CHAPTER ONE
I looked around my room for the last time. I was leaving.
Finally. For good.
For good.
There was only one way I’d ever return to the town of Christmas, Florida, and it involved my dead body. Which meant I needed to make sure I had everything. I fished my iPod out of the front pocket of my old duffel and hit Play. Putting in my earbuds, I did a quick inventory of my stuff.
I had my clothes, of course. Not too many of those. Working the evening shift at Fuddruckers didn’t exactly buy someone a passport to fashion. What I did own was mostly cheap and mostly black, though I had managed to collect a few prized possessions. A vintage Pretenders T-shirt. Fingerless gloves in an awesome plummy black color. An ancient pair of Converse sneakers, broken in just right.
My bag was heavy with books, too. I was a little worried the zipper would pop from the strain, but there was no way I’d leave without them.
My French-English dictionary was especially gigantic. It was unabridged, and had cost several days of hard-won waitressing tips. But it held such promise, like I might be jetting off to Paris any day, where I’d sit around in bistros, grappling with issues and nibbling madeleines.
And then there was my biggest treasure of all: a framed picture of my mother. I patted the top of the duffel, feeling for its hard profile, checking for the umpteenth time that I’d packed it.
She’d died when I was only four. For some reason everyone took great pains to assure me there was no way I could possibly remember her. I’d look at the photo in secret, though, and I could still hear her voice and smell her crisp, lemony scent. With her blond hair and wide eyes, she reminded me of Uma Thurman, and I liked to imagine her wearing a tight yellow pantsuit, kicking my dad’s ass, Kill Bill–style.
Dad. Ah, the sound of shouting and the stench of warm Coors. Now, those were some personal gems I wouldn’t stow away in the old duffel, even if I could.
“Bye-bye, Daddy Dearest. I am so out of here. Not that you’ll notice.” I pulled my iPod back out of my pocket and zipped through the playlist to my favorite Radiohead song. Standing up to check my drawers one last time, I bellowed out the lyrics. “I don’t belong here. . . .”
“Annelise Drew!” Somebody banged on the door. “Shut the hell up!”
I scowled. It was my stepmother, the Yatch.
So I turned up the volume and sang even louder. “But I’m a creep. . . .”
“I’m trying to get some rest,” she screamed from the other side of the door.
“Oh yeah.” I tore out the earbuds. “Because it’s eleven in the morning and you’ve been working since dawn?”
“You think you’re so special,” she shouted. “Genius? You’re a freak. And now you graduate early from high school, and we’re supposed to think you’re so special.”
I smirked at how her words echoed the lyrics, and opened the door to the sight of her pale, haggard face. The Yatch. It was my pet name for her, the progression having gone a little something like Beatrice . . . Bee-yatch . . . Yatch.
“What are you laughing at?” The faint bruise on the side of her cheek had paled to a sickly yellow.
Imagine that. She’d fallen in the shower. Again.
Just ask Daddy.
I shook my head. It was a two-bedroom apartment—there was nothing to hide. I’d “fallen in the shower” before, too.
“Don’t give me that holier-than-thou look, young lady.” She shouldered her way in, peering around the room as though I’d been caught trying to steal the family silver. “Have I heard a thank-you for all I’ve done for you, all these years?”
“No,” I said, after a moment of elaborate contemplation. “I don’t imagine you have.”
Her eyes skittered nervously from me. She never had been good at standing up for herself. I imagined it was why Daddy kept her around.
She scanned what remained of my belongings, her gaze lingering on the threadbare bedspread I’d had since I was eight, when I’d liked all things lavender. Believe me—nine years is a long time in which to learn to despise a color. “You’re welcome to keep that,” I assured her.
“You better clean this crap up,” she said instead, her voice shrill with disbelief. You’d have thought I’d left her a steaming turd right there in the middle of the tan shag rug. Her eyes came back to me. “Or were you going to sneak out like a thief?”
A little something like that, yeah. I remained silent.
“Where the hell have you got to go, anyway? It’s not like you’ve got any friends.”
Friends.
I thought of the crowd at Dale R. Fielding High School. A bunch of half-wits who spent their time going to the mall or making out, or doing whatever it is kids my age did to fill their time.
As if.
No, I was going to college, thankyouverymuch. Not that I’d ever tell them that. They’d just suspect me of embezzling tuition money from Dad’s vast stores of wealth. Which was a laugh. If there was any money, it came from a disability check he’d probably drank away long ago.
