“I know. I’m so sorry.” I try to reach for my hair, desperate for the small reassurance, but I find nothing coming out from beneath my beanie. “What … what do we do now?”
Sol opens his door and slides out, still not looking my way as he answers, “We wait and see how much damage you’ve done.”
CAELA
Itdidn’t take long for the trouble to start after Caela arrived in Kentucky. Her mother and stepfather, Rob, seemed to be anticipating conflict, always giving Caela the side-eye and implying that she should be careful not to be a bad influence on Sam, the five-year-old half brother she was meeting for the first time.
They didn’t like Caela’s band tees or her ripped jeans. They hated the music she listened to and the fact that she never seemed to smile. And despite her mother’s claims of being an ally, they pretty much refused to acknowledge the fact that she was gay.
“You just gotta stick it out for, like, two years,” Eliza told her during one of their phone conversations the first week. “I know it sucks, but it’ll be easier once school starts and you can make some new friends.”
“Unless no one here likes me.”
“Don’t be stupid. Why wouldn’t people like you?”
“Imean, my own mother doesn’t seem to like me. And Rob definitely doesn’t.”
“Yeah, well, screw them,” Eliza said. “I like you, and I happen to have excellent taste. So who cares what they think?”
But Caela did care. Maybe it was just because she missed her dad, but she found herself desperately wanting her mother to like her. She’d never wanted that before. Her mom’s abandonment and lack of interest had stung, but Caela was able to accept it. Because she had her dad there to love her enough for both of them.
But now he was gone, and her mother was the only parent she had left.
Caela tried to be what her mother and Rob wanted at first. She started wearing preppy clothes. She tried to listen to Christian radio and country music. She forced herself to smile more, even though it felt like she was dying inside. She even stopped asking them to call her Caela and resigned herself to being Michaela from now on.
There was nothing she could do about being gay, aside from just giving them what they wanted and never bringing it up.
Caela tried. She really tried.
But it wasn’t good enough.
Robstill looked at her with blatant distrust and disapproval in his eyes. And her mother hardly looked at her at all. They still questioned every move she made, every place she went, every person she spoke to. Each moment Caela spent in that house was suffocating.
The only person who seemed to like Caela was Sam, the kid who’d made her mother realize that being a parent wasn’t so bad after all. Her mother adored him. Spoiled him and told him how wonderful he was.
And to be fair, he was pretty wonderful.
Sam loved Caela from the moment they met. He loved to have her take videos of him with her fancy camera, loved to play catch with her in the backyard, loved to sit on her bed and ask her a thousand questions while she waited on texts from Eliza and Grady.
Texts that, once school started, became less frequent.
“Michaela, can I play with your camera?” “Michaela, what’s this song called?” “Michaela, can we watch a movie?” “Who’re you texting, Michaela?” “Michaela, will you play LEGOs with me?”
But it seemed like her mother and Rob hated how close Sam and Caela were becoming, so they found excuses to pull himaway from her every chance they got, isolating her even more in the house that should have been her home.
She couldn’t breathe.
School wasn’t much better. This farm town was tiny, and Caela quickly learned that the people at her new high school had all gone to school together since kindergarten. They already had their friends, their routines, their full lunch tables, and there didn’t seem to be any room for her.
She needed something, though. Something to occupy her time, to get her out of the house and keep her distracted so she wasn’t constantly thinking about her dad or the fact that Eliza and Grady were hanging out without her.
“I think I’m gonna apply for a job at Ricci’s.”
It was early autumn, a few weeks into the school year. They had been sitting down at the dinner table for fifteen minutes, and it was the first time Caela had spoken. Most nights, she didn’t say anything beyond answering yes or no questions.
Rob turned to look at her, and her mother put down her fork.
“Ricci’s?”
