PROLOGUE

‘Even though you cannot go back and make a brand new start, you can always start now and make a brand new ending.’

Luce...

There are two kinds of people in this world.

People who love shopping malls.

And people who are correct.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Mom said, for probably the hundredth time, holding a pair of beige pants up to the light like they were a winning lottery ticket. “Just give me a sec. I just need to grab some pants and then we’ll be on our way.”

“Okay,” I said.

I immediately regretted it.

My legs were aching. My shoulders were entirely another story. I was carrying eleven shopping bags, and I’m pretty sure at least four of them were full of throw pillows. We didn’t even have a couch yet. We had pillows for a couch that didn’t exist.

To survive, I imagined the bags were a tower of blueberry pancakes.

It worked for about four minutes.

Mom walked from store to store in four-inch heels like she was gliding on ice. I followed in sneakers, jogging to keep up, my feet screaming. How does she do it? I’m nineteen. She’s thirty-six. She should be the one who’s tired. That’s how ageing works. It’s science.

“Ooh, Luce, look, a candle store!”

“Mom...”

“Just one sniff!”

It was not just one sniff.

It was thirty-five minutes of sniffs.

######

When we finally got in line at the front desk of the last store, the line was approximately nine miles long. Two guys behind us started whistling at Mom. Then at me. Then at Mom again, like they couldn’t decide.

I turned around and gave them the look.

You know the look. The one that says ‘I have eleven shopping bags and nothing left to lose’.

They stopped whistling.

Mom paid. We walked to the car. I collapsed into the passenger seat of our black Benz, put my head against the headrest, closed my eyes and let my shoulders melt.

“See?” Mom said, starting the engine. “That wasn’t so bad.”

I didn’t answer.

I was busy being dead.

“Now don’t be a crybaby,” she said, patting my knee. “We won’t need to come back for another month.”

A month.

A whole month.

I’d be emotionally ready by then.

Maybe.

§§§§§§§§

So. Hi. I’m Luce.

Luciana Willows, technically, but nobody calls me that except my mother when I’m in trouble, which is a lot.

Red hair. Pale skin. Freckles I’ve been trying to scrub off since I was six. Nineteen years old and about to start senior year of high school, which, yes, is a little old for a senior, and no, I don’t want to talk about why.

Okay, fine. I’ll talk about it a little.

Later.

Yesterday, my mom and I moved from Tampa, Florida, to a tiny town in California called Hollow Pines. Population: trees. And about four thousand people, probably. But mostly trees.

My whole life was in Florida.

The beach where I learned to swim. The ice cream place that put rainbow sprinkles on everything, even if you didn’t ask. The mall, which I hated, but it was MY mall, and I knew exactly which bathroom was the clean one.

And now it was all gone.

Mom said it was a fresh start. Mom said she got a great job at the hospital here. Mom said California would be good for us.

Mom says a lot of things.

We moved on Friday. Today was Saturday, and we went shopping. Tomorrow, I planned to sleep for twenty-four hours straight.

And on Monday, I start school.

Wow. School. How exciting.

Note the sarcasm.

✓✓✓✓✓

Here’s what I didn’t tell my mom.

I wasn’t going to make any friends this year.

Not one. Zero. Nada.

I was going to keep my head down, my headphones on, and my mouth shut. I was going to go to class, do my homework, eat my lunch alone and go home. I was going to be a ghost.

Because friends hurt you.

Boys hurt you.

And I had a heart that was just starting to scab over, and I wasn’t about to let anybody pick at it.

His name was Carl.

Even thinking about it made my jaw go tight.

Carl Mercer. Blond hair, blue eyes, letterman jacket. The kind of smile that made every girl in Tampa forget how to use her brain. Including me. Especially me.

We dated for two years.

Two whole years. Every date, every text, every ‘goodnight, babe’, every kiss in the back of his black Mustang. I thought it was real. I thought he was the one. I thought I was the luckiest weird redhead in the state of Florida.

Turns out it was a dare.

All of it. From the first ‘hey’ to the last ‘happy birthday’. Some drunk boys at a party bet him he couldn’t get the weird redhead to date him, and he did. And then it became a joke. A long, ongoing joke that everybody was in on.

Everybody except me.

Mom never liked him. She said she had a bad feeling about him. I thought she was just being overprotective. Moms always are.

I should have listened.

That’s going to be the theme of my whole life, I think. I should have listened.

††††††††††

Four months ago, I turned nineteen.

Carl threw me a party. A night party, in my name, at a friend’s house. Mom said no. Mom doesn’t do night parties. Mom thinks anything that happens after nine p.m. is basically a crime.

So I snuck out.

I walked to a diner ten minutes from my house and called Carl to come pick me up. I sat in a red booth under a neon sign with a flickering P and told the waitress I didn’t need a refill, my boyfriend was coming.

My boyfriend.

I was so proud of that word.

He pulled up. I got in the car.

And somebody in the back seat put a cloth over my face.

And that was it.

That’s all I remember.

The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital bed, and my mother’s face was grey, and a doctor with kind eyes was saying words I didn’t understand.

Damage. Infection. Both ovaries. I’m so sorry.

I’m going to skip the rest. Partly because I don’t remember it. Mostly because I don’t want to.

Here’s the short version: some boys did a very bad thing, and I’m the one who has to live with it. I can’t have kids. Ever. The police said there wasn’t enough proof. Carl had a scholarship and a very good lawyer.

And then there was Serenity.

My best friend. Since fourth grade, when she gave me half her pudding cup and I decided that meant forever. I braided her hair at every sleepover for ten years. I stood up for her every single time someone was mean to her.

She knew about the dare.

She knew the whole time.

She didn’t tell me because she had a crush on Carl and wanted him for herself.

So that was fun.

§§§§§§§§

I spent three months in my bedroom after that.

Not eating. Not talking. Not doing anything except staring at the ceiling and wondering what was wrong with me.

Then I started seeing a therapist named Doctor Merlin. She has big round glasses and a cardigan full of cat hair and a plant in her office that I’m ninety percent sure is fake. She taught me how to breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for four. She made me keep a journal.

And on the first page of that journal, I wrote down a quote I found on the internet at three in the morning.

The one at the top of this page.

You can’t go back and make a brand new start. But you can always start now and make a brand new ending.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

I came up with a plan.

It’s very simple. Even Carl could follow it.

Step one: Cage my heart. Lock it up. Throw away the key.

Step two: Put on a mask. Smile. Nod. Pretend everything is fine.

Step three: Survive one more year.

One more year of high school. One more year until I graduate. One more year, and I’ll be free from the clutches of high school heartbreak forever.

No friends.

No boys.