I strolled down the soap and shampoo aisle, stopping short at a small display of hair dye. They had five colors: black, dark brown, light brown, blonde, and fire engine red. Most of the boxes were expired and the ones that weren’t had misshapen packages as if they’d been knocked off the shelf and replaced too many times. I hesitated over the box of blonde hair dye with a smiling woman on the front, and instead reached for the jet-black.
“Wait, don’t take that one.”
A thin hand reached around my shoulder to grab for a box at the back of the shelf. I turned to find a girl behind me, smiling and holding out the new box for me to take. Her eyes were rimmed with black eyeliner and her blonde hair faded to bright pink halfway down as if she’d dipped the strands into a bucket of radioactive paint that morning. She was tall, with spindly arms and hollow cheekbones.
I took the box and stared down at it. “Thanks.”
“Kids always mess with the ones in the front. Usually I get home to find half the stuff missing.”
“Makes sense,” I said, tossing the new box of hair dye into my basket.
“I’m Ashley,” she said, offering a gentle, awkward wave. The name confirmed that I knew her, vaguely. She’d moved to town our freshman year of high school, but I’d never had a reason to talk to her before moving to Austin.
“I’m Lilah.”
Her smile faltered at the mention of my name. She hadn’t recognized me at first, but as her eyes roamed my features, trying to extract my old persona, I knew it was too late to hope for anonymity.
“You’re back?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Looks like it.”
I knew why she was confused. I’d left Blackwater as a blonde dance team captain and had returned as a choppy-haired vampire.
After a few moments of her standing there dumbstruck, I stepped past her in pursuit of the cash register.
“Well, see you around.”
“Wait,” she said, reaching her hand out to stop me. “I don’t know what your plans are for the rest of the day, but I’m pretty good with hair dye…”
She let her gaze linger on my blonde roots.
“My house is just down the street,” she continued.
Her invitation took me by surprise considering the fact that we’d never been friends. Maybe I had a bright, scrolling marquee across my forehead that read “HELP. I’M IN NEED OF A FRIEND”, or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, if going to Ashley's house delayed the inevitable return to mine, I was in.
…
Ashley’s house was just a few streets away from mine, close enough that I swore I could hear the rumble of Chase’s truck from my perch in her bathroom. She worked her way through my hair with the dye and I sat on a stool, watching her in the mirror.
“Nothing’s changed much since you’ve been gone.”
I raised my eyebrows, curious about what she meant.
“Kimberly and the dance team girls are still popular. Josh Hastings is still the quarterback and he’s tied with Trent Bailey for second. It sort of depends on if you prefer jocks or bad boys.”
“Second...like, second place?”
Her brown eyes met mine in the mirror. “For hottest guy at school.”
In a small town like Blackwater, it was slim pickings when it came to guys. I had forgotten that any girl in school would have been able to spout the most eligible guys in our class off the top of her head.
“I personally think Trent is cuter,” she said.
I remembered Trent. He had black hair and perfectly imperfect features. Before I’d left town, he’d already been arrested three times, ranging from small time drug dealing to underage drinking. If Ashley referred to him as a bad boy, chances were he hadn’t changed his ways during my time away.
“And you already know who holds the number one spot,” she smirked.
Chase.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek. “Can we talk about something else?”
She blushed and ducked her to head to reach for another hair clip.
“Oh, uh, sure.”
I’d embarrassed her.
“What are you doing tonight?” I asked.
For one, I wanted her to know that I wasn’t going to ditch her after she finished dying my hair; I wasn’t in a position to turn down friends. Also, I didn’t want to go home.
Her eyes widened with hope. “Actually, there’s this party over at—”
“Sounds good,” I interrupted, offering her my best attempt at a real smile.
Chapter Five
Chase
My dad had inherited a repair shop in the town square from his father, who’d inherited it from my great-grandfather. There was a 1950s sign out front that boasted, “If it’s broken, we can fix it.” As a kid, I’d learned how to fix everything from toasters to washing machines, but my real forte was repairing vintage cameras. We didn’t get many of them in the shop, so few in fact that my dad had always cast them aside to me. It wasn’t worth his time to learn how to fix them.
