by Jo Watson
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Jo Watson
Excerpt from Burning Moon copyright © 2016 by Jo Watson
Cover image from Shutterstock. Cover design by Elizabeth Turner.
Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First edition: May 2017
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LCCN: 2017934095
ISBNs: 978-1-4555-9554-9 (pbk.), 978-1-4555-9552-5 (ebook), 978-1-4789-6731-6 (audio)
E3-20170323-JV-PC
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY JO WATSON
AN EXCERPT FROM BURNING MOON
NEWSLETTERS
This book is dedicated to everyone who’s ever felt like they didn’t belong. And DM.
PROLOGUE
The day of my mental breakdown was a Wednesday.
And when I say “mental breakdown,” I don’t mean the kind that celebrities have when they check into a luxury spa for medicated mud wraps and mojitos. I’m talking about the other kind. The messy kind.
It was a normal Wednesday. An unspectacular, uneventful, run-of-the-mill, not Monday, not Tuesday, but Wednesday. There was nothing special about the day.
So why was I feeling like this? Like what exactly?
Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?
Because I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The feeling wasn’t fully formed yet, but it had gripped me nonetheless. Embedded itself like an arrow in my back or a virus in my bloodstream—invisible, but deadly.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
A mild pressure in my solar plexus. A slight heaviness in my head and a feeling of total disconnectedness. Everything around me screeched that I did not belong here, and suddenly I felt like an alien in my own home.
I rubbed the sticky sleep from my eyes and glanced around my room. The chair in the corner that Mother had insisted on having reupholstered in Toasted Granola Sunrise suede, and the walls she had insisted I paint in Mystical Song of the Gray Dove, looked odd. (Sidenote: Who the hell is coming up with the names of colors these days, anyway?)
I climbed out of bed apprehensively, stalked over to my bathroom, and looked at myself in the mirror. My features were the same—large and distinct. Olive complexion, unruly curly black hair, that “signature” mole on my cheek that I’d always hated, and then there are my eyes… one dark brown, one light hazel.
But somehow everything looked different. I looked less like myself and more like someone I didn’t know. If that makes sense?
But of course it doesn’t make sense. Because nothing about this so-called normal Wednesday was making any sense at all (hence growing suspicions of imminent mental breakdown).
Perhaps I was still asleep and dreaming. That was surely the only possible explanation for these feelings.
I pinched my cheek. Nothing.
Splashed water on my face. Nope.
I stood in the strange bathroom, looking at this strange person in the mirror. Her name was Jane. Plain Jane Smith. Dr. Plain Jane Smith.
Well, that’s my name now; it wasn’t the name I was born with. But that had nothing to do with the way I was feeling, did it?
Kitchen. Tea. Now!
A soothing cup of tea was surely the antidote that would rid me of these feelings. I walked into the kitchen, turned on the kettle, and waited. I felt out of place here, too.
Tea—one bag.
Sugar—zero.
No milk in sight.
I stirred the liquid that I was pinning my hopes of normality on and sipped. It tasted bitter. Did it always taste like this?
The so-called soothing tea only seemed to intensify the feelings and gave rise to a humming anxiety, which crept slowly like a growing evening shadow.
What was going on with me? I could phone one of my friends. But what would I say?
Help! I think I might have been sucked into the Twilight Zone.
Nothing had changed really, nothing significant enough to explain this feeling anyway. I’d just graduated and had started my new job. But no surprises there. It certainly wouldn’t be the thing shaking me to my very core. The job had been planned for and organized, and it was inevitable—I was going to be taking over my father’s dental practice.
It was my birthday in a few days, but birthdays came along every year. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. I needed to stop this feeling. I needed to stop obsessing.
Drive!
That always cleared my head. I got dressed and brushed my teeth for precisely two minutes—no excuse for bad dental hygiene, even in the face of a total nervous breakdown.
I climbed into my car and started driving through the sleepy suburbs. Then I veered left, away from the little houses and toward the city.
The mall. With shops and people and breakfast. That would surely make me feel normal again.
It was early, so most of the shops were closed and the mall looked like an empty school hall: depressing. Like it was waiting for kids to rush in, and without them was just a sad shell of what it had once been. A washed-up carcass on an empty beach.
The pressure in my solar plexus was back. The feelings intensified into a painful stab. I grabbed my stomac
h. What’s that? This time the feeling was somewhat familiar.
Loss.
