Willow
“Please give a hearty Mason Mavericks welcome to Willow Holloway. She comes to us all the way from New York City.”
I smiled blandly at my new classmates. The jocks in the letterman jackets, a clear agenda behind their friendly smiles. The girl with the dark curly hair and the freckles across her pale skin who was no doubt going to pounce on me the second the bell rang. The rebel-without-a-cause badass whose seat I’d taken…
Everyone was easy to ignore except for him.
Holy hell, I’d never seen a more stunningly gorgeous guy in my life. At least six-two with broad shoulders, lean muscle, and a movie-star face. Impossibly perfect features. High cheek bones, bristly chiseled jaw, thick brows, full lips. His eyes were gray-green, like the sea off of Nantucket in winter.
All of him was stormy and cold, with an undertow of danger. His black leather jacket smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and I wouldn’t be surprised if he kept a switchblade down his boot. Even the way he looked at me felt dangerous. My body reacted instantly, all over, as if his scrutinizing gaze went deeper than skin. He looked at me like he could see me.
You’re overreacting, girl. Like, a lot.
I fixed my eyes on the window and its bleak landscape of gray skies and dirty snow. This was all wrong. The first day of school was supposed to be at the end of summer, when the heat hasn’t quite given in to chillier autumn breezes. Not the middle of winter with snow blanketing the ground and only a few months remained before graduation.
It would’ve sucked, if I still had the capacity to give a shit if I made friends or not. I was trapped in my own perpetual winter. Sealed in a cube of apathetic ice, like one of those mummies they show on the Discovery Channel. They looked so life-like but on the inside… Nothing.
I used to like school. I looked forward to the day. My friends could be moody and dramatic, but they were my friends. The workload was either overwhelming or mind-numbingly boring, but I took pride in my grades. In the months after the party, I hated watching my GPA sink lower and lower, taking my college prospects with them. I hated how I worried my parents, even if it was a peripheral kind of concern.
I looked around the classroom, safe in my ice coffin. I wanted to be friendly. But friendly led to friends. Friends led to phone calls and texts and late-night talks under the covers. Warm, dangerous conditions that made icy barricades melt and terrible secrets were liable to pour out on a torrent of never-ending tears.
Forget it. These kids could like me or hate me or ignore me—my preferred option—and I wouldn’t feel the difference. Even James Dean next to me. He could have his damn chair back tomorrow. I didn’t need him and his stormy green eyes digging under my skin.
I was right about the dark-haired girl. I avoided her after English, but she caught me coming out of Economics later in the morning. She sidled up, confident in boots, leggings and a slouchy black sweatshirt that read My head says GYM but my body says TACOS.
“Hi. Angie McKenzie, yearbook editor,” she said. I half-expected her to hand me a business card, or flash me identification like FBI agents do on TV. “You’re from New York? What brings you out here?”
“My dad’s work,” I said.
“Wow, sucky timing, right? Middle of your senior year?”
I shrugged. “I’ll live.”
She grinned slyly. “Look at you with your angel face and Disney princess hair…just a front for a secret badass?”
Despite my best efforts, a smile crept past my lips. Angie was one of those quirky, instantly-likeable girls, damn her. My best friend, Michaela (former best friend, I thought), had been the same.
I got the smile under control. “Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “The hair’s a cover.”
“A Pantene commercial-level cover,” Angie said. “I’m so jelly. Nash, my boyfriend since, like, forever? He keeps bitching at me to grow mine out, but it wouldn’t look like yours.” She shook her hands in her mass of dark curls. “Can you say humidity frizz, children? I knew you could!”
A laugh burst out of me. “You’re weird. I mean, in a good way,” I added. I may have been in self-imposed cryogenic stasis, but I actually did give a shit if I hurt her feelings or not.
Angie laughed along, making her pink hoop earrings bounce. “Girl, weird is my life’s mission.”
We’d arrived at my locker at the end of the second-floor hall. Glass doors led to a small outdoor stairwell with brick walls and metal railings. The gorgeous guy from English class was out there, wearing a knit cap on his head and fingerless gloves, neither of which looked enough to keep him warm. He leaned against the railing, casual as hell, smoking a cigarette. The smoke thickened the plume of his breath as it was caught on the wind and torn away.
“Who’s he?” I asked.
“Isaac Pearce,” Angie said. “He’s all kinds of hot, isn’t he? But forget it. He only dates older girls. And by dates, I mean has epic, emotion-less sex with. I assume.”
A phantom flush of heat swept through me, like the itch an amputee might feel for a limb that’s been cut off. I leaned against the bank of lockers, adjusted my bag, then my hair, then my bag again.
“Oh yeah? He likes older women?”
Angie nodded. “Though it’s hard to imagine him calling someone and asking them out. Like, on the phone. With words.”
“What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t speak,” she said.