I broke the first four cameras he gave me. They were difficult repairs, but tinkering with them felt like a puzzle, a puzzle with big payouts in the end. Vintage Polaroid cameras went for a hundred dollars, but restored Leicas could go for a couple thousand. Leicas were my specialty.
I still took in cameras from the repair shop, but the quantity couldn’t compare to the ones I found online. I usually spent a couple hours a week searching around for rare finds, the specialty cameras that hadn’t worked in years. Those were the most fun to fix; they taught me that there was value in trying to fix something even when everyone else has given up.
I hopped down from the bed of my truck with a box of vintage cameras in tow. It was the last box of the day and I rested the corner of it against my hip as I closed my lift gate, hoping the pile of rust would stay intact for another day.
Harvey stuck close to me as I walked up the sidewalk and into the house. He’d been confused all day, following me back and forth for each trip to and from my truck. Neither one of us was sure of what to make of our new home.
I pushed opened the door to my room and Harvey ran in first, sniffing the carpet around the bed. It smelled different than our house, a fact he picked up on even more than me.
Coach Calloway had insisted he was giving me a spare room, but I knew that wasn’t the case. The stack of boxes with Elaine Calloway’s name scribbled across the side of them proved it. This was her room, and I felt like an intruder.
I glanced around, looking for some space to carve out as my own, but the stack of boxes in the corner kept grabbing by attention. I dropped my cameras on the bed and turned toward them. If I was going to be an intruder, I might as well start acting like one.
I pulled the top off the box on top. An empty perfume bottle rattled against the side as I rooted through the contents. It looked like a bunch of junk, but at the very bottom I found a photo of a young Elaine Calloway sitting between her parents. She was the spitting image of them both. Her mom had her arm wrapped tightly around her, leaning over as if shielding her from the world. Her dad wore a sharp expression, his dark brown eyes staring straight into the soul of the person snapping the photo.
Her dad.
The man who’d started it all.
Fucking prick.
I tossed the cardboard lid back onto the box and stood up.
“Let’s go, Harvey,”
I slid on my running shoes without untying them, picked up his leash, and flew down the stairs.
Chapter Six
April 1985
Blackwater, Texas
Elaine Calloway had always prayed for a sister, a guardian angel, or a hero. She’d sink to her knees in the back of her family’s trailer and clasp her hands together until her knuckles turned white. Her prayers didn’t drown out the sound of her father’s blows; there was no escaping them in their doublewide, but that didn’t keep her from trying.
On particularly bad nights, her mom would sneak into her small bedroom and
shove a change of clothes into her backpack for school. On those nights she never let Elaine see her face, hiding behind her long blonde hair, but Elaine knew better. Her mama was the prettiest lady in the whole town and she never covered up her face unless it was black and blue.
“Baby, go to Hannah’s house. Sneak out the window and ride your bike to Hannah’s.” Her pale green eyes pleaded with Elaine to understand.
Elaine glanced down at her pajamas, confused. “Mama, it’s a school night. I’m not supposed to be out late on a school—”
“Elaine!” her mom yelled, before softening. “Do what I say, sweetie. Hurry.”
Elaine shook, trying to keep from crying. Her mama never yelled, not at her.
“Susan! God dammit, I'm not done talking to you!”
Her mama flinched at the sound of his voice. She bent low and put her face right in front of Elaine’s, letting her see the worst of it. Her mom’s lip was split open and her left eye was already big and puffy, almost twice the size of the right one.
“Please go,” her mom pleaded.
Elaine couldn’t stop the tears. She couldn’t be a big girl.
“Come with me,” Elaine begged. “Come with me to Hannah’s!”
Her mom shook her head and moved to the window. She flipped open the rusted lock and pushed it up. A gust of cold night air rushed in and Elaine crossed her arms, trying to keep warm. Her mom tossed her backpack out onto the grass and then turned back for Elaine, waving her closer.
