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  In memory of Nancy Redwine

  Furious and forgiving in all the right ways

  Contents

  Title page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  “I tell you, ladies … you don’t know how good it feels till you begin to smash, smash, smash!”

  —CARRIE NATION

  PROLOGUE

  In times past, all dramas started with a prologue, the before before the beginning.

  Enter the character to tell you what you need to know.

  Enter me, Ambrosia.

  Here is what you see. Someone tall and straight, dressed always in black, unruffled in every way down to the clean, classic lines of my designer clothing. I am not perfect by contemporary standards. My almond-shaped eyes—a legacy from my ancestors—sit a little too close together, giving me a penetrating gaze. My nose is too pointed and prominent to be considered an iconic profile in this culture of perky and pug-nosed Anglo-Saxons.

  Yet mine is the face that all other female faces at Hunter High are unfavorably compared to. Beauty is not merely in the eye of the beholder. It exists beyond fashion and trend, and everyone feels drawn to it, to what’s deep and unshakable.

  From this description, you think you know me, right? I’m the girl who has it all—the looks, the grades, the boobs, the family connections. But my face, this mask of self-assurance, covers a seething anger.

  Because in truth, I have nothing worth having. When someone has wronged you and gotten away with it, when the guilty walk free, that miscarriage of justice makes your very soul writhe in agony.

  Let bygones be bygones?

  Come to peace with the past?

  What rot!

  Animals may forgive and forget, but not a human. I will never find relief, not until a certain someone pays for the crime and suffers as deeply as I have.

  I’ve been waiting ages, and finally all the elements are coming together. What a rare alignment of sun and stars and flesh it is. It’s been up to me to find the talent, coax it, feed it, and slowly cultivate it into its full dangerous bloom.

  I have two-thirds of what I need. I wait for the missing piece to reveal itself.

  I can already taste the iron tinge in my mouth, blood calling out for blood.

  It’s time for me to close the book on the prologue. But there’s one more crucial thing you must understand:

  This story started long ago, when the wrong that haunts me was committed and left unpunished. When a spoiled and selfish young prince picked up a knife and decided that it was his gods-given right to plunge the blade deep into someone’s back.

  That someone was me.

  PROLOGUE, THE BOOK OF FURIOUS

  1

  When you’ve got an overbite and only one real friend and you’re what grown-ups euphemistically call “a late bloomer” (meaning I’m short and skinny where I shouldn’t be skinny and I just got my period), you pretty much accept that every day is bound to be a series of humiliations, large and small.

  So given the sucky reality of being me, of being Meg, it’s really something to say that in my almost sixteen years of living, despite my many episodes of blowing it big-time, this particular day turns out to be the most humiliating one of my life.

  More humiliating than when I was five and going to scary kindergarten for the first time and had to be pried loose from my foster mom. I was screaming and got a bloody nose from freaking out, and all the other kids were just sitting there—cross-legged and staring.

  More humiliating than finding out too late that an eighth-grade girl should never stand at the school entrance and hand out valentines to all 167 members of her class. Especially when the cards are personally signed and individually addressed.

  Even more humiliating than last week, when I must have had a brain drain that erased everything I ever learned from my previous humiliations. That’s the only explanation for how I could walk right up to this guy Brendon—this popular guy with adorable eye crinkles when he smiles—and blurt out that I had a two-for-one mini-golf coupon and maybe he might want to go with me sometime. I love mini-golf—I mean, who doesn’t? But Eye Crinkles only stared at me blankly, like he’d never seen me before, even though we’ve been in a ton of classes together for the past three years.

  And now his friends make pretend golf swings whenever I walk by.

  So probably you’re thinking, what could be more humiliating than that?

  Hold on. It gets far worse.

  A brief setting of the scene. Third period. 10th grade Western Civ, my favorite class this year, even though Ms. Pallas makes you work your butt off just for a B. All the usual characters are there. Our teacher is standing to the side of the room, arms crossed, listening to our first oral presentations of the semester. I am in my usual seat—not too close to the front, not way in the back either—right in the middle where it’s easy to get lost in the pack. Next to me, my best friend, Raymond, is totally engrossed in whatever genius thing he’s writing in his notebook.

  In front of the class, one of the Double D twins, Dawn or DeeDee, is giving her presentation. Not to be mean or anything, but her report on ancient Sumerian civilization is crap. I’m just being truthful. I can’t imagine that she put in any more than twenty minutes to plagiarize from Wikipedia. Doesn’t she have any pride? Ms. Pallas won’t let her get away with it.

  Anyway, the thing I remember next is getting distracted by what’s going on outside the window. This is taking place in a coastal town, a slice of surfer paradise wedged between the Pacific Ocean and a redwood forest. The geography here makes the weather unpredictable: sunny one minute, and then warm air hits cold ocean, which makes the fog roll in, and that’s what happens right then. It’s like the whole classroom gets whisked to a different place and a different day without anyone leaving their seat. Poof. It’s gray, dreary, and Jane Eyre–ish, which is fine with me. I’m not exactly embracing life these days.

