“Kick that,” I said angrily, cupping my bleeding elbow.

“If we kick it, it’ll only trip you again next time you come around. The key to never tripping with the same rock is hang on to it,” he said with a smirk. “You can make sure you’ll never trip with the same rock if you grab on to it and know where it is.”

Thank you, Mackenna, for that nugget of wisdom. I’m going to make sure I never trip over you!

There are people who have an effect on your life. And then there are people who become your life.

Like he did.

I was always a solitary, withdrawn girl, my mother a workaholic, my father a workaholic, both of them strict and pretty much expecting me to focus on grades and grades only. They were always wary of me having bad influences, or even friends, really. This, for some reason, and my choice of clothes, made me the cool girls’ favorite attraction—or distraction. I was the only goth in our grade, and they loved to snicker about my all-black clothes and call me a cutter. But there was this one boy, the coolest bad boy, who stopped the teasing one day. He approached me with a purple scarf I had seen one of the girls wearing earlier, and he draped it around my neck, pulling me to him almost intimately close. “I’ll see you after school,” he said and kissed my forehead. The other girls shut up.

Because everyone would have given a limb to get that attention from “Jones”—and he gave it just like that to me.

And that’s how I fell, like a ton of bricks, for Mackenna Jones.

It turns out he did wait for me after school that day. He drove me home and asked his neighbor to sit in the backseat so “Pandora” could sit up front with him. I didn’t even know he knew my name. “Why’d you do that?” I asked when he walked me up the stairs to my building.

“Why’d you let them?” he returned, those eyes of his making me feel vulnerable and naked and strangely pretty. For a goth, this is big.

Really big.

But I also noticed by his frown that he was displeased.

“I don’t stop them because I don’t give a shit,” I said as I hurried up the steps. He followed, grabbed my wrist, and spun me to face him.

“Hey! Go out with me Friday night.”

“Excuse me?” I sputtered.

“You heard me.”

“Why would you want to go out with someone like me? Your line of fans not long enough?”

“Because the girl I want is right here.”

We started going out in secret, finding hiding places where no one would see us. He told me about music, how he wanted to see the world. He worked as a DJ on the weekends. He had hopes and dreams and wishes. I told him I didn’t know what I wanted to be, and I didn’t have hopes and dreams and wishes. I guess you never feel so hopeless as when you’re with someone who’s bursting with ideas and knows he’s going to take on the world. Even so, he was drawn to me. He teased me, made me laugh, later made me forget about my father’s death and the fact that my mother considered it a betrayal if I ever cried at his loss.

He became my life. I began to wait for his eyes, silver like a wolf’s, to turn to see me. I began to quake and shiver in anticipation of him walking past my locker even if he wasn’t supposed to come over. Sometimes I dropped a pencil, a book, my bag, just so that he could hand it over with that smile of his and brush his thumb over mine. I suppose people wondered about us, but we never gave them proof. Maybe I wondered if he only wanted sex from me, but I also wanted it. I fantasized about it. When it would happen, where it would be, how it would feel, if he’d say nice things to me.

It ended up being amazing. Every time with him. Amazing. Addictive.

I only wanted him.

We fooled around for months before finally going all the way, and things got even more serious after that. I spoke about telling my overprotective mother about us, about taking care of my school grades so she had no excuse to tell me I couldn’t have a boyfriend . . . and just when I was about to say something to her . . .

His father got arrested for drug trafficking. That night, when I got home, my mother was being called by the DA’s office. Mackenna’s hopes were shattered, and I had none of my own to pull us through. I tried to tell my mother that Mackenna and I had “something,” to which she responded by immediately forbidding me to contact “the son.” And after Dad died, even as Mackenna and I planned to leave the city, she watched me like a hawk. . . .

In the end, Mackenna did leave. He left me behind.

I went back to being the goth people laughed at, except now I was not sad anymore. I was mad. I punched some of the girls, and my mother sent me to therapy and, later, to a private school, where I ended up meeting the two girls who’ve been my only friends.

