Chapter 1
I am not a good girl.
I like to think it’s not entirely my fault, that I’m some messed up concoction brewed by a lifetime shifted from one foster house to another until they all just start to look the same.
My bedroom window only creaks when the whole house is asleep.
I pad, soft-footed into the back yard. It isn’t really a yard—I think there has to be grass for that—more of a patch of dirt meant for old bike tires and gravel. My sneakers are so worn that they leave indistinct marks in the dust and my shadow so familiar that the Rottweilers next door just watch me lazily from the neighbor’s back stoop.
I pause in front of the window and take a deep breath to steady myself. A blue light catches on the glass, a tiny sliver running along the reflected tops of the run-down houses to my back.
“Fuck,” I whisper under my breath. I should’ve been back hours ago. I can’t afford to be caught sneaking out again. This place might be a hell-hole of a foster house but it can always be worse. I’ve had worse. I know what it looks like, and as shitty as this place is, this isn’t it.
I press the base of my palms to the bottom of the window frame and try to push up as slowly and evenly as possible. The window sticks for a moment, the old peeling wood swollen and slippery from morning dew. One of my fingers pries up under the bottom and it finally jerks up with a gut-wrenching screech.
I freeze.
The Rots next door perk up, their heads tilting back as they sniff the air. I listen for any noise, any sign of stirring on the other side. Aside from the rustle as the dogs flop back down, nothing makes a single clue I was overheard.
I have to save my sigh of relief just a little longer. I push the window up as slowly and carefully as possible and hoist myself up and through into the bottom bunk directly on the other side. I’ve barely collapsed into my bed and tugged the window back shut behind me, this time with only the tiniest of squeaks, when the door to the room flies open.
I tug the blankets up to my chin as if I’m protecting my modesty. I can’t let her catch me in yesterday’s clothes, or she’ll know I snuck out again.
“Teddy!”
From the shrill tone of Ms. Martin’s voice, you’d think I asked for this life. When I don’t answer right away, her wraith-like silhouette stumbles another couple steps into the room. This time she repeats herself using my full name.
“Theodora!” The name I hate most rattles the very frame of the bunk bed, waking the others where the groaning window couldn’t. Cassie and Rachel mutter incoherently, still half in dreams. Lucky them. I’ve been stuck in this pathetic reality for as long as I can remember.
My most recent wretched foster mother stands over me, so close even I can’t pretend to sleep any longer. Her three-day-old makeup is smeared, her hair is matted and askew all over her head, and she reeks of vodka. She’s a terror, but I don’t complain because she’s also the only one who didn’t try to take me back right away like a sweater with a limited return policy. She might suck, but I know that it could always be worse.
“What?” I snap at her and finally push myself up. I move too fast and smack my head on the top bunk above me. I clap my hands over my forehead and groan as I fall back into the pillow. I should be used to the tiny bed by now, but in my defense, it was built for someone half my size.
Ms. Martin tosses a wad of black cloth at me and I somehow manage to catch it, just to drop it in my lap a second later. I don’t know what she just threw at me, but it feels like a steel wool scrubbing pad.
“Get up! Get dressed. You’re going to a funeral,” she says.
Well, of all the things she might have said to me, that was certainly the last thing I expected.
“Who died? Your personality?”
I cock an eyebrow at her. I know I shouldn’t be talking back to her this early in the morning, but I can’t let the opportunity slip away. Call it a slip of judgement thanks to the exhaustion pressing at the back of my eyelids. I’d been counting on one more day to sleep before the new school year starts up tomorrow.
Ms. Martin raises her hand to slap me across the face, but she spots Cassie sitting up and stretching and quickly goes to paw the back of her head instead. The girl is still new to the system and hasn’t learned to keep her mouth shut yet. It’s been my saving grace on more than one occasion, but I shouldn’t keep pushing my luck.
I quickly change the subject and pick up the thing Ms. Martin tossed to me. The black fabric is as shapeless as it is scratchy.
“What am I supposed to do with this? Clean something?” I shoot her a dirty look. She grits her teeth and glares at me.
“No, smartass. Clean yourself up a bit and put it on. We haven’t got much time if we want to be early.”
I look the dress over again. I guess if you look at it from a certain angle, you can at least tell what it is. Still, it’s the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen in my life.
“You know what the problem is about funerals?” I say, almost swinging my legs over the edge of the bed before I remember I’m still wearing yesterday’s clothes. I stop just in time. “The person you’re there to see is usually dead.”
Cassie’s eyes grow wide as she looks down at me. I cringe inwardly. I should be more careful around her and the others. Not all of them have to turn out like I have. Jaded and short tempered, amongst other poor qualities.
Ms. Martin plants her hand on her hip. She always does that when I’m testing her patience. I always test her patience, just to see how far I can push her before she snaps. We are on opposite ends of a broad spectrum.
“You might not be so snarky if you knew whose funeral it was.”
I sit straight up. Forget getting caught. My pulse races and a sickening feeling settles in the pit of my stomach.
“Who is it?” I try to run through who it could be, whose death could possibly upset me more than having to wear that potato sack of a dress she just threw at my face.
“One of your classmates.”
The purposeful evasiveness
makes me want to gouge out her eyeballs. Dear lord, give me the patience not to kill this woman.
“Which one?” I ask through gritted teeth.
“The pretty one. Sadie White.”
Now even Rachel, usually oblivious to all but the most violent methods of waking her up, stirs. She rolls over and rubs sleep from her eyes.
“You mean the one who looks like Teddy?” she asks.
Cassie giggles. “Ms. Martin just called Teddy pretty.”
I have to fight away the tiny smile that tugs at the corner of my moth as Ms. Martin looks appalled. What the girls say is true. I’ve never seen it, but everyone else at school always said we shared an uncanny resemblance to one another.
I never minded, but Sadie she …
I stop myself. You aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead … no matter what a bitch they were when they were alive.
That doesn’t help the fact that, no matter how much people thought we looked alike, Sadie White and I were as far from being friends as you can be without actually being enemies.
“That’s sad and all, but I’m good, thanks,” I say, flopping back onto the bed. It’s draining, thinking someone you actually care about might have died … until you remember that there isn’t anyone you actually care about.
I glance up at Cassie and Rachel’s petrified faces looking back at me. Ms. Martin is staring daggers.
“Ass out of bed now. We leave in ten.” She glances up at the girls, who duck out of sight under the covers faster than a high school relationship lasts. “That goes for you too.”
She shoots me one last look, and I know she means business because she doesn’t even stay to make sure we do it. If there’s one thing I know about Ms. Martin, it’s that you don’t want her to have to come back.