  And I’m not going to lie. As I watch the weather change, I am trying very hard not to think about that guy with the eye crinkles who happens to be sitting a mere few seats to my right. Only, of course, my mind-control technique is backfiring. All I can do is think about him.

  What’s the matter with me? Wasn’t living through that embarrassment once enough? Why do I keep replaying it? For about the two-millionth time, I put myself through every mortifying detail. The pounding heart. The sw
eaty palms. My own voice confessing my love of mini-golf. The condescending look on his face. The heat rising to my cheeks. My stuttering apology for bothering him.

  How could I have been so stupid?

  Could I have made a more pathetic cry for love?

  Why did I pick such a popular guy?

  What was I thinking?

  Why do these embarrassing things always happen to me?

  Why me? Why not to other people? Why not to him?

  Just once, I say to myself. Why can’t he feel what it’s like? He should try being me for once. He should feel every aching throb of longing for me that I feel for him, and then get shot down.

  I let that idea sink in very deep, and—I’m not going to lie about this either—it gives me a real charge, a jolt of pleasure, to think about getting back at him in some way. I decide to stay with my fantasy, go with it. I let myself get really worked up at him, then even angrier. Why not? Who am I hurting?

  So while Dawn or DeeDee drones on, and outside the fog turns to rain—not drizzle rain, but rain rain that slaps the windows in sheets—I let myself hate that boy with all my might. I savor every sweet detail of revenge that my mind conjures up. I let it become real.

  First he will come begging to me for a date. He’ll be all shy and scared, and I’ll listen as he fumbles his words.

  Then … and then … I won’t answer. I’ll just wrap both of my hands around his neck and pull him close and kiss him. I’ll kiss him so hard that he won’t know what hit him.

  This fantasy is so much fun. It feels so good that I have to stop myself from cackling out loud like a crazed chicken. I actually put my hand over my mouth. It’s kind of scary how good it makes me feel, but scary in a very satisfying way.

  And when he looks at me, dazed with love, I’ll ask, “So, change your mind about mini-golf?”

  He’ll nod eagerly, hopefully, practically in pain with love for me, and I’ll shoot him down. Bam! I’ll yawn and say, “That was the most boring kiss ever. For you, Brendon, the mini-golf coupon has expired. Permanently.”

  In public. So everyone hears.

  And after that …

  And after that?

  I don’t know what happens after that. I really don’t. Something. I don’t remember much, not a whole lot that makes sense, anyway. A light flashes and the air moves in a swirling distortion, like the whole world has suddenly tilted on its side.

  And there’s music. Definitely music. Who is playing music? Why is music playing? My mind latches on to the individual notes, a series of them that rise and fall in an eerie, whistling way. I don’t know this song.

  But then, I do know it. I do! I don’t want it to ever go away.

  Under the music, someone is laughing. And then someone else is shouting the word hate.

  Hate! Hate! Hate!

  A hand cups my shoulder, but I push it aside. There’s so much power surging through me. Someone is pulling on the hem of my shirt. I slap at it.

  “Meg!” Pause. “Meg!”

  I hear a bell then, loud and sharp, and I tremble with a jolt, as if waking suddenly out of a dream when you have a 103-degree fever. The music is gone. An empty silence has taken over. Reluctantly, I blink open my eyes.

  I’m standing.

  Not standing on the ground like your average, normal person, but standing on my chair.

  In the middle of class. With my neck muscles straining and a layer of sweat on my forehead. And my throat dry and raw. And my fists clenched in tight balls at my side.

  Ms. Pallas, directly in front of me, slams her ruler on my desk, and I feel the vibration ripple up through the bottom of my feet to my head. My brain feels like it’s been punched in the gut.

  It all becomes clear then, too clear, and the word humiliation doesn’t begin to cover it.

  It had been Raymond tugging on my shirt, calling my name. The bell was the end of class. And I was the one standing on my chair shouting, “Hate! Hate! Hate! I hate all of you.”

  2

  “Meg-o-mania, what the hell was that about?”

  That’s what Raymond wants to know, and I can’t blame him for pouncing on me as soon as I leave the classroom. While I was getting a stern talking-to from Ms. Pallas and promising her that an outburst like that will never happen again, and that I completely understand how Hunter High is a hate-free zone, and that words have consequences, and that shouting in class is definitely on the school’s list of no-nos, and that in her class especially she won’t tolerate that kind of ugly talk, Raymond waited patiently for me in the hallway. His long, thin body is slouched against a locker. I’m so happy and relieved to see him. I give him a sheepish smile and a weak shrug.

  “Just a warning,” I say.