No, I was going to college tuition free. It was one of the bennies of having a genius IQ and crazy-high GPA. My preference was to get the hell out of Florida, and though my guidance counselor said I could get a scholarship wherever I wanted, fancy private schools didn’t take Needs Cases (gag) like me midyear. Graduating from high school one semester early was the best I could wrangle, and so it was state school for me.
“I suppose you think you’re taking that car you’ve been driving.” The Yatch crossed her arms, believing she’d gotten one over on me. “But who do you think has been paying for your insurance?”
“I’ve been paying for my insurance, just like I paid for the car.” I glared, challenging her to just try to argue.
“Bea!” Daddy Dearest crowed from the other room.
My stepmother and I continued our silent stare-off. Finally she snarled, “You think just because you’re smarter than the rest of us—”
“Bea! Get in here!”
God forbid the man got up from the Barcalounger to grab his own freshie from the refrigerator. He had no idea I was leaving, and wouldn’t care if he did. I gave her my best saccharine-sweet smile. “I think Daddy needs another tall boy.”
The Yatch shot me a final scowl and bustled into the living room.
Out. Of. Here. I heaved my duffel onto my shoulder, giving a farewell glance to the Einstein poster on my wall. He was sticking his tongue out at me, and I stuck out mine right back. “Ciao for now, Al.”
I snuck out the front door and was on my way.
CHAPTER TWO
Florida is famous for a variety of things:1. Disney World
2. Serial killers
3. Bizarre alligator accidents
4. Bizarre lightning accidents
5. Ginormous universities
A fan of neither princesses nor pain, it was number five for me. Gator Nation, God help me. But hey, say what you will—the University of Florida in Gainesville wasn’t exactly Paris, but it was a start.
I drove my Honda carefully, winding through campus, goggling at all the crazy architecture as I went. I was hot and sweaty after three hours of driving with a broken AC and the sun broiling overhead, but still, nervous excitement surged through me. So what if the stately brick buildings were surrounded by spindly palm trees instead of ivy? This was college.
I popped a chocolate madeleine for courage.
UF had more than fifty thousand students. Surely there’d be some other misfits like me. Surely there was at least one other girl on campus not sporting a French pedicure (do girls really think we’re fooled by the little white lines painted across their toenails?), who had some black in her wardrobe, and actually thought about things. You know, someone who knew the word French could imply more than just a way to kiss.
Surely I’d make a friend. Right?
I downshifted my little Civic, pulling into the parking lot off Museum Road. I didn’t need to look at the campus map for directions—I’d already memorized the thing. In fact, the moment the school catalog arrived in the mail, I’d studied every single aspect, inside and out, up to and including the bedbug advisory.
Walking into the registrar’s office, the blast of air-conditioning made my skin crawl. That was another thing that really freaked me out about this state: Cooling a room was one thing, but the compulsive need to superchill every indoor space to a brisk sixtythree degrees confounded me. It was January, for crissakes.
I shoved my favorite hat farther down on my head. It was a beige raffia fedora with a narrow brim, sort of like something you’d see on an old Cuban man. Mostly I wore it to tone down my conspicuously blond hair. But it wasn’t without its practical applications—I was feeling a little less chilly already.
Once my eyes adjusted, I spotted the bouffy-haired receptionist. She sat in a little glass-fronted kiosk that made her look like one of those old-fashioned carnival fortune-tellers. She was greeting each new student with a forced, coral-lipsticked smile.
If you resent teenagers so much, don’t work at a college, lady. She caught my eye, and I returned her stiff smile.
But it froze the moment I saw him.
Tall, dark, and hot leaned against a pillar, watching me as I took my place in line. Tousled dark hair went every which way on his head. His eyes were slitted and intense, like he might need to have sex at any moment. Maybe even with me.
I had to look down, I was so flustered. I felt like I’d been the one caught staring.
But just as my eyes flitted away, I caught a glimpse of the tattoo peeking out from under his T-shirt sleeve. It was a quote.
Something niggled in the back of my mind and I looked back, feeling my cheeks blaze red with the fear that he was still watching me.
The first half of the quote was obscured, but the end bit was clear: c’est le paradis perdu.
My breath caught. Goose bumps rippled across my skin in a way that had nothing to do with the excessive air-conditioning. I knew the line well. Le seul paradis c’est le paradis perdu.
The only paradise is paradise lost.