by Ally Derby
Copyright © Jacqueline Ross and Ally Derby 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Jacqueline Ross, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
1st Edition Published: July 2015
Published by: Blue Valley Publishing
Cover Design by: Cover To Cover Designs
Cover Model: Quinn Biddle
Photographer: Michael Anthony Downs
First Edit by: C&D
Final Edit by: Kellie Montgomery
Formatting by: IndieVention Designs
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
*Disclaimer*
This book contains mature content not suitable for some under the age of 16.
It involves strong language and sexual situations.
All parties portrayed in sexual situations are consenting adults over the age of 18.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all the fangirls (and boys) who find their escape inside the pages of a good book.
To all of the people who feel a deeper connection to a character than the people they sit next to in class.
To all those who feel they are alone in wishing, and wanting, and hoping for a different ending to what they feel is their reality.
Never stop, wishing, dreaming, hoping and reading.
Wishing proves we want more.
Dreaming helps us find a path and a way.
Hoping means we haven’t given up.
Reading opens our minds, makes us feel and see through the words of others.
Your happily ever after is going to happen in a way, which you may not expect, and when you least expect it.
Truly…. Regardless…
Ally Derby
table of contents
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
About the Authors
Playlist
prologue
I lie on my back, looking up at the white ceiling, and in my head, I am singing the song about the old lady swallowing the fly.
One event in a person’s life can change everything. My father’s unemployment led to his drinking and driving, which led to an accident, which led to his injury, which led to his pain and depression, which led to his inability to find a job, which led to me moving to two different schools already this year. Tomorrow, I will start the third.
My mother’s Aunt Ann passed away, and Mom is now the only living relative. We bought her house right before the tax auction. It is in a very small town that apparently is very expensive. This is the first home my family has owned. My mother is optimistic, hopeful, and tries her best to make my father and I feel the same way.
I wish I could do that for her. I wish I could be as happy as she is, but honestly, it drives me crazy that she can act as if our family isn’t broken, because it is. It is so very broken.
chapter one
New Girl
It is six-thirty on a Monday morning in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York. The temperature is negative two degrees, and there is not a cloud in the February sky.
My alarm clock blares “Fifteen,” and I think, Taylor Swift, as much as I love you, today you are my enemy. Then I groan as I roll over and push snooze on my hand-me-down alarm clock radio, given to me by my mother when she got the iPhone 4.
Wanting to go back to sleep, I have no desire to roll out of bed. I know, as soon as I do, my feet will touch the hardwood floor, and they will turn cold. I hate cold feet almost as much as I hate Monday mornings.
“Hadley, it’s time to get up,” my mom sings as she walks past my door toward the bathroom.
“I’m up,” I grumble.
I hear her footsteps halt before she leans back, looking at me as she stands in my doorway. “Good morning, beautiful girl.” My mother is obnoxiously chipper in the morning. It drives me insane. “Happy fifteenth birthday,” she almost sings.
“It’s Monday, Mom.” I roll my eyes and cover my head. “That’s a crappy day to have a birthday.”
“Language, Hadley.” She shakes her head and steps back. “May I enter the sanctuary?”
Yes, she asks if she can come in my room. Six months ago, when I found her crying on my bed as she was reading my diary, I kind of went off on her.
I nod in answer. Then, against all that should be for a girl celebrating her fifteenth birthday, I force myself to get out of bed. There’s that cold. Ugh. That feeling drives me even crazier. Now I’m pushing the limit.
I walk to my closet and pull out a pair of tattered skinny jeans and a blue field hockey T-shirt then pair the outfit with my white Converse high-tops. I quickly dress in the small solitude of my closet and exit the sanctuary with Mom at my heels.
“It’s your first day at a new school, Hadley, so are you sure you wouldn’t rather dress up a little? Mix it up a bit?”
“It’s my third school in a year. Things are mixed up enough.” Realizing I have hurt her feelings, I give her a hundred watt smile and a thumbs up. “I’m being true to myself.”
She smiles and nods, “That’s perfect.”
I walk into the 80s-style bathroom and turn on the mustard yellow sink with a very rusty water stain down the middle of the bowl. I brush my teeth, run a brush through my hair, and swiftly pull it into a waterfall braid that Mom and I saw on YouTube by a lucky girl who had an iPhone of her own.
I look in the mirror, and staring back at me is an average looking girl with slightly wavy, deep brown hair and green eyes that my mom promises me are the most beautiful eyes she has ever seen. I don’t argue with that compliment, seeing as they are the same as hers. Beautiful, I’m not sure of. Above average … possibly.
Regardless of how I feel about myself, I am reminded of the great words of Effie Trinket, “Chins up, smiles on!”
