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“ N o one wants a girl with the devil in her heart.” Never did I think the words that haunted my mother, then me, would be proven right. Especially not by someone as good and loving and amazing as Claire.

That’s why I’m here.

I need to know if she’s right.

With each step closer to his door, I remind myself what she did for me.

She took me to lunch.

She called me Lenny … Or Carl. We never did sort out who was who.

She let me rest.

She asked for my number.

She brought me a cake and gave me a party.

She introduced me to her brother.

She brought me flowers.

She smiled while running her fingers over my painted walls.

She came to check on me.

She was my friend.

She trusted me.

The same disgust that marked Claire’s stunning features, color Professor Carole’s as he swings open the front door on his surprisingly beautiful home. “What! What are you … How did you find my house, West?”

“I needed to know the truth,” I mutter, my broken voice barely audible even to me. “And who better to tell me than my father?”

I don’t wait for him to ask me in, rather I take advantage of my small stature to duck under an outstretched arm that was attempting to block my entry. I don’t expect him to be polite, or even to acknowledge what I’ve said before grabbing the back of my shirt and yanking me back out onto the street, and I definitely don’t expect this.

“I knew this day would come eventually, but tell me, West.” My hair shifts in the breeze as the door closes with a click, and he steps closer, close enough for his breath to raise the hackles on my neck. “Who told you?”

Before me sits a man to whom I hold such little respect for, who clearly holds the same for me, that I can hardly bring myself to meet his gaze. I’ve been here for maybe thirty minutes, neither of us willing to begin, just sitting in a toxic, contemptuous silence only drowned out by the throbbing pulse in my ears.

Dehydration threatens to take me under, I cried so hard on the way here, but I refuse to ask for it though. That would require speech, and dammit. I will not go first.

That same sheer stubbornness means I’ve been able to suppress my tics in Carole’s company, but as the stand-off stretches into the second hour and the panicked loneliness I’d felt shifting from my heart since meeting Noah, seep back in, my control is beginning to waiver.

I need water.

I feel sick.

I’ll never be able to set foot back into a lecture after turning up at a professor’s house like this, so that’s the end of school, and as part of its conditions of operating on campus, Beanz and Bookz only hires students. No school means no job, and that means I will end up homeless, and likely to starve to death, or submit to alcoholism and be eaten by a pack of wild and roaming Alsatians, which of course, would re-invite the comparisons to Bridget Jones I had just begun to escape.

I’ve lost Claire and am certain she’ll make sure I’ll lose her brother, too, and I really, really, really want Noah. For most of my life I’ve wished for little else than to be free of Tourette’s. But he made me believe it was, as he said, the least interesting thing about me.

So now, instead of wishing it away. I wish him here.

But that can’t happen.

All in all, it’s not an enjoyable day.

Just as I’m about to forfeit, run to the nearest basin and drink straight from the faucet like a weird cat, Carole slams his hands into the timber table top sitting between us and pushes back from his seat.

“It was Marty Klein, wasn’t it?”

“Wait … wait … Marty? Marty knows you’re my … about you and me?”

“Of course he does. He was friends with your mother and grandmother. Another do-gooder freak that helped her trick me into thinking she was normal. The day I saw you wearing that damn ugly shirt in my class, I warned him not to say anything, but he wouldn’t listen. Even losing his precious rink wasn’t enough to keep him from his noble intentions.”

A fresh wave of nausea has my head spinning, “You destroyed the Green Line?”

There’s a flash of shock in Carole’s eyes as he realizes that he’s sent himself down the creek without a paddle, but he’s either confident or delusional enough to dismiss the awareness away with a shrug. “I didn’t tell Donnelly to destroy anything. He was supposed to wait outside and frighten you, but Petterson got the poor fool so wild, he watched you two leave together then went berserk.” He pauses to scratch his chin, “So really, if you think about it, this whole thing is your fault.”

Unable to speak, I sit and blink and process.

“You’re just like her, you know. The same eyes. Same tics. The same manipulation and deception. You’ve hoodwinked Petterson into thinking he can have a normal life with you, but like I did, he’ll realize soon enough.”

My throat is so tight, so restricted, only the tiniest amount of air is able to pass though, but somehow, I manage to eke out, “Realize what?”

His face twists into the same sadistic snarl I’ve seen so many times in class. “No one wants a girl with the devil in her heart.”

I’ve ditched school, blocked Noah and been holed up in Quinn’s parents’ house for days. Her fierce loyalty and their forced reconciliation on my behalf is the only good thing to come from the whole shit -show that is my life.

My pathetic neediness and continuing presence in their home means they are under siege.

Reporters, desperate seeking quotes from the freshly arrested, scandalized professor’s long-lost lovechild, are camped out at their workplaces, on the evergreen lawns of their home, hidden in bushes and up trees. A steady stream of police, their never-ending questions and either indifferent or worse, pitying looks come and go.

