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prologue
Winter 1995
Laughter wakes me from a deep sleep. It’s coming from downstairs; I look to the space beside me where she was tucked in when I drifted off a few hours ago and find it empty. I pull myself from the bed, cross the room, and open the slightly ajar bedroom door. Upon stepping out onto the landing, I observe my five-year-old sister sitting on the floor in the hallway, peering through the railing down at the first floor where my mother is in the kitchen, laughing with a light-haired man.
I watch for just a second, too; I can’t stop myself. She’s a beautiful woman—tall and thin with stick-straight blonde hair that matches my own and a smile that belongs in a magazine. Of course, we don’t get that version of her, and I suppose that’s why I watch. We get the real, raw version: the perpetually tired one, the one who feels defeated and who’s angry from pretending she isn’t. The waitress who’s exhausted after being on her feet all day, struggling to keep the lights on. The one with no smiles or laughs left to give because she has to fake them at night for guys like this.
And I had to grow up too quickly for it.
The man pulls a bottle of champagne from a paper bag. My mom takes it from him and pops the cork, the spray running down the front of her body, between her breasts. He leans in and runs his tongue up the space between them, slowly licking and sucking the area clean, and she throws her head back and moans.
It snaps me out of my haze.
“Emma,” I hiss. “What do you think you’re doing? Get your ass back in here.”
I grab her by the back of her nightshirt, haul her to her feet, and drag her back into the bedroom. I close the door behind me and turn both locks.
“You can’t let them see you, Emma. You know that.”
“She was laughing, though,” Emma says. “She looked happy. Did you see her?”
Yeah, I saw her. “Just go to bed, Emma.”
“Maybe he’s a nice man,” she says.
“None of them are nice men; I can promise you that.”
“Maybe they’ll get married.”
I scoff. “No, Emma. They’re not going to get married.”
“Mom thinks he’s dead.”
“What?” I ask. “Who are you talking about?”
“Dad,” she says. “She said he always comes back. She thinks he’s dead.”
“She said that to you?”
She can hear it in my voice—how angry it makes me and she rolls over, pulling the covers up to her neck without replying. I knew she suspected it; I knew that the last job he left for in Northern California was a dangerous one, but who says that to a five-year-old?
But maybe that makes it easier for her. She didn’t get to know him like I did. It doesn’t bring me any comfort to think of him as dead. For the baby he left, who never got a chance to know her father, maybe it is easier to think that he isn’t here because it’s physically impossible, not because it’s a choice.
I don’t know what I think. I just know things were never easy, but the last few years have been even worse.
A few minutes pass, and I hear Emma’s slow, deliberate breathing next to me and realize she’s fallen asleep. Not long after, I hear footfall on the staircase and the slamming of a bedroom door. I reach over and turn on the radio next to me, the volume down low, and let the static of the only station we can get up here—and even then, only when weather permits—and Oasis’s “Wonderwall” lull me to sleep.
one
Summer 1999
“Mel!” Aaron, my manager, shouts at me from behind the counter, gesturing for me to come closer. I sigh and roll my eyes.
“I’ll see you guys later,” I tell my former classmates as I bring myself to stand.
“Not for long!” Heather adds just before I walk away. “In a few days, you and Ty will be the only ones here, and we’ll all be away at college. Crazy, isn’t it?”
She smiles, but not in a kind way—in a ‘I finally beat you at something, bitch’ kind of way, and it makes my blood boil. I’ve been hyper-focused on getting the fuck out of this town since I was thirteen years old, and everyone at this table knows it. Instead, I'll be the one who’s stuck here, watching everyone pack up and go start the rest of their lives while I rot away on this mountain.