Her dad’s heavy steps sounded in the hallway, growing louder as he yelled. His words were nasty and filled with hate. They were the kind of words that earned Elaine a smack on the butt, but there was never anyone around to punish her dad.
He banged on Elaine's door, turning the knob until the cheap particleboard began to splinter.
“Open the door!” he yelled.
Her mom rushed forward and grabbed Elaine’s arm, yanking her toward the window.
“Ride your bike to Hannah’s,” she insisted. “You remember the way. Just like we practiced—”
“OPEN THE DOOR,” her dad yelled again, his fist banging and banging and banging.
Her mom lifted her up, trying to get her to climb out the window.
“I don’t want to leave,” Elaine cried, clinging to her mom’s neck. “Please. Come with me. Please come!”
“Go, baby. I’ll come get you after school tomorrow. GO.”
She pushed Elaine toward the window and held her steady as she climbed through. It was a three-foot drop from the window to the front yard, and when her bare feet hit the soft grass, she looked up and met her mom’s pale green eyes.
“I love you,” she said just as the thin door gave way to her dad’s fists. “GO.”
Elaine turned, yanked on her backpack, and ran for her hot pink bike lying on its side in the dirt. She tried to block out the sounds coming from her bedroom as she peddled away. They were the noises that kept her awake at night, the noises that haunted her dreams.
She peddled fast, leaving the rotten trailer park behind to cross over Main Street. Hannah’s house was in a better part of town, where the houses had big porches and roses in the front yard. Elaine unlocked the gate on the short fence and dropped her bike in the grass. She tiptoed around the edge of the house until she reached Hannah’s window in the back. Her friend was sleeping in her princess bed, under a ceiling painted to look like a blue sky, clouds and all.
“Psst. Hannah,” Elaine said, tapping her small finger against the glass. “Hannah!”
Her friend shot up in bed and squealed when she saw Elaine outside. She scooted out of her blankets and rushed for the window. Her small hands had to work on the lock for a few seconds before she could slide the window up just enough for Elaine to climb through.
She took Elaine’s backpack and then helped tug her inside, too excited to notice Elaine’s tearstained cheeks.
“I was hoping you’d come tonight!” Hannah said. “My mom gave me cookies after dinner and I snuck an extra one for you.”
She turned for her nightstand and pulled out a cookie wrapped tightly in a napkin. She cradled it in her palm as she carried it to Elaine.
It was still warm, and when Elaine bit into it and let the chocolate chips melt on her tongue, she realized that she didn’t need to pray for a guardian angel.
She had Hannah.
Chapter Seven
Lilah
Music pounded around us as I followed Ashley through the crowded party, keeping my gaze focused on her back. I wasn’t ready for a slew of hometown reunions; my first day back at school was sure to have enough to last me a lifetime.
Ashley bypassed the keg and beer pong tables and led us toward a gazebo in the backyard. There was a small group gathered there and as we stepped closer, I noticed Trent Bailey perched inside.
He glanced up and smiled, and I was momentarily caught in his web. It was easy to see his appeal. He was the kind of cute that no one had expected. He’d somehow broken his ancestors' chain of mediocrity, blending his parents' frumpy genes into an offspring worthy of attention.
He patted the seat beside him in the gazebo, Ashley pushed me forward, and I slid down to claim the bare patch of wood between him and his friend, resisting the urge to wave the cigarette smoke away from my face. The scent of tobacco brought back vivid memories of when I’d lost my virginity. At the start of my junior year in Austin, I’d been approached by a nameless boy. He’d asked me to be his girlfriend, and two months later he took my virginity in a flash of sweaty limbs, tobacco breath, and scratchy sheets. I’d kept my eyes closed the entire time, and at the end, I’d stared up at the ceiling through the haze of his cigarette smoke and thought of Chase.
