LITMIR.BIZ

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the front door, I stepped out on the narrow stoop and into the warm air and bright sun of a late-August morning. My gaze drifted over the neatly landscaped front yard that matched the house across the street, and was identical to every house in the Pointe subdivision.

      Every house.

      Sometimes it still shocked me that I was living in a place like this—a big home with a yard and flowers artfully planted, with a car in the recently asphalted driveway that was mine. Some days it didn’t seem real. Like I’d wake up and find myself back...

      I shook my head, pushing those thoughts away as I approached the decade-old Honda Civic. The car had belonged to Rosa and Carl’s real daughter, a high school graduation gift given to Marquette before she’d left for college to become a doctor, like them.

      Real daughter.

      Dr. Taft had always corrected me when I referred to Marquette that way, because he believed it somehow lessened what I was to Carl and Rosa. I hoped he was right, because some days I felt like the big home with the manicured yard.

      Some days I didn’t feel real.

      Marquette never made it to college. An aneurysm. There one minute and gone the next, and there had been nothing anyone could do. I imagined that was something Rosa and Carl had always struggled with. They saved so many lives, but couldn’t save the one that meant the most.

      It was a little weird that the car belonged to me now, like I was somehow a replacement child. They never made me feel that way and I’d never say that out loud, but still, when I got behind the wheel I couldn’t help but think about Marquette.

      I placed my bag on the passenger seat. My gaze crawled over the interior, landing on the reflection of my eyes in the rearview mirror. They were way too wide. I looked like a deer about to get slammed by a semi, if a deer had blue eyes, but whatever. The skin around my eyes was pale, my brows knitted. I looked scared.

      Sigh.

      That was not how I wanted to look on my first day of school.

      I started to glance away, but the silver medallion dangling from the rearview mirror snagged my attention. It wasn’t much bigger than a quarter. A bearded man was engraved inside a raised oval. He was writing in a book with a feathered pen. Above him were the words SAINT LUKE and below was PRAY FOR US.

      Saint Luke was the patron saint of physicians.

      The necklace had belonged to Rosa. Her mother had given it to her when she entered med school, and Rosa had given it to me when I’d told her that I was ready to attend public school my senior year. I guessed she’d given it to Marquette at some point, but I hadn’t asked.

      I think there was a part of both Rosa and Carl that hoped that I’d follow in their footsteps, much like Marquette had been planning to. But becoming a surgeon required assertiveness, confidence and a damn near fearless personality, which were three adjectives literally no one would ever use to describe me.

      Carl and Rosa knew that, so they were pushing me more in the direction of research since, according to them, I’d displayed the same aptitude in science in my years of homeschooling as Marquette had. While I hadn’t protested their urging, spending forever studying microbes or cells sounded as interesting as spending forever repainting the walls in my room white. But I had no idea what I wanted other than to attend college, because until Rosa and Carl had come into my life, college had never, ever been a part of the equation.

      The drive to Lands High took exactly eighteen minutes, just as I expected. The moment the three-story brick building came into view beyond the baseball and football fields, I tensed as if a speeding baseball was heading for my face and I’d forgotten my mitt.

      My stomach twisted as my hands tightened on the steering wheel. The school was enormous and relatively new. Its website said it had been built in the nineties, and compared to other schools, it was still shiny.

      Shiny and huge.

      I passed the buses turning to do their drop-off in the roundabout and followed another car around the sprawling structure, to the mall-sized parking lot. Parking wasn’t hard, and I was a little early, so I used that fifteen minutes to do something akin to a daily affirmation, and just as cheesy and embarrassing.

      I can do this. I will do this.

      Over and over, I repeated those words as I climbed out of the Honda, slinging my new bag over my shoulder. My heart pounded, thumped so fast I thought I’d be sick as I looked around me, taking in the sea of bodies streaming toward the walkway leading to the back entrance of Lands High. Different features, colors, shapes and sizes greeted me. For a moment it was like my brain was a second away from short-circuiting. I held my breath. Eyes glanced over me, some lingering and some moving on as if they didn’t even notice me standing there, which was okay in a way, because I was used to being nothing more than a ghost.

      My hand fluttered to the strap of my bag and, mouth dry, I forced my legs to move. I joined the wave of people, slipping in beside them. I focused on the blond ponytail of the girl in front of me. My gaze dipped. She was wearing a jean skirt and sandals. Bright orange, strappy, gladiator-style sandals. They were cute. I could tell her that. Strike up a conversation. The ponytail was also pretty amazing. It had the bump along the crown of her head, the kind I could never replicate even after watching a dozen YouTube tutorials on how to do it. Whenever I tried, I looked like I had an uneven growth on my head.

      But I said nothing to her.

      As I lifted my gaze, my eyes collided with a boy next to me. Sleep clung to his expression. He didn’t smile or frown or do anything other than turn his attention back to the cell phone he held in his hand. I wasn’t even sure if he saw me.

      The morning air was warm, but the moment I stepped into the near-frigid school, I was grateful for the thin cardigan I’d carefully paired with my tank top and jeans.

      From the entrance, everyone spread out in different directions. Smaller students who were roughly around my height, but were definitely much younger, speed-walked over the red-and-blue Viking painted on the floor, their book bags thumping off their backs as they dodged taller and broader bodies. Others walked like zombies, gaits slow and seemingly aimless. I was somewhere in the middle, moving at what appeared to be a normal pace, but was actually one I’d practiced.

      And there were some who raced toward others, hugging them and laughing. I guessed they were friends who hadn’t seen each other over the summer break, or maybe they were just really excitable people. Either way, I stared at them as I walked. Seeing them reminded me of my friend Ainsley. Like me, she’d been homeschooled—still was—but if she wasn’t, I imagined we’d be like these kids right now, hopping toward one another, grinning and animated. Normal.

      Ainsley was probably still in bed.

      Not because she got to goof off all day, but because our mutual instructor did summer break a little differently. She was still on break, but once her year got going again, her homeschooling hours would be as strict and grueling as mine had been.

      Shaking myself from my reverie, I took the stairwell at the end of the wide hall, near the entrance to the cafeteria. Even being close to the lunchroom had my pulse spiking, causing my stomach to twist with nausea.

      Lunch.

      Oh, God, what was I going to do about lunch? I didn’t know anyone, not a single person, and I would—

      I cut myself off, unable to really think about that right now. If I did, there was a good chance I might turn around and run back to the safety of my car.

      My locker was on the second floor, middle of the hall, number two-three-four. I found it with no problem, and bonus, it opened on the first try. Twisting at the waist, I pulled out a binder I was using for my afternoon classes and dropped it on the top shelf, knowing that I was going to be collecting massive textbooks today.

      The locker beside mine slammed shut, causing me to jump and tense. My chin jerked up. A tall girl with dark skin and tiny braids all over her head flashed a quick smile in my direction. “Hey.”

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