I blinked. “He’s mute?”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean, he can speak. He just doesn’t much. Unless he’s on stage, acting…”
Her words trailed away, and I looked to where Isaac Pearce leaned against the wall outside the doors, braving the cold and smoking a cigarette in plain sight, not caring if a teacher caught him.
“He’s an actor? He looks…” My own words dwindled away, none of them sufficient. Hot. A bad boy. Manwhore. Chews girls up and spits them out. A different girl every night…
“Tough,” I finished.
“He has to be. His father beats the hell out of him.”
My gaze jumped back to Isaac, trying to see if the signs of the abuse were written all over him, or if his worst scars, like mine, were hidden on the inside.
“His father beats him?”
“That’s the word on the street. But no one’s seen his dad in town for a while, so the current rumor is that Isaac killed him and hid the body in their scrapyard.”
I scrunched my face at her. “What? Come on…”
Angie shrugged, her freckle-smattered nose wrinkling. “It’s a dumb rumor, but I couldn’t blame the guy. They live all the way on the edge of town, by themselves in that shitty trailer surrounded by a car graveyard.” She shivered.
Now my eyes sought signs of Isaac’s poverty and found it at once in his scuffed boots and faded jeans. Poor but proud. Not one thing about him begged pity.
“Okay, but he didn’t kill his dad,” I said.
Angie flapped her hands. “Charles Pearce will show up in town eventually. The rumors will rest for a few weeks then start up again. It’s been this way since Isaac’s mom died about ten years ago. He used to come to school all bruised up. Not so much these days. I mean, look at his build. He’s strong enough to fight back now. Why wouldn’t he?”
I had no answer to that. I didn’t want to think about how horrible it would be, not only to be hit by your own father, but to have to fight back. To defend yourself.
“Onstage, Isaac’s a whole different animal,” Angie said. “An ungodly, sexy beast. He plays all these emotional parts—screaming and crying onstage. Couple of years ago, the community theater did Angels in America, and he and another dude kissed. You’d think that would’ve been a death sentence but it wasn’t. He’s untouchable.”
Untouchable.
The word sang to me like a lullaby. Everything safe was in those four syllables. Everything I wanted to be but wasn’t.
Neither is Isaac, I thought. He’s not untouchable to his dad.
“You should come to the latest play tonight or tomorrow,” Angie said. “Watch Isaac act.”
“He’s good?”
She snorted. “Good? It’s a transformative experience. I’m not a big fan of plays myself, but watching Isaac Pearce onstage…” She gave me a sly look. “Bring a spare pair of panties is all I’m saying.”
“Maybe I will,” I said. “Go, I mean.”
“Let’s go tonight,” she said brightly. “It’s Oedipus Rex at the community theater. I know, I know, Greek tragedy is a snooze, right? But trust me, with Isaac in the lead…” Her shoulders gave a little shiver. “I’ve already seen it twice. The show closes tomorrow but I can squeeze one more in. For you.” She nudged my arm. “Aren’t I the best welcome wagon?”
“I don’t know, you’re my first.”
Angie fished a ballpoint pen out of her backpack, grabbed my hand, and wrote down her phone number on my palm. I flinched; her pen was inches from the concealed ink of my black X’s on my wrist.
“Tonight at eight,” she said. “Text me when you get the okay from your ‘rents. I’ll be waiting for you outside the theater.”
I blinked at the sudden social engagement thrust upon me. My Friday night plans typically involved reading, drinking tea or binge-watching Black Mirror on Netflix. A quiet night in the ice palace.
I heard myself saying, “Yeah, okay. I’ll text you.”
“Brill.” Angie beamed. “And come find me and my crew at lunch. You can avoid the usual New Kid Who Eats Alone bullshit.”
“Thanks.”
“Welcome wagon extraordinaire, darling.”
The bell rang. She blew me a kiss and trotted off to class. I moved more slowly, my gaze lingering on Isaac over the open door of my locker. He looked up.
For a second, through the steamed-up glass doors, his eyes met mine. I was struck all over again by the dangerous beauty of this guy. He was a sleek dagger. He’d cut you with a look if you didn’t know how to handle him.
And I’d stolen his seat in English class.
Maybe let’s not do that again…
Isaac tilted his chin at me, then ground his cigarette out and sauntered back into the building. He strode past me, smelling of smoke and the cold bite of winter, a hint of peppermint. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him. But, like me, the students all stared. Everyone stared. Mesmerized.
I’d never learned to drive in New York City, there was simply no need. I didn’t even have a learner’s permit. So, I took the school bus home from George Mason. It lumbered and lurched toward the east side of Harmony, where the road started winding through small foothills. The houses were immense on this side of town, with wide, sprawling yards. More than one property boasted horse paddocks and barns. I’d never imagined having so much space around a house. Backyards, front yards, side yards. And trees everywhere. They were skeletal with winter, but it was easy to imagine them green and full in summer, or bursting orange and red in autumn. Easy and enjoyable. I found myself looking forward to that.