As I head for the stairs, I peek into my parents’ room to see my dad is still asleep. No shocker there. He had sock throat last night. That’s what happens when he has had a few too many “sleeping pills.” He sounds like someone stuffed a gym sock in his mouth, and he swallowed down the next shot too fast. That’s something they don’t talk about in health class—sock throat.
Apparently, we don’t talk about it here, either. Mom only tells me, “He’s just going through a rough spell right now.” Said spell has lasted, oh, about three years, since the layoff that “ruined” his life. The wizard that must have cast such a spell has to have been Voldemort.
“Morning, Dad,” I whisper, though I know he won’t hear me.
Sleep it off, man, sleep it off.
I head downstairs and nearly trip over our old, fat, yellow cat. “Shove a cheek, Yolo,” I growl at him.
Yolo, yes, Yolo.
I got a cat for
my birthday two years ago, during the peak of my Hunger Games obsession, so I named him Buttercup. He got hit by car exactly one month after my birthday. Apparently, cats DO NOT have nine lives.
Then this fatty showed up, so we fed him. Now he won’t leave, and he is not friendly.
Quite honestly, I don’t like him.
“He was meant to be yours, Hadley. Look at the signs. He showed up exactly one week after Buttercup disappeared.”
“Disappeared, Mom? I saw him get hit. I watched as Dad scraped him off the street with a shovel. His blood stain stayed there as a reminder of my rotten luck.”
“Honey, he was meant to be yours for a short time—”
“A reminder that cats actually don’t have nine lives?”
“Well, maybe that’s the lesson you were supposed to learn from the experience.”
“Whatever, Mom,” I say as I walk down the stairs to head to school.
The odds were certainly not in Buttercup’s favor
~*~
My mother takes me to school, and by the grace of God, she doesn’t ask me a hundred times if I am all right. She only does it once in the half a mile it takes to get there. I let her know that it’s nothing new, but it is because this school is much smaller than I am used to. It will make it harder to blend in.
We walk up the front walk together and pass several of my new peers through the loud, busy halls toward the main office. They all notice me, and only a couple smile. I suspect it’s because my mother smiles brightly at all of them.
“Hadley Asher, first day of school,” Mom announces in a very chipper tone to the round receptionist with the tight bun.
“Of course,” she says as she types something on her keyboard then pushes back in her chair and walks over to grab to the paper from the printer. “Locker number one four two. Take a right when you walk out the door. Your first class is global on the second floor, next to the library, room two one two.”
When my mom smiles and acts as if she is going to hug me, she sees I am mortified and stops. Instead, I walk out of the office and look back as Mom heads left toward the main entry.
“Mom,” I call out, and she stops, looking back and giving me a sad smile. “I’m gonna walk home.”
“You sure?”
I nod, wave, and smile, wanting her to know I’m fine. Why? She deserves it.
I make my way to my locker, noticing the stares, the whispers, and a couple people smile. I give them a quick smile and then open my locker to put my Jansport backpack in it. I keep a binder, a pencil, and a pen, hoping it’s all I will need. Glancing at my schedule, I see that after global I have chemistry, algebra 2/trig, English, home economics, lunch, physical education, study hall, Spanish, and then homeroom.
The school is like a hotel compared to my last one. It is clean, and the locker-room doesn’t even smell like dirty feet. In each class, I am introduced by the teacher. I force a smile, then look back down and pretend to take notes. I collect my books, the syllabus, and make sure to jot down any questions I may have.
When the class is excused, I take the time to ask the teacher a question. This almost always makes me late for the next class, which is perfect. I am given a hall pass and skate in as class begins, avoiding awkward moments where I may have to actually interact.
Every class, I end up sitting in the front. This is preferred. I catch no dirty looks if I have to sit by someone who doesn’t want me there; the teacher doesn’t label me as a bad kid because I am not in the back, trying to mess around; and my peers don’t think I am a butt kisser sitting in front, because they know it isn’t a choice.
The students are all dressed to impress. They are all Abercrombie, and I am definitely not Fitch. The girls, every single one of them, have their hair done in a way that lets you know they spend more than half an hour styling it and doing their make-up. The boys … well, they may have spent more time doing theirs than I did, too.
Blue Valley is picture perfect, and I am certainly drawing unwanted attention, even with a bowed head and making sure there is no eye contact.
At lunch, I hide out in the bathroom. It isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. I prefer it over walking around the lunchroom, trying to find a place to sit and eat when I know I won’t be eating anyways. Why? I am a nervous wreck.
Historically, it will pass in about two weeks. I will no longer be the un-shiny new girl and will have perfected the blending in. This school is different, so blending will be harder, but I will figure it out. I will also have figured out who to avoid and who is going to cause the least amount of drama.
