As if on cue, there was a knock on the bedroom door.
“Come in,” she said, surprised at her aunt’s respect for her privacy. With her mom and Lucy, there had been no knocking, no boundaries.
“How are you settling in?” Nora cast an eye at the scarves, the lineup of Skylar’s shoes at the foot of the bed, the empty suitcases waiting to be shoved into the closet. Skylar was struck, as she always was, by how little Nora looked like her mom. Where her mom was skinny and hard and fake blond, Nora was soft and rounded, with wavy hair that showed just a few streaks of gray. And she smelled of plants. Dirt. In a good way. “Is there enough room in the dresser for your clothes? I put the flannel sheets on the bed—it can get pretty chilly up here.”
“It’s fine, Aunt Nora,” Skylar said, smiling. “Thank you.”
Nora had bought Skylar’s plane ticket the very night her mom had landed in jail for driving drunk—for the third time. “You’ll spend the rest of the school year here,” Nora had said on the phone that evening, “and we’ll see what happens after that.”
But Skylar and Nora had both known the truth: Skylar was moving to Ascension for good. Life in Alabama was bad enough before Lucy’s accident, but over the past year it had gotten unbearable. Her mom had been drinking more than ever, raging around the house when she wasn’t smoking cigarettes listlessly in front of the television. She’d been bringing home random guys who didn’t even pretend to want to learn Skylar’s name. The emotional distance Skylar had felt for years became physical distance too. She would go days without even seeing her mother; sometimes she didn’t even miss her. Her life had become a nightmare.
In effect, Nora had rescued Skylar. And so Skylar was determined to overlook and grow accustomed to all of her aunt’s oddities, like her eerily encyclopedic knowledge of Ascension’s history and her funny nervous giggle. Not to mention the fact that unlike Skylar’s mom, Nora had a steady job—she was a dental hygienist at a local clinic—and therefore a steady income and a stable routine. Skylar was not used to any of these things.
Before she turned to go, Nora asked, “Would you like some tea? I’m just brewing some downstairs.”
“No thank you,” Skylar said. “I’m not really a tea person. But thank you for offering.”
There she was again, eternally grateful. For so much. Because Nora hadn’t just gotten her out of Alabama. She was giving Skylar a fresh start, a chance to be someone new.
“I’ll drive you to the high school in the morning,” Nora was saying, “in case there’s any additional transfer paperwork we need to fill out. We should leave the house by seven o’clock, okay? Get some sleep, and let me know if you need anything else.” She wrapped her burnt-orange shawl around her shoulders as she left the room. “Brrrr,” Skylar heard her say as she padded back down the stairs. “What a brutal winter.”
Skylar turned her attention back to her duffel bag, which was almost empty. There at the bottom was a large hardcover edition of Aesop’s Fables, one she’d had since she was a kid. She’d always loved these stories, and had once suggested to her mother that she recite one for the talent portion of a beauty pageant. Her mom had scoffed. “You think anyone wants to hear you run your mouth?” Skylar had tap-danced instead.
She opened the book and flipped through, looking at the familiar pictures inside. “The Fox and the Grapes.” “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” She smiled and leafed through more pages. She’d always found comfort in stories.
And then, horrified, she dropped the book to the floor with a loud thud. A photograph that had been wedged between its pages skittered out onto the floor. It was a picture of her and Lucy before last year’s statewide pageant, the terrible night when everything went wrong. Her: short and a little chubby, flat-chested, and looking off to the side. Lucy: tall, shapely, and gorgeous, beaming a smile at the camera with her painted red lips, her arm slung around Skylar’s neck.
As always, Skylar marveled at Lucy’s effortless beauty. “It’s too bad Lucy got most of my features,” her mom had slurred, more than once. Her mother had been a pageant queen too, before the smoking dulled her skin and the booze deadened her eyes. She’d pushed both her daughters to fulfill the dreams she’d killed for herself, entering them into beauty contests and talent competitions as soon as they could walk. For Skylar, they’d been repeated exercises in humiliation and rejection. But Lucy had excelled, wowing the judges with her easy grace, assertive strut, and killer dance moves. Lucy had everyone convinced she was perfect.
Almost everyone.