A deep sense of loss washed over me, loss like I’d experienced only one other time in my life. But what the hell have I lost?
I took in a deep breath and filled my lungs to capacity and then I walked. I walked as fast as I could.
Past the banks, past the hardware store, and past the shop where I’d bought the exorbitantly overpriced scented candle that I had absolutely no use for (but I’m a people pleaser and the shop attendant had been so nice). I passed a coffee shop that had just opened its doors to a solitary customer in need of an early-morning fix.
And then… I saw it.
I stood outside Flight and Travel Center, looking up at the electronic display of all the holiday specials. And there it was. At the very top.
GREECE
A special.
Round-trip ticket $800.
Almost sold out.
Buy now. Complimentary beach bag and sunscreen included.
*Terms and Conditions apply
And that’s when the mists of confusion started to evaporate and the picture finally came into focus.
This was about my name. This was about my job and this was definitely, definitely about my birthday. This was about the day I was born and the circumstances in which I was born.
I slumped down against the wall and pulled out my credit card. I clutched it tightly and waited for someone to open the shop so I could buy the only thing that could furnish me with the answers I’d been seeking my entire life.
CHAPTER ONE
I’ve always known I was adopted. It’s not one of those closely guarded family secrets that makes its way onto a TLC reality show: My mother is actually my father’s Siamese twin’s second cousin’s daughter’s lover twice removed.
Besides, it’s pretty damn obvious. You would have to be seriously visually impaired not to notice.
My family—Mom, Dad, and twin sisters Janet and Jenna (my mother has a thing for the letter J)—all look alike. They’re short, fair skinned, with strawberry blond hair, blue eyes, and cute little button noses.
They’re also all terribly attractive, looking like one of those happy families that appear in TV ads for fiber-rich breakfast cereal or get up and go multivitamins.
Me? I’m none of these things. I’m tall, freakishly so. I’m also dark, with a complexion that goes the color of a cappuccino with too much sun—I avoid it at all costs. My features aren’t delicate, either: nose more pronounced than most, lips fuller than usual, and I seem to have large, furry caterpillars masquerading as eyebrows. Thank God those are back in fashion now, so I no longer have to endure hours of root-ripping torture.
You could quite literally call me the black sheep of the family. And for all this, I suspect I am my mother’s greatest disappointment. Maybe that’s why she overcompensates with me so much. Not that she would ever admit that out loud. I was adopted after she and my father spent years trying to get pregnant. But six months after I arrived, she was miraculously pregnant with perfect twins. I often wonder if she regrets adopting me…
Standing out wasn’t easy. It made growing up even harder than it should have been. During middle school I went through a particularly awkward stage where my limbs seemed too long for my body and my facial features too large for my face.
“Maybe she’ll grow into them?” I once overheard a classmate’s mother say.
“She’s a big-boned girl,” someone else once said. “You know, sturdy. I bet she’ll never break a bone.”
It was true; I’ve never broken a bone. But I would have gladly traded a little snapped femur or two for the joy of not being likened to the foundations of a house. Kids teased me for not looking like my family. For being too tall, having a big nose, and anything else the snot-nosed schoolyard bullies could think of.
And then there was that one boy who told me my parents didn’t really love me because I wasn’t their real child. And I took it all in. I internalized every single cruel word, each one feeding off the other, until I was carrying around a dark, twisty, cancerous growth inside.
Luckily, when I hit eighteen, stuff started falling into place. That is to say that things weren’t so disproportionately big, long, and full. I still don’t look like my sisters, though. I envy them so much, sometimes, that I struggle to like them. Does that make me a bad person?
I’ve always felt like the perpetual ugly duckling, waiting for her swan moment that never seemed to come. The wallflower that never bloomed. And believe me, I’ve tried to bloom. I fight with a hair straightener most mornings, and I’ve probably watched every YouTube makeup tutorial on the contouring craze. But each time I tried to make my nose look slimmer and cheekbones higher, I just ended up looking like a zebra, and no amount of blending changed that. And as of today, I officially own precisely thirty-three lipsticks. I got it into my head once that somehow the perfect shade could save me from myself and transform me like Cinderella’s glass slipper. I try them all on once, but none of them seem to do the job. So I put them all into a giant makeup bag and close it, and each time I do, I close off a little bit of hope inside myself, too.
There was nothing I could do to change. I was just… different. I have since accounted for that difference, though.
