“God, no need to be so dramatic.” She groans. “I already asked DeWitt to stick you in the chorus. He’s basically obsessed with me, so I’m sure he’ll find you a spot.”
“Chorus? Are you serious?” I gape at her. “You can shove chorus up your ass,Ambrosia!”
I feel a small flicker of satisfaction as her face flushes red. She can’t stand her own weird name any more than I can stand mine.
“My name isAmber,” she hisses, jaw tight.
I flip her off and stalk toward the campus parking lot. Sadly, whatever petty thrill I get from the jab doesn’t even come close to the sting of losing Megara.
I yank open the rust-flecked door of my beat-up Toyota Camry and collapse inside. I won’t give anyone at school—or this damn town—the satisfaction of watching me break. Certainly not my stupid sister and her friends. It’s just… I really did need this.
Megara was supposed to be the thing that saved me.
Last year, I got rejected from my dream school, NYU. I’d spent my whole life wanting out of this too-bright, shallow little beach town, with its perfect façade and pastel everything. I’d never fit in here. But New York? That city breathed people like me. NYU’s elite performing arts program, Tisch, had the best theater training in the country, and Broadway was right around the corner. NYU wasn’t just a school to me. It was a way out.
I’d been gutted when the rejection came.
My high school guidance counselor said I could try applying again as a transfer after my freshman year of college. My grades weren’t the problem. I’d graduated with a 4.0 unweighted GPA and an almost perfect SAT score, but everyone applying to Tisch had numbers like that. What I lacked was real “performance arts experience.” I’d taken Advanced Performance Choir in high school last year, but apparently, that wasn’t enough.
I’d pinned all my hopes and dreams on community theater this fall and landing the lead inHercules. I figured this way I could pad my résumé enough to earn a shot at a live audition. I just knew once I got infront of the actual decision-makers at NYU and they heard me sing, they’d have to let me in.
Now what was I supposed to do?
I start the car’s engine and Thom Yorke’s haunting voice fills the space as the radio syncs with my phone’s playlist. The aching melody of “Let Down” wraps around me like a second skin, and I close my eyes, letting the lyrics settle in. The song’s about the kind of helplessness that makes you want to scream and, right now, I feel every single word.
A wave of failure crashes over me, and I tear off the tourmaline quartz necklace my mom made me wear for good luck, tossing it into the glove box. I know my eccentric, hippie-dippie mother means well, but no amount of “magical” crystals is going to fix the mess that is my life.
Fucking Amber.
It’s just like her to ruin this for me. My sister and I have been butting heads since birth.
Less than a year apart—both October babies—we’ve always been locked in some twisted sibling rivalry, fighting over everything: clothes, toys, Mom’s attention, even who got the biggest slice of cake at our shared birthday parties. Separate celebrations were a luxury we couldn’t afford. Mom did her best, but there was never quite enough to go around.
Our father walked out right after Amber was born, and Mom’s been scrambling to raise us ever since. She calls herself a “mystic artist,” which is basically code for painting people’s auras and peddling healing crystals to bored housewives.
I’ve never believed in that stuff, but it pays the bills. The women in town flock to her readings with the same manic energy they bring to their overpriced hot yoga classes and bulk-buy kombucha hauls at Erewhon.
I should’ve known Megara was a lost cause the second Amber got involved with the Players. It doesn’t matter that I can sing circles around my sister. People just loveAmber for some reason. Always have. She’s got that thing, that effortless, impossible-to-nameItgirl factor.
One time, we were walking through Sephora when a casting director from LA stopped her mid-aisle and offered her a national cereal commercial on the spot. It aired during the freaking Super Bowl, too. That’s just how Amber’s charmed life works—opportunity finds her.
The most obnoxious part? She doesn’t even like musical theater. This whole play is just practice for her. A stepping stone.
What she really wants is to be some glossy, vapid Hollywood starlet or maybe the next reality-star Kardashian, as long as it means paparazzi and a designer wardrobe. Fame is the goal and looking good while getting it.
Unlike my sister, I’ve never been the girl everyone likes.
I mean, yes—technically—I know I’m attractive, in my own emo-Elvira-meets-Wednesday-Addams kind of way. Pale, icy-blue eyes. Jet-black hair down to my waist, thick and shiny enough to land a shampoo deal. Mom’sbegged me to cut it for years, but I’d rather stick needles in my eyes than lose even one inch.
Even Hayes—my best friend and lifelong source of brutal honesty—once admitted the guys on the LHU football team think I’m hot. Like goth Megan Fox hot. But apparently, I also give off “major demon succubus vibes,” like I might devour their souls in the quad between classes. So they’re all too freaked out to actually ask me on a date.
Still, good hair and some locker-room talk doesn’t change the fact that I’ve never fit in. Not in Laguna Hills, at least.
I wasn’t the cool girl in high school. The only parties I went to were the ones Hayes dragged me to, and even then, I always knew I was only there because of him. I was the plus-one no one actually invited. The tag-along.
That’s why, even if this play was mostly about NYU, part of me hoped it could mean something more. I thought maybe my freshman year at LHU could be a fresh start. That maybeHerculeswould give me an actual in—a way to be seen. To finally be accepted. To belong, even just a little.
It’s stupid, I know, but it’s the truth.
