Table Of Contentred handed
Also by Gena Showalter
Oh My Goth
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Gena Showalter
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ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-3951-3
ISBN-10: 1-4165-3951-4
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
To Brad Redus—an amazing friend.
To Sherry Rowland—invaluable to me.
To Cody Quine—welcome to the family!
(If possible, I would dot the “i” with a heart.)
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Jill Monroe, Sheila Fields, Donnell Epperson, and Betty Sanders
for the late-night reads.
1
New Chicago
Sometime in the near future…
I’d always loved the night, where anything could happen and everything usually
did. The forbidden…the unexpected…the bad. Nothing seemed real in the
ethereal light of the moon. Sins were easily forgiven. Why not play? everyone
thought—I had once thought. Why not enjoy?
At the moment, loud, gyrating music pounded through the darkness,
vibrating with so much force the ground shook and the trees swayed. In the
center of a forest clearing, my friends danced around a blazing fire, and in the
flickering gold and shadows their hands were everywhere. Their mouths were
kissing hungrily, their bodies moved to the rhythm of the rock, fast and erratic.
Sexual.
Those who weren’t dancing were lounging against the circling trees,
drinking beer, laughing, and smoking Onadyn, or “Snow Angels,” as we called
the cigs—the drug of choice for humans nowadays. It was a deoxygenating drug
meant only for the aliens who had invaded our planet so many years ago. A
deoxygenating drug that made humans, who needed oxygen to survive, feel as if
they were soaring through the heavens, untouchable and invincible (if it didn’t
kill them).
“I should know,” I muttered under my breath.
I’d flown for years before being forced into rehab. (Twice) I’d been too
wasted to recall the first, but I remembered the second very well, the memory of
it burned into my brain.
it burned into my brain.
My mom had picked me up after school one day. Uncaring of her reaction,
I’d smoked a Snow Angel just before she arrived. Not enough to pass out, but
just enough to fragment my thoughts and emotions, making me loopy,
disoriented, and a total pain in the ass.
Nothing could touch me when I was like that. Not anger, not fear, not
sadness.
She’d known what I’d done the instant she spotted me—the glassy eyes and
blue lips always gave users away—yelling in front of the other kids waiting for
their parents, “Damn you, Phoenix! Is this how you put your life back together?”
Some of the kids around me snickered; some stared at me with disgust. Still
uncaring, I didn’t sit up, just continued to lounge on the steps. The sun was
shining, bright and warm. Maybe I’d spend the rest of the day here.
“I asked you a question, young lady.”
“And I didn’t give you an answer,” I’d replied with a laugh. “Now hush.”
“Hush? Hush! You’re ruining your life, you’re ruining my life, and you don’t
even care!” She abandoned the car and stomped to me, scowling down at me.
“I’m supposed to go to work, but I can’t leave you alone like this. No telling
what you’ll do.”
I laughed again. “You’re a waitress. It’s not like you make a difference in
the world. And you know what else? Whatever I do is my business, not yours.”
Hurt washed over her face, but she squared her chin. “Whether I make a
difference or not, my job is what pays for your food and your shelter and your
clothes.” She grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Your actions become my
business when you steal my hard-earned money to buy the very drugs that are
killing you. Your actions become my business when you run away to God knows
where and I don’t see you for days.”
“Just, I don’t know, shut up and go away or something. You’re ruining my
buzz.” Dizzy, I tried to push her hands away but didn’t have the strength. That,
too, made me laugh.
She didn’t reply for several strangled seconds, just stared at me as if I were a
She didn’t reply for several strangled seconds, just stared at me as if I were a
bottle of poison and she’d just digested the entire contents. Other parents had
arrived, I realized, and watched us unabashedly.
My mom realized it, too, and wheeled around to face them. “What are you
staring at?” she snapped. “Get your kids and go home.”
“Your daughter is seriously disturbed,” someone muttered.
“She’s a menace,” someone else, a man, said. “And if she ever comes near
my child, I’ll call the cops and have her locked away.”
“Don’t worry, Daddy,” one of the more popular girls at the school said in a
snotty voice. I couldn’t recall her name, but I knew she was a straight-A student,
an all-around goody-goody, and someone I despised because she always seemed
so put together, as if the world were her own personal treasure chest. “I’d rather
kill myself than go near her.”
I pushed to my feet, wobbling as another wave of dizziness struck. I meant
to approach her, realized I’d fall, so remained in place, saying instead, “You can
fuck the hell off.” With that, I gave her and her dad a double-birded salute. “Feel
free to kill yourself like you promised. Or maybe call me and I’ll come over and
do it for you.”
There was a gasp. An enraged snarl.
My mom dragged me into the car after that. I hadn’t cared at the time, but
she’d cried the entire way home and shipped me to rehab that very evening.
Once I’d sobered up, the memory had embarrassed and shamed me. Still did.
I’d made my own mother feel worthless, and I’d laughed about it.
I didn’t want to be that uncaring girl ever again. I kept thinking, What if, next
time I use, I do something worse? What if, next time, I couldn’t be forgiven—by
my mom or myself? I mean, a guy I met in rehab had later killed himself
because he’d been humiliated by the things he’d done to support his habit.
I hadn’t reached that point. And I won’t.
I refused to fly anymore. Which was hard, now that I was back in school and
surrounded by friends who flew every weekend. Harder still as I stood in that