At the age of eighteen, I was legally allowed to reach out to my biological mother through the adoption agency. I wanted answers and was desperate to meet her and know who I was and where I came from.
She, however, did not want to meet me—which broke my heart more than I can ever describe. She had rejected me at birth, and now done the same thing to me eighteen years later. She did pass on a few breadcrumbs, though.
She told me that she’d named me Tracy, that I’m half Greek, and that she was only eighteen when she’d given me up. As if her young age were some kind of excuse, or explained away any accountability she might have had in the act. I wrote back asking for information about my father—maybe he would want to meet me—but all she told me was that I was the product of a youthful holiday fling with a tour guide named Dimitri. That was it. And then she slammed the metaphorical door in my face.
I thought finding out about my birth parents would have made me feel better. But it didn’t. In fact, it made me feel worse.
Greek. There it was: the reason I wasn’t blond and had to pluck a stray chin hair by the age of eight. I didn’t want to be different. Why couldn’t I be blonder and prettier, with size 6 shoes and ballerina limbs?
Why couldn’t I be not-me.
I remember crying myself to sleep that night and wishing I could have the part of me that made me different, the Greek part, surgically removed. The next morning I woke up and two things happened.
I decided that if I couldn’t change the color of my skin, shrink my features, or radically shorten my limbs with dramatic, experimental plastic surgery (I really did Google this), I would become the poster child for “normality.” So I rejected everything about myself that was different and went about trying to blend in.
Plain Jane Smith. Polite, run-of-the-mill, average. I strove to be that person you couldn’t pick out of a crowd if you tried. That person that at your ten-year school reunion no one even remembers. I flew under the radar like a stealth plane in enemy territory. Stealth Plain Jane. If they can’t see me, they can’t tease me.
The second thing I did was start building a wall that kept me somewhat separate from the world around me—only allowing access to my select group of friends, each one of us outcasts in our own special way.
That was also the last time I cried…
I stared up at the electronic display once more. GREECE. I’d rejected and denied my Greek heritage in every possible way. In fact, you could go as far as saying I’d developed some kind of psychosomatic allergy to anything Hellenic.
And now I want to go to Greece with every fiber of my being?
Not only that, but I was overcome by a desire—no, a need—to find my biological father. Maybe meeting him
would finally give me the answer to this drowning confusion I felt. Maybe it was time to tackle my Greekness head-on.
But I couldn’t embark on this journey alone. I grabbed my phone, opened WhatsApp, and quickly created a “Jane goes to Greece” group.
Then:
Lilly added
Annie added
Val added
Stormy added
Jane: Guess what?
Annie: You know what time it is here in LA?
Val: What?
Jane: Where is everyone? Hello?
Annie: Lilly is probably (a) staring at her engagement ring, (b) having sex with Damien, (c) staring at her ring while having sex with Damien.
Lilly: I saw that! And you’re wrong, it’s (d) postcoital cuddling while staring at my ring.
Annie: Nympho.
Val: Hang on… YOU’RE GOING TO GREECE? Did I read that right?
Annie: What?
Lilly: You hate Greek food!
Annie: You hate anything Greek!!!! WTH
Lilly: Hang on, Stormy is phoning me. She’s probably confused about how to use the iPhone Damien bought her again.
Annie: I can’t believe she even agreed to use it.
Val: She’s named it “Tumor” and refuses to hold it to her ear when talking.
Annie: LOL that’s dramatic!
Lilly: She’s freaking out because green speech bubbles have invaded her screen.
Val: hahaha
Lilly: I’ve tried to explain to her how to join.
Stormy: amI Here’s?
Val: Welcome to 2017!
Annie: OMG it’s going to snow.
Stormy: wHose is talks ing?
Jane: I have to go. The shop is opening.
Annie: What shop?
Lilly:? Wait.
Val: ARE YOU GOING TO GREECE?
Stormy: wHY os is rhis THIS going so gast?
Stormy: gast
Stormy: DUCK this. FAST?
Stormy: Fuck this!
CHAPTER TWO
One round-trip ticket to Greece please, the special.” I pointed at the board, unable to contain my excitement.
The woman looked slightly irritated with me. I’d barely given her a chance to open the shop and slide a high-heeled toe inside. I’d been waiting so impatiently that I’d practically cartwheeled through the doors the second they were opened. Not my usual style. I always waited patiently and let the elderly and the women with children go in front of me. But today, if there’d been an elderly lady with a walker, I may have actually used the thing to catapult myself inside.