Another photo of her fills my screen. My mouth curves with deadly precision.
Get ready, little daisy. We’re only getting started.
Four
Maisy
People sidestep me in the hall at school a few days later. I’m like a rock in the middle of a river, forcing everyone to go around me because I’m frozen, glaring at my locker. The words spray painted on it are a slap in the face.
LIAR.
The big bold black letters stand out against the green metal door. The worst part is it hits home in a way I don't expect. It's not the first time my locker has been vandalized in the last couple of weeks since Fox started paying attention, but this shines a light on an ugly truth: I am a liar. That's how I feel, anyway. Always obeying my parents' expectations instead of making my own choices. He sees it somehow. Knew exactly how to get under my skin.
Someone snickers, bumping into me on purpose and I shuffle on my feet to keep my balance. Their whispers have become the norm lately. All it took was one party for people to stop seeing me as the nice girl with good grades. They don’t care if it’s true or not when the gossip is juicy and entertaining.
Everyone lives for a good downfall story.
It doesn’t matter. I repeat it in my head enough times for it to feel true. None of this matters.
Just smile through it. Play along. Ignore the whispers.
Someone laughs louder and says my name as if I’m not standing right in the middle of it all, listening to the lies grow bigger. She’s secr
etly a nympho and the prude thing was an act. She’s sleeping with one of her teachers. She’s Wilder’s personal sex doll and in exchange for doing his homework he lets her suck his dick. I’m done with this.
Turning on my heel, I head for the custodian office with my head held high. Whether I look down or not, my classmates’ stares bore into me, so I might as well keep my chin up. It’s just a locker.
I’m polite when I ask if a janitor could come to my locker. One of them follows me back. A crowd has formed around it, snapping selfies and laughing.
“Move aside,” the janitor says.
People I’ve never seen or talked to before swagger away, smirking at me like I’m on display in a zoo.
“Again?” The janitor asks in a tone that makes me ball my hands into fists.
It’s this side of judgmental. Just my luck I got the same janitor who spent two days last week scrubbing EASY off my locker the first time it was vandalized. The thing about high school is that it’s not just the students who love to gossip. The staff are just as bad if not worse.
The urge to get upset and fight against these rumors is there, sitting in my chest, waiting to be unleashed. I breathe through it, feeling the bars of my cage bumping against my back. If I make a bigger scene, Mom will only bring her wrath down on me for putting a dent in our family’s image. Totally more important than standing up for myself, right?
With her promotion to CEO and Dad's to police chief came more eyes on us, which meant tempering my impulses. The words on my locker ring alarmingly true. Most days I barely feel like I know myself because of the image I've been trained to portray.
Instead of opening my mouth, I shrug and plaster on a sweet smile. That’s the best I can manage right now. His gaze lingers on me for a beat too long before he turns back to examine the locker and mutter into his radio about the cleanup.
What they think they know doesn’t mean anything, these people will never see the truth. It’s only high school, it’s not forever. I’m almost done here. Of course, rumors have a way of sticking in Ridgeview. It’s a big town, but not that big. People love to talk.
On my way to meet up with Thea after school, an impulse grips me. It doesn’t happen a lot, but when I’m in this part of town, I can’t fight the pull to drive down the old street where we used to live. Maybe it’s stronger now because of my run in with Fox in the parking lot.
If Mom or Dad knew I came here they’d kill me. When Holden and I got our licenses, they forbid us from coming back here, as if our childhood home was tainted. I never understood why, it’s a nice area where we had block parties with our neighbors.
“Just to see. It’s been a while,” I murmur to myself, turning down the road instead of going straight.
Like always, as soon as the familiar houses pass by I’m overcome with a wave of longing. After Fox left Ridgeview, we moved to a new house because Mom got a big promotion at her pharmaceutical company. I still don’t get how someone from the research department becomes CEO, but no matter how many times I’ve tried to wrap my head around it I can’t make sense of why it happened. It was supposed to change our lives for the better—that’s what Mom and Dad told us. But it didn’t. The last good times we had as a family were left behind on this street.
My life has been good, but a piece of me was torn out when Fox went away. Everything changed, and the piece hasn’t slotted back into place since he’s returned, like the damn thing has warped, no longer fitting where it belongs.
After I pass both of our old houses, I slow the car to a stop at the end of the block by the field. It’s overgrown with fresh wildflowers, dotted by a few bees and butterflies floating on the breeze above the blooms. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can hear an echo of laughter. My throat is thick when I swallow. So many memories…
I get out of the white Audi Q7. It’s really Holden’s car, but he lets me use it whenever I need it, which has come in handy since he never left for college like he was supposed to. It’s not fair that my brother got a car and I didn’t, but there are way bigger problems in the world than not being gifted a car. Dad refuses to let me have my own and it’s putting a serious damper on my road trip plans. He’s not going to stop me from going on that trip, though. I’ve played by their rules and given them what they wanted. The road trip is my one chance to spread my wings before I go back to being a picture-perfect Landry for the college they picked out for me.