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Cinderella had Prince Charming. Belle had Beast. Jasmine had Aladdin. Snow White had seven short servants, and Mulan got a fucking sword. What I have is Ethan Brimley.

I don’t need TikTok to tell me we’re toxic, and I’m sure everyone thinks I’m just in this for the payout. But what no one tells you about toxic relationships is that they are also intoxicating. Whatever I’m feeling about Ethan at any given moment—love, hate, passion, jealousy—it’s overpowering, shooting adrenaline through my blood, my brain not questioning the source of the high, just enjoying the ride. We’re a car crash and a house fire and a violent thunderstorm all mixed together; but driving fast is fun, fire is pretty, and a good storm clears the air. Sure, people get hurt. Sometimes it’s him, and sometimes it’s me, but whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger—and I get a little stronger every day.

I cover for his ass when he fucks up, and he shows up for me when other guys might flinch. Like when I ask him to hold down my grandpa so that I can pull glass out of his gums. Quentin can’t stand the sight of blood ever since someone left him lying in a pool of his own by the side of the road, and Dad’s only got the one arm since the other got caught up in an auger when Eric Hollern hired him to help bring in the harvest back when I was in elementary school. Mom had to hold the flashlight since we couldn’t pay the electricity bill this month, which left me operating a pair of tweezers while Grandpa screamed and Ethan swore, all of us blood-spattered by the end.

Trauma bonding is real, and I’d leaned against Ethan in the driveway afterward, his arms around me offering a little bit of normalcy, even if it’s our own kind of flavor.

“You feeling okay?” he’d asked, chin resting on top of my head.

I told him I was fine, even though I’m not. You can only ask for so much support in one night without becoming a burden and I can’t be that, because I’m a cool girl. I’m fine because blood washes off and wounds close. Tomorrow I’ll be clean and Grandpa will start healing, the good side of his face sewn together with a needle and thread Mom dug out of her sewing box.

“We need to keep a better eye on him,” I tell Quentin now, arms wrapped around myself for warmth on the front porch, the only part of our house that isn’t falling apart since the church installed a ramp for my brother.

“I’m doing my best,” he says, and even though it’s dark, I can hear the clench in his jaw.

“I know,” I tell him, using the voice only my brother hears, the one that says, I understand, I care, I love you. With Mom it’s only German, with the outside world it’s acid and bile, my throat scorched with the words I have to say, the tone I use to survive. Quentin is the only person who sees the real me, the one who’s got soft spots, who cries when she’s scared, and who can’t let anyone know that’s pretty much all the fucking time.

I’m scared of what my life looks like without Ethan in it, and terrified of what it will be if he stays. I’m scared of the mailbox and the bills sitting inside of it, stamped with red PAST DUE notices. I’m scared of my boyfriend fucking up so badly I won’t be able to cover for him anymore, frightened of how far I’ve already gone, and what else I might be willing to do. I’m scared of Ava Germaine and the fire in her eyes, the grit under her skin, the little bits inside of her that are just like me, coming out in different ways.

Just about the only thing I’m not scared of is the jar on the mantel above the fireplace with a milky-white residue drying inside. A jar that hadn’t been opened in thirty years, until what was inside of it moved, and I made a decision. It’s one I can’t take back, and though what was inside that jar is the most terrifying thing in my life, I feel only gratitude and a warm swell of comfort when I think of it.

Like humans, it has a will and a desire. Like humans, it has goals.

But unlike them, it won’t hurt me.

“You feeling okay?” Quentin asks me, echoing Ethan’s question from before.

But with him I’m honest, with him I’ll cry. I can’t with Ethan because then I’m work, not play. I can’t with Ethan because I know that deep down he’s just like me and exposing a soft spot means offering up a target. And I can’t with Ethan because crying makes your mascara run and your eyes red, and I know where my value lies.

Because Cinderella didn’t win her Prince Charming because she was kind and sweet, because she was smart and had a bubbling personality, or because she stuck by her principles and held her head high. She got what she wanted by being the hottest chick to show up at the party, and the prince had to hit that or die trying. Ethan’s no Prince Charming, and I’m sure as shit not Cinderella, but we’re both a little closer to the original version, the one where the stepsisters are hacking off parts of their feet, trying to jam them into a glass slipper. The one where birds peck out their eyeballs and Cinderella waves as she rides away in her carriage, because she knew that the world is brutal and a girl’s gotta do some ugly shit to survive.

“No, I’m not okay,” I tell Quentin.

But I will be, very soon.

Nineteen

Ava

Mom sees my bandage the second I walk in the door, and her face becomes a kaleidoscope of twisting emotions. Worry follows fear, and then a cold stillness settles in.

“What happened this time?” she asks, flipping a dish towel over her shoulder.

I don’t like her tone, but I can’t blame her for the this time. I’ve only been at Restoration Acres a month and I’ve come home with talon slices on my arm, squirrel scratches on my face, and—once when I didn’t read the room very well on an intake—smelling like a skunk.

“Got cut on some glass,” I say, lifting my hand, my goat ring just poking out from the bandage.

I can’t tell the truth, which is something I’d always prided myself on before. Ugly truths were my specialty, and today would be a pin-up on the twelve-month calendar of ugly truths if I were still following my own rules. But somewhere, things got bendy, and I started slipping inaccuracies and omissions into my responses to How was work?

Mom and Dad don’t know about the healed puncture wounds on my wrist from Panda, or the welt across my hamstring from the poison hemlock that grows in the ditches around Restoration Acres. They have no idea that there’s a snake bite on my ankle, and I’ve been hiding a rash coming in along my hairline on the back of my neck.

“What happened?” Mom asks again, sitting down across from me at the kitchen table. I’d cycled various stories on my drive home but ended up deciding that partial truths were still truths.

“I was feeding the bees, and I fell down. The syrup feeder broke, and I got cut.”

Cut isn’t the word to use here. Lacerated or impaled would be better descriptions. But I’m not going to use those, because while they are more accurate, they’re also more disturbing.

“Let me see,” Mom says, fingers going for the tucked edge of the bandage.