Melanie and Brooke.

I never, ever mentioned his name to them.

I’d thought he’d saved me, but it turns out he’d only just started to ruin my life.

At seventeen, I had needed him.

At eighteen, I still missed him.

At nineteen, I still wanted him.

At twenty, I still thought about him.

But by the time I heard him sing about me on the radio, making light music from nights that had held me together when I’d felt lonely—that’s when I wished I’d never laid eyes on him.

♥ ♥ ♥

AT DAWN, I hear my mom moving around.

“Hey,” I say when I join her in the kitchen. She smiles and nudges a cup of coffee in my direction with the back of one finger. I shake my head. “Thanks.”

“You came in late last night,” she says.

“I was with Melanie.”

“Ahh, of course. That explains it all.”

I start buttering some toast for myself so I don’t have to look her in the eye when I lie. Otherwise, she’ll know in an instant. By profession, she’s naturally inclined to immediately detect liars. You have to be really good to fool her—which, I guess, I am. “Mother, I have a business opportunity, and I need to travel out of town for a while.”

“Travel?” she repeats.

She’s a lawyer. She’s used to asking a question and staring you down until you either whimper or cave. I stare back at her and don’t respond, forcing myself not to twitch under her stare.

“Travel implies flying, Pandora.”

The mere word makes my stomach spin as if someone is twirling it with a spoon. “I just flew with Melanie and did all right with the meds I took. By the time I woke up, we’d landed. I’ll take those and try to do some stretches by land,” I lie. I have no clue how the rock band works, or if they travel by land, air, or heck, even sea. Still, I open my hand and show her the pillbox I just retrieved, three pills resting inside.

She stares directly at me, ignoring the pills. “So what kind of opportunity is this?”

“It’s a good one—great one,” I amend as I frantically set my mind free to imagine a sufficient lie. “I sent in the proposal for several apartments—dark fabrics, you know. What I like. They’re for a big, um, family, and I was hired on the spot. They said nobody can do this but me—it has to be me. And I’ve been decorating long enough to know it’s the kind of opportunity I might never see again. Ever.”

“All right, so when are you home?”

“I think three weeks.”

“Very well.”

We continue our breakfast in silence. I try to exhale slowly so my breath doesn’t shake on its exit.

“PanPan!” A cannonball lands on my lap, and I laugh as all the warmth that is Magnolia envelops me.

“Hey, Magnificent!” I say, tweaking her nose. I call Magnolia anything with a Mag. She gets a toothy grin when I ask her what she’s up to.

“Nuttin’,” she says, pulling free and jamming a hand in the cereal box on the counter.

“Magazine, I’m going to be away for a bit, are you going to stay out of trouble?”

“Nope. Trouble’s my middle name.”

“We agreed it was mine.” I go to the cabinet and pull out a bowl and a spoon. “What’ll you do if you miss me?”

She blinks.

“You’ll make a list of the things you wanted to do with me when I was away and we’ll do them all when I get back,” I tell her.

She nods and carries her cereal to the table. I’m a big believer in lists. You write your wants down on paper, and it’s like putting them out there to the Universe: Bitch, you gotta make this happen for me. I got it from my mother, who’s married to her lists, and I think I will probably marry mine . . . when I finally get around to writing one.

“Okay, I will,” Magnolia says, starting to eat her cereal. I feel my phone buzz and notice Kyle’s car out in the street.

“Kyle’s here, I better go.” Putting away my phone, I squeeze Magnolia to me. When I stand, my mother nods. I grab my duffel bag, and for a moment, I’m uncertain whether to hug her or not. Since she stands there with her coffee in her hand and makes no move toward me, I nod back and leave. She’s just not very tactile, but neither am I. We’re more comfortable remaining in our little bubbles—little bubbles only Magnolia seems to penetrate. Well, Melanie sometimes gets into mine too.

I spot Kyle behind the wheel and slide into his nerdy automobile.