Trent Bailey reminded me of that boy back in Austin, with his lit cigarette and his leather boots. He was the same sort of grunge and my stomach rolled as he leaned in to whisper in my ear. “When’d you get back in town?”
“Yesterday.”
Trent tossed his cigarette butt on the floor of the gazebo and crushed it beneath his boot. “I like the hair. The black suits you more than the blonde.”
I stared down at where the cigarette ash stained the wood, and then the smell of vodka momentarily overpowered the scent of tobacco. It was my turn to sip from the half-empty bottle getting passed around the group. I reached out and accepted it from Trent’s friend beside me. The cheap paper label was already soaked from lazy sips, and as I tipped it back to my mouth, I hovered the lip of the bottle so that the clear liquid slipped into my mouth like a waterfall.
I had gone back and forth on whether or not I should drink. I'd read that the children of alcoholics are four times as likely to develop problems with alcohol, but I figured there wasn't much point in trying to avoid my mother’s legacy. Her face bled into my thoughts as the cheap vodka slid down my throat. I hated the taste and I fought to keep from showing it. It was the same liquor my mom would slip into her morning orange juice. The same taste that made her salivate only ever made me want to gag.
I wiped an excess drop from my lip and passed the bottle on to Trent. He took it with a smirk, skimming his finger against mine, and I knew I’d probably end up going home with him.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked brazenly, emboldened by the vodka. I glanced up to meet Ashley’s gaze across the gazebo. She smiled and gave me a subtle thumbs-up. She was impressed I’d caught Trent’s attention, but I didn’t deserve her praise. I was just the newest and shiniest thing at the party, a glorified spoon for Trent to catch his own reflection in.
I turned to him and slid an inch closer. “No. Why do you care?”
He smiled and focused on my lips as he pulled a little plastic bag out of the pocket of his jeans. Ten little white pills. Molly. I’d never met her, but I’d tried her friends, always hoping that one of them would answer my question: which little white pill makes mothers forget their daughters?
I opened my mouth and Trent slid the pill onto my tongue. The capsule started to disso
lve just as he leaned in and kissed me. I pressed my hands against his chest and pushed against him, but he broke the kiss off first. It was quick, painless, innocent, and then the vodka slipped back around to me.
It was time for another sip.
Chapter Eight
Chase
I stared at the Calloways’ dining table as my lasagna warmed in the microwave. It was an old wooden square that rocked back and forth on unstable legs. It’d sat in the corner of their kitchen for the last decade and a half and it housed countless memories. I’d sat across from Lilah at that table, licking ice cream off my face before begging her to let me finish off her bowl too. I’d lost my first tooth in an apple at that table and I’d gotten in big trouble when I’d scared Lilah with my bloody mouth.
There was a layer of dust coating the top of it now, as if no one had eaten on it in years. I wet a rag and wiped it down until the microwave dinged. Then I took a seat at my old spot against the wall and ate my dinner. I had a perfect view of the empty house. It had the effect of a museum preserving time as best as it could. I knew the lamp in the corner no longer worked, but no one replaced it, just like the ancient VCR and the broken rocking chair in the corner. They were all things Mrs. Calloway had added to the house and I couldn’t figure out why no one had gotten rid of them.
I could hear the faint sound of game footage coming from Coach’s room down the hall. His notepads littered the house, continuous ramblings of a man with a passion for baseball. I loved the game too, but it was in Mr. Calloway’s blood in a way it would never be in mine.
Harvey let out a melodramatic moan beneath the table and I realized he’d been waiting patiently for a scrap. I tossed him a piece of burnt cheese just before the front door opened.
It was 12:01 AM, officially the start of my second day living with the Calloways, and I was finally getting my first glimpse of Lilah. She stumbled inside, closed the door behind her, and then leaned against it as if she couldn’t hold up the weight of her own body. With bated breath, I waited for her next move. Before she could meet my gaze, Harvey’s excitement bubbled over. I reached down and held his collar so he couldn’t run and lunge at her. I shook my head as his bright pleading eyes met mine.