Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 128893 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128893 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 644(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
I laid the pliers on the bed and stood up, crossing the creaking wooden floor to the full-length mirror in the corner of my new room. I wasn’t sure who had stayed in this room before me, but it was made up like an old-fashioned nursery. There was a rocking horse in the opposite corner and several china dolls with blank faces crowded each other on top of the bookcase.
Actually, it was kind of spooky.
Ignoring the blank stares of the dolls, I examined myself in the mirror. A girl with long, auburn-brown hair and green-gray eyes looked back. All the woman in my family had the same eyes. My mother had them too, but she’d been dead almost two years now.
I pushed the morbid thought away and looked at the necklace which felt heavy and cold around my throat. If I painted, I would have done a self-portrait and entitled it Girl with Key. Or maybe Girl with a Freaky Necklace that Won’t Come Off. Ha-ha, Megan, very funny.
Hesitantly, I reached up and brushed just the tips of my fingers against the jewel-studded black metal. The key throbbed at my touch like a live thing and I jerked my hand away with an indrawn hiss of breath.
I’d read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy—not because of the movies or for AP English but because they were the kind of books my Dad used to recommend to me. Before Mom had died and he became an absentee parent, that was. Anyway, the key around my neck reminded me of Tolkien’s one ring. Especially the way he described it as Sam and Frodo got closer to Mordor. The way it got heavier and heavier—the way it seemed to have a mind of its own…
The comparison freaked me out. It was bizarre and more than a little scary.
I thought about trying to talk to Aunt Delliee again, but when I opened my bedroom door, I heard the faint sounds of Middle Eastern music drifting up the broad central staircase. Oh right, she had told me she was teaching a belly dancing class this evening—that was the whole reason she was in such a hurry to get home. Well, that and the fact that she wanted me to get plenty of sleep on the night before my first day of school.
Like that was ever going to happen.
I closed the door and decided to try and forget about the necklace and its weird key and concentrate on my clothing options for tomorrow instead. Not that I was some kind of a fashion maven, but school had already been in session here in Frostproof for a couple of weeks so I was walking into hostile territory.
It’s always best to be prepared.
Of course, I had always gotten along fine back home in Seattle. I more or less blended into the background—just another college fast-track academic nerd. But there was only one small high school in Frostproof and I was sure most of the kids there had been friends since kindergarten. Any hope I had of fitting in, or at least going unnoticed and being left alone, might depend on a good first impression—or maybe no impression at all.
What I needed was a nondescript outfit that didn’t draw attention to me, I decided. I began to unpack my one large suitcase, hanging clothes in the single dusty closet. I considered my options as I went along.
Unfortunately, everything I owned had long sleeves.
There was a good reason for that. I pushed up my Henley’s sleeves and looked at myself critically. The neat rows of tiny pinkish-white scars marching up and down my inner arms looked like a ladder. They were much too visible against my pale skin—much too noticeable.
I didn’t need to spend my first day at school being labeled and judged. So it looked like I’d be wearing a long-sleeved shirt no matter how hot it was. I sighed as I look at the scars again. But I didn’t regret a single one of them.
Yes, I was a cutter—or I used to be, anyway. But not for the reasons you might think.
I had started back when Mom was dying. Dad and I both knew she was going and she knew it too. That was awful—too awful to think about and yet it was all I could think about. I literally couldn’t turn my mind off.
That was why I started cutting. The physical pain seemed to release the emotional hurt somehow. When the blade sliced my flesh, I had a brief moment of respite from the never-ending loop of Mom’s dying, she’s leaving me, I’ll never see her again, she’s dying that ran over and over inside my head constantly. It always came back, of course, but in that brief moment of bright, sharp pain, I was free of it.