My mother wasn’t as enthusiastic.
“I hope our homeowners’ insurance covers Indian raids,” she’d said to Dad when we first arrived. “And locust swarms.”
He’d pretended she was joking, though I knew Mom was deadly serious. Country life wasn’t going to suit her. She’d been a Connecticut socialite, a Wellesley girl and a fixture on the Upper West Side. I gave her six months in Harmony before she gave my dad an ultimatum: go back to New York or find a new place in Divorceville.
As the school bus let me off on my new street that first day, I inhaled the crisp air deep into my lungs. This was an entirely different kind of cold than New York. A cleaner cold. Probably just my imagination, but I felt like I could breathe a little easier.
Our old townhouse had been spacious by Manhattan standards, but our new home was huge. No barn or paddock for Regina Holloway—she insisted we buy something entirely remodeled. Like Winona Ryder’s stepmother in Beetlejuice, she wanted to tear the country charm out of a house and replace it with cold elegance. I would’ve loved an old country house with little flowers on the yellowing wallpaper and warm wood banisters on the stairs. The more polar opposite to our city home the better. No subconscious reminders or throwbacks to the illicit party I’d thrown and what had happened in my bedroom that night.
I unlocked the front door and stepped into the warmth. We had a grand entryway with a chandelier that belonged in a ballroom. I crossed the blond-gray hardwood floors, and I kicked off my snowy boots before heading through the maze of couches and chairs and rolled up area rugs—all still wrapped in plastic.
The house was quiet and empty. Our furniture from New York wasn’t enough to fill this hulking space, and Mom was in Indianapolis buying more. Dad was at work, naturally, slaving away for Mr. Wilkinson to keep up with Mom’s spending.
The kitchen was mostly unpacked. I made some strawberry tea and took it up to my room. My new bed was supposed to be delivered today. It was the only purchase I’d demanded for the move. I argued we had the space now and Dad, pleased as hell I wasn’t bitching about Indiana, was more than happy to oblige.
I peeked my head into my room, then exhaled.
Yes.
My old bed with its X-marked mattress was gone. Consigned to the scrap heap or recycling. In its place was a queen-sized canopy bed with gauzy curtains.
I’m going to sleep in this bed, I vowed. Like a normal girl.
I set my tea on the table next to it and lay down on the plastic-wrapped mattress. I folded my arms over my stomach and closed my eyes.
“Untouchable,” I whispered.
After countless nights of shitty sleep, it reached up quickly with clawed hands and took me under. Down into black darkness. Muffled, pulsing music through the walls and floor. A warm, beer-coated, peanut-smelling mouth on mine. Squeezing hands on my throat. And that weight. Xavier’s crushing, smothering, destructive weight…
I bolted upright, a scream stuck in my chest, trapped between my tight, gasping lungs. My eyes blinked until my new room in my new house came into focus. The afternoon light was gone. The clock radio read 6:18 p.m. I sucked in deep breaths, wiped the tears from my cheeks and slid from the covers onto the floor.
No bed was safe anymore.
I sat, legs splayed out like a doll thinking that old song, “Living Dead Girl.” I thought about bundling into my bedspread, cocooning myself in the comforter and spending the rest of the night there, waiting for morning light. Then I remembered Angie’s invitation to Isaac’s show.
With a nightmare still clinging to me, the idea of dragging myself out of the house to socialize, felt impossible. But maybe seeing a play was like reading—immersive and escapist. I could lose myself in ancient Greek times and get some goddamn distance from my own pathetic tragedy.
I wrestled my arm out from under the blanket and stared at the phone number on my palm.
Was I really going to the play? Why?
To make a new friend in Angie.
To see this so-called acting prodigy, Isaac Pearce.
To get out of the house.
To be normal.
I pulled my sleeve down and compared the blue ink of Angie’s loopy print to the ugly black X’s I’d scrawled below.
I grabbed my phone and shot Angie a text.
This is Willow. I’m in. See you at 7:45?
The reply was almost instant. Make it 7 and we can grab burgers and shakes at The Scoop. You have a ride?
I realized I didn’t, and that Uber drivers or cabs probably weren’t as plentiful in Harmony as they had been in New York.
No, pick me up?
Yes, Your Majesty. <3
I gave her my address then texted my parents.
Going to eat with friends then to the play at the theater. Be home 11-ish.
My mother wanted to know whom I was going with—she’d already formed the opinion that Harmony was entirely populated with rubes and hicks. Dad insisted on an eleven o’clock curfew and ‘not a minute later.’
I ignored both of their texts as I got ready. It was none of Mom’s business and I hadn’t been asking Dad’s permission.