When the last bell rings, I stand nearly inside my locker and wait until the hall is almost bare before I leave. I am avoiding the crowed, blending. I am doing all the things I need to do to get through day one at a new school. When I round the corner on my way home from school, Mom is outside, bent over and looking in the bushes, singing, “Yolo, come here, kitty-kitty. Hadley is almost home. You’ll be best friends.”
Dear God, woman, I think.
I turn, ready to make a run for it, when I see the blonde–haired, short and slender neighbor girl laughing at me, and my cheeks flush red with embarrassment. She gestures for me to come over to her yard.
“Yolo, Hadley already loves you! You just have to return the love!”
The girl again waves for me to come over, and I make a run for it.
As soon as I reach her yard, she speaks, “I’m so sorry.” She laughs.
“I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m Hadley.” I smile.
“Oh, I’m Lana,” she says, oblivious to the fact that I was most obviously trying to change the subject, but then she seems to catch on. “I saw you! You’re in, like, three of my classes! The new girl!” She is obviously happy with her observation.
“Yeah, I think so. Anyway, I’ve got to go home. See you around!” I smile.
~*~
Throughout dinner, the cards and boxes taunt me. It seems to be an eternity before Mom laughs and brings out a small blue cake with the words “Happy Birthday, Hadley” written in neat, white lettering.
She places fifteen candles on the cake and lights them. Then, for “Happy Birthday,” Mom sings cheerfully while Dad grumbles along. I blow out the candles mindlessly, and then we each eat a piece of cake, Dad finishing last. After taking his sweet time and a few swigs of whatever’s in his glass, he stacks his plate on top of ours as Mom carries a card and four boxes over to me.
I open the card first out of respect, and it’s this sappy drugstore thing that says nothing but how ‘amazing’ I am. I thank them both then pick up the smallest box. When I take off the wrapping paper, my jaw drops because it’s an iPhone 4. I run over and hug both parents then open the phone box, looking at the shiny black screen and the silver body just like Mom’s.
The next biggest box has two phone cases. Both are ones Mom has seen me look at when we went shopping a week ago at a mall kiosk. There is also a pair of ear buds in it. The next box has a blue Lifeproof phone case in it. The biggest box is full of smaller and smaller boxes, and in the smallest box is a fifty-dollar iTunes gift card.
I hug them both again after I open them all. Then I carefully put everything in the largest box and carry it to my room.
Once I reach my room, I put the Lifeproof case on my new phone and plug it into the outlet next to my nightstand. I set the phone on the stand so it can charge before I mess with it.
Finally, the screen turns a lighter shade of black, and the Apple symbol materializes, making me grin. After two hours, I have two books and twenty-five of my favorite songs loaded onto the phone as well as a few free games to play. Soon enough, I set it down and fall asleep.
~*~
The next morning, Lana is waiting for me on the sidewalk. “Do you want to walk together?”
“I have my bike,” I say as I see a boy backing out of her driveway.
“Need a ride, Lana?” he yells out the window.
“No thanks, Pax. I’m gonna ri
de my bike.”
“You’re doing what?” He laughs at her.
“Go, shoo, I’m capable.”
He shakes his head as she runs to the garage and grabs her bike.
“See you later, new girl,” he says with a wave as he drives away.
I watch as the black Honda Accord backs out of the driveway. The driver is wearing a gray hoodie, black winter vest, and has aviator sunglasses covering his eyes. I assume he is Lana’s brother, and Lana must have told him about me.
New girl? I wonder if she remembers my name.
“It’s been a while.” Lana gestures at her bike in explanation. “Hopefully, I remember. I have ridden with him ever since he got his license.”
“From what I understand, it comes back to you fast. You know, ‘just like riding a bike.’ ”
She laughs and looks at the ground. “What the heck are we doing? It’s winter. Do you really ride your bike to school in this crap?”
“There’s no snow on the ground.”
“Okay, but seriously, we’re going to look like a couple idiots. I can’t do that, and if we’re going to be friends, I seriously can’t allow you to, either.”
With that settled, we end up walking to school together, talking the entire way, or rather, she talks, and I listen. She makes me feel at ease, which is quite a feat in itself.
We walk down a sidewalk crowded with other students. Today I am dressed in a way to make blending an option. I am wearing a pair of less tattered jeans and a sweater Mom got off the sale rack last season at The Gap.
I blend in during global, but as soon as I walk into chemistry, Lana yells out my name and pats the seat next to her.
“Sit here, Hadley.”
So I do. I sit there and watch as some of the judgy faces from yesterday seem to become less harsh.
When class is over, we walk out, and she shows me where the next class is. I already know—I was here yesterday—but I don’t remind her of that. I just thank her because, well, she’s been very nice.