And then there’s me.

The weird girl who tore apart the family of the only boy she ever loved.

The girl whose own father abandoned her freak mother while pregnant. Who reappeared in her life, only to recede back into the shadows once he detected the daughter he’d always wondered about, carried devil in her too.

“Your mom really cared about Derek.” Marty told me yesterday when he came to check up on me, a tray of Donna’s snickerdoodle cookies still warm in his hand. Even now, his confession plays on my mind, humming like the relentless traffic on the I-93, so loudly I hear it slither through my veins. “ She had suppressed her tics around him for as long as she could, but seven or eight months into her pregnancy, unsurprisingly, growing a human consumed most of her energy. The tics became evident. Derek accused your mom of baby trapping him and just poof! Disappeared. He was still working at BU at that point but transferred over to BC when you were about … I’m going to say ten. He came to see you a few times. Wanted to see if you turned out like your mom. And you did. You are just as wonderful as she was.”

The stranger by the door. In Mom’s room. In the parking lot. Yelling over his shoulder as he fled down the stairwell. Destroying a beautiful woman’s heart and soul.

The daughter who went to the police, who asked those same questions, cost him his job, and perhaps his freedom.

The ultimate inconvenience.

Any day now I expect the Harris’s to tire of me too. It’s just a matter of time.

Who knows how many days later, a persistent pounding downstairs shakes the windows and me awake. Rolling to my side, I crack open my eyes and squint to see the time on my phone. “It’s one pm, loser.” I taunt. “Another day spent in bed.”

Whatever the noise was, it stops. So, I return to the comfy impression I carved into the mattress in the Harris’s spare room and close my eyes.

For about five seconds.

Quinn and her parents are at a game, the last before the big one, so I know it’s not coming from them. As it continues, I realize it’s someone very insistent knocking at the door. Most likely a reporter, but who knows.

What does one do in this situation? I’ve never been a house guest before so I have no idea if I’m supposed to answer it, ignore or sneak downstairs, peer through the peep hole and decide what to do based on how much they look like a serial killer. I have a faint recollection of Marty promising to stop by again this week, but I can’t remember if I gave him the address, or what day he said he would come, which in itself is a moot point because I have no idea what day today is.

Who knew a knocking door doubled as a Pandora’s box.

Like so many times in my life, indecision leads to complacency and I do nothing but bury myself deeper into my quilted cocoon and hope the world goes away.

Hot tip. Even when you think it will, that never works.

The knocking stops, and I claim victory, but it’s short lived. One annoying noise is simply replaced by another - my phone. It’s been switched to silent since my confrontation with Carole, but Quinn made us promise to turn it on while she was out and called about five times to check if I had done so. Expecting it to be her again, I pick up without checking the name.

“Not gonna lie, Quinny. There was a close call with a potential axe murderer, but I handled it myself and lived to tell the tale. I’m fine. Enjoy the game with your Mom.”

A familiar voice has my heart leaping into my mouth. “I have many, many questions, most regarding the axe wielder, but sorry, Lotte. It’s not Quinn.”

“Claire?” Tears I’ve bottled up burn like acid against my skin. “I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you again.”

“And I didn’t know if I deserved to speak to you again, but here we both are. Speaking.”

The glut of things I wanted to say should I ever get the chance, compete to be heard first, clogging my mind so severely I wind up saying nothing at all. Possibly mistaking my silence for indifference, Claire’s voice rises in pace and pitch. “I’ll understand if you can never forgive what I said to you,” she almost yells, “but please. Lotte. Please talk to Noah. I was so wrong, but you are so right. He needs you. You promised to help him make it, remember?”

“Of course, I remember and that’s exactly why I have to let him go. No one can or will stop him from making his dream, especially not me.”

“I know this is about Carole, but you have to understand no one blames you for what he did, Lotte. His mistakes are not your cross to bear.”

“Maybe not, but the awkwardness is. The anxiety is, and holy shit the Tourette’s definitely is.”

“Lotte,”

“No, it’s true, and you know it is. You were right all along. I was kidding myself to think I can help Noah do anything. Imagine him at big games, or official team events, proudly standing in the spotlight, he rightly deserves to be alongside all the other players and their beautiful families. But he’s with me, the weirdo glitching beside him and desperately trying to get back to the shadows. I won’t do it, Claire. I won’t drag him into the dark with me. “

“Don’t you think he should have a say in that?”

Being on the receiving end of the same advice I gave to Quinn just a few days ago, prickles against my raw nerves. “No,” I snap, “because I’ll see him and he’ll be all floppy and cute and… andNoah-ry, and … and I know what he’ll say so there’s no point.” Once again, the pounding at the door begins. I’m about to toss my phone and scream obscenities out the window at whoever it is, when Claire adds, “Yeah, well why don’t you open the door and see if you’re right.”