  He lets out a low whistle of relief. “Lucky. Pallas doesn’t usually suffer from Pushover Teacher Syndrome. I figured you’d pull detention for that spontaneous outburst of misanthropy.”

  Classic Raymond vocabulary. According to Hunter High mythology, my best friend started talking in complete sentences when he was six months old and hasn’t shut up since. That’s not his only achievement. He’s a whiz in math. He skipped fourth grade. He plays first violin in the school orchestra and composes his own music. Plus, he can speak pig Latin in Latin. He’s by far the youngest, smartest, most accomplished person in our class, but also kind of an idiot.

  His most recent form of self-amusement is saying things like “What I lack in maturity, I make up for in infantile behavior,” followed by his enormous high-pitched laugh.

  The truth is—and I’m not talking behind his back because Raymond would admit it himself—he drives most people up a wall. It’s not polite to say this, and maybe my thinking it makes me an awful person, but I’m actually grateful that Raymond is so irritating. Otherwise he might not have been so desperate to have me as a friend when I met him three years ago. On the surface, I know that our friendship doesn’t make much sense—the ethnically ambiguous, awkward girl who loves BLT sandwiches and happy romantic comedies who is inseparable from the big-brain gay kid who’s a vegetarian and obsessed with horror films—the older the better, especially the campy black-and-white ones from the 1960s.

  But it comes down to this: he and I click in a way that we’ve never clicked with anyone else before. We can tell each other anything. To Raymond, I’m not some shy dork who, when she does speak, always manages to say the wrong thing. I’m—get this!—smart, tolerant, funny, a deep thinker, a survivor, and a closet optimist.

  And I think that he’s the most unique person on the planet.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I say. I glance around nervously to see who might have heard about my Western Civ breakdown. There’s only a couple of freshmen hurrying to their next class, and none of them are staring or smirking. Raymond and I have study hall next period and can easily ditch that. With a quick pivot, I start walking down the corridor and he follows, not bothering to lower his voice. “Not so fast, Meg. You were dauntingly intimidating. Terrifying! You hate everyone? Speak!”

  And say what?

  I push through a set of double doors into a stairwell, and I’m so befuddled that I can’t decide what to do next. Where was I going? Up? Down? My hands claw through my hair in frustration.

  “Sit!” he orders, pressing on my shoulder.

  I do. He joins me on the bottom step. “Deep breath in and out. Explain.”

  I swallow hard, shiver a little. How do I start? I can’t explain it to myself. I just want to rub out the whole incident, make the collective memory of thirty-two students disappear. I don’t want to think about every pair of eyes trained on me, some kids laughing so hard they had to put their heads on their desks, others dropping their eyes in embarrassment, like I just confessed in public that I masturbate every night. I don’t want to think about how angry Ms. Pallas is at me and how Brendon—that boy with the crinkle eyes—turned so pale, like he somehow sensed that my hate was focused on him.

  “Well?” Raymond asks again, and the question e
choes in the empty stairwell.

  I let my body cave in on itself, dropping my eyes to the floor, my voice a mumble, as if making myself smaller will make the whole subject disappear. “It was nothing. A blood sugar drop or something.”

  “Blood sugar?” His voice is loud and cracking.

  I cobble together a few coherent sentences that I hope will satisfy him for at least right now. “I don’t know what happened. I was thinking. It was … slippage.”

  “Slippage?”

  “From my brain.”

  His face lights up. “Oh! You mean brain slippage! Good old brain slippage. That explains everything.”

  “It does?”

  Raymond sighs, not buying it for a second. “I’m not talking about the content of your impromptu confession—we’ll come back to Meg’s astounding moment of existential crisis in a minute. It was how you said it.” He cups his hand into a megaphone. “Cue the zombie.”

  I shush him. His eyes search my face. I look away—at my feet, at my nails, at the square tiles of acoustical ceiling, at a big wad of bubble gum fossilized on the wall. But it’s no use. Raymond has infinite patience for my avoidance techniques. He will wait in annoying silence until I spill every detail.

  “Talking it through might help,” I finally admit. Who else can I talk to about it, anyway? My understanding foster mom? My other friend? “Okay. But Raymond, don’t you dare laugh.”

  “Why would I laugh?”

  “’Cause you laugh at everything.”

  He makes a big drama of swiping a hand magician-style across his face, pretending to wipe away any trace of humor. “Totally serious.” Pause. “Devoid of levity. You may proceed.”

  I force a calmness into my voice that I don’t actually feel. “I know it was strange…”

  So much for calmness: I blurt everything, at least as much as I can remember, because it’s all beginning to fade. “That’s the best I can do, my explanation for being, you know, not like myself.”

  “Not yourself? You were positively Demon Girl—with a strong hint of Possessed Person.” Raymond turns his body rigid, arms glued to his thighs. “I hhhhhhhate everyone.”