Page 41 of Where Daisies Breathe (Star Meadows #2)

AVA

THE PAST…

I t’s Saturday and I’m getting ready to hang out with Clover. We’ve been friends for a few months now, much to my mother’s dismay, something she reminds me of on a daily basis.

“You look ridiculous,” she tells me when I enter the kitchen. She eyes my outfit and shakes her head, returning to flipping the pancakes she’s cooking. “Go change. Now, Ava.”

“What I’m wearing is fine,” I reply, reaching for the car keys that are on the wall hook.

My outfit consists of torn jeans and a cropped T-shirt, along with an oversized green jacket and thick boots.

My father is sitting at the table with an array of camping gear spread out in front of him. He’s changing the batteries in a flashlight when he flits a glance at me. Anger flares in his eyes.

“Go change now. You look like you should be doing crack in an alleyway,” he grumbles before returning his attention to the flashlight.

I want to say: Maybe I am going to do crack in an alley.

I want to make them feel the same rage as I have since the day I ran out of the woods, and they locked me in the basement. But thinking these things and actually having the courage to say them aloud is an entirely different story.

So I choke the words down, like they’re my breakfast.

I turn and head for the stairway. I pause at the top of it, waiting for them to stop paying attention before I sneak out the front door without changing.

Snow has fallen overnight, and the mountains and fields are blanketed with a sheet of white.

The car I drive to school is frozen, and patches of ice dot the road.

The snow crunches under my boots as I wade through it and toward my car.

I’ll have to let it warm up for a bit, which is going to suck since I’m not about to go back into the house.

Once I’ve got the engine started, I start the process of scraping the ice off the window. Without gloves on, my fingers turn blue rather quickly. But after freezing in the forest, standing outside for a few minutes in the cold is nothing.

Although I struggle to pick up t he phone when it rings. I end up climbing in the car in order to answer. I’m so frozen that I don’t even pay attention to who the caller is.

“Hello?” I answer through my shivering.

“Hello, slut,” the person on the other end says into the phone.

I’m in the middle of cranking up the heat but go still. “Who is this?’

“I think the real question is: who are you?” they sneer. “Did you know that if you come from evil, more than likely you’ll be just as evil, if not more.”

“Who is this?” I repeat. “Are you the person who’s been calling and breathing into the phone?”

They laugh. I can tell they’re disguising their voice. Either that or using a device to do so. The person who’s been harassing me for months, ever since that first girl disappeared, does the same thing. However, this conversation feels slightly different.

They laugh, a low, sinister sound that sends a chill slithering up my spine. “You were always so stupid. And I’m not surprised you turned into a slut.”

I curl my fingers inward. “Are you the person who painted slut on my locker?”

“So many questions, and yet you ask all the wrong ones,” they say. “If you knew what to look for, maybe you wouldn’t have wandered into those woods. Then again, perhaps you wanted to, you little slut. So evil. So selfish. So?—”

Someone says something in the background, and then the call ends.

I lower the phone from my ear, my breath fogging up the windows. The call was listed as unknown, leaving me with zero clues as to who it could be, other than sifting through their words. It had to be the person who wrote slut on my locker a few months ago. They knew about the woods too.

My mind wanders to Trystan. Could it be him? Weirdly, the person in the background of the call just barely kind of sounded like him, but that would mean he wasn’t the one who called me. Maybe he had one of his friends do it?

I sit in the frozen car, watching the frost webbing the glass slowly fade away. The wiper blades finally unfreeze from the glass and begin to move, back and forth… Back and forth…

The windshield wipers move back and forth across the window as a snowstorm pours down from the cloudy sky.

“Are you sure we’re in the clear?” my mother whispers as she gazes out the window. “If there’s any evidence left ? —”

“There isn’t,” my father snaps, causing me to jolt.

I’m in the back seat, hunkered down with a blanket wrapped around me.

My eyes are swollen from hours of crying over the fact that we’re moving.

My parents gave me hardly any warning, and I haven’t had time to process it.

I yelled at them when they informed me three days ago that I was to pack what I could and get rid of the rest of it.

My father smacked me across the face when I cried.

My cheek still aches.

But it’s small in comparison to the pain of moving.

I’d finally made some friends, and now we’re moving, and to the mountains of all places. From what I read about Star Meadows, it’s in the middle of nowhere and is constantly cold.

I hate this.

I hate it so much.

As tears burn in my eyes again, I bite down on my bottom lip. But a half-sob manages to claw out of my mouth.

My mother’s attention darts in my direction.

“Ava, go to sleep. Now,” she warns, then gives a nervous glance at my father.

She always does that when she’s worried I’ve annoyed him. Part of me wants to annoy him more, but the throbbing in my left cheek causes me to swallow down the compulsion.

I lay down and tug the blanket over my head, facing the back of the seat. Time ticks by, and my parents utter nothing to each other. My eyelids grow heavy as I start to grow sleepy.

“Star Meadows has a lot of potential,” my father says. “So many mountains, and it’s more secluded. I think we’re going to flourish here.”

My mother remains silent for a moment. “Yeah, I guess.” Her voice sounds odd—wobbly and yet empty. “Do you think it’s a good idea to continue, though, with what just happened?”

“Are you questioning me?” my father asks in a tone that is chillingly cold.

“Not at all,” my mother quickly says. “I just want you to be careful. That’s all.”

“I am careful. What happened just barely… That wasn’t my fault. It was her’s. She came on to me. She did this.” A short pause. “She’s a fucking little slut.

“Agreed. It’s good you got rid of her.” She pauses. “Marissa isn’t taking it well, though. Her death, I mean.”

“You haven’t told her the truth, right?”

“I’m not stupid, James. I know she has to believe it’s an accident.” She pauses again. “I wish she’d never brought her into our lives. I don’t know why she let that slut in her house when she knew what she was ? —”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Someone knocks on the window, startling me so badly that I jump. My gaze darts to the right, and I find my aunt Marissa glaring at me through the window.

“Why are you just sitting around in your car? You should be at school,” she warns while wrapping her jacket around herself.

I reach for the shifter. “I am.”

Her glare deepens. “Trystan told me about the people you’ve been hanging out with at school. That has to be an embarrassment for your mother. And do they know that you're dressed like a slut right now?” Weirdly, I swear there’s a twinkle in her eyes, like she’s getting off on tormenting me.

I think about the memory I just had.

I wonder who the person was that was related to Marissa.

I stare at her, wondering if she’s aware of the stuff my parents were talking about that night.

When she glares at me, I tear my attention away from her. She’s always so timid unless it’s directed at me. It’s beyond annoying, and I don’t even know why she seems to hate me.

She continues to glare at me as I drive away.

I know for sure when I return home, she’ll have told my parents about what I was wearing, and I’ll be in trouble.

Except when I get home, she hasn’t told them.

She kept it to herself.

It makes me wonder why.

And what other secrets she’s holding inside her.