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PROLOGUE
ETTA
FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER
Covering my ears with the palms of my hands, I try to block out the sounds of the arguing, but all it does is muffle the raised voices and angry words. Even from my seat on the steps at the back of the house that lead down to the pretty backyard, I can hear Bruce’s booming voice and the angry yells of his son, Oscar.
I don’t like it when people argue. I didn’t like it when Mom used to argue with the man who owned the apartment we lived in when she couldn’t afford to pay the rent. I didn’t like it when my dad used to shout at her until she cried, and I don’t like it every time Oscar comes to visit.
I’ve known Oscar for three years now, but it doesn’t seem to matter how much time passes between his visits, they all end the same way. With me hiding somewhere trying to drown out the noise of my stepdad Bruce and his son Oscar fighting.
I remember the very first time I met Bruce. He’d turned up at the crappy apartment Mom and I had been living in and taken us out to dinner. Whenever Mom had dated men before him, she’d make me go to my room before they got there, then she’d leave me alone while she went out. But instead of pretending I didn’t exist, Bruce had asked me to join them, like he’d be honored if I agreed.
Unlike my dad and the guys my mom fell in and out of love with, Bruce seemed…nice. For six months after she introduced him to me, he came to our place once or twice a week and took Mom and me out on a date. We went bowling, ate ice cream, or saw a movie, and then got dinner. He was nice to my mom, and he was nice to me, and I liked him.
It wasn’t until we moved into this house with him that I found out Bruce had a wife and a son. At the age of nine, I didn’t really understand what it meant that he had another family. So when he and Mom sat me down and told me I had a big brother now and that he was looking forward to meeting me, a dumb, naive part of me was excited.
That only lasted until the first time twelve-year-old Oscar Malik stepped into our happy home with a scowl on his face and hatred in his eyes.
I never found out what I did to make Oscar hate me so much, but he never held back from telling me, my mom, and Bruce how much he despised us. How he wished he’d never have to see any of us ever again.
For the first year, Bruce went and fetched Oscar from school every Friday, and then we all spent the weekend dealing with his anger and hatred. Slammed doors, raised voices, and argument after argument made weekends a nightmare for all of us.
I remember clearly the day that Oscar’s mom showed up at the house, and she and Bruce screamed and yelled at each other for what felt like hours. After that, Bruce stopped picking Oscar up for the weekend, and instead, he only came on the holidays. I reclaimed my peaceful weekends, but instead, I found myself bracing long before a holiday break, trying and failing to hide the anxiety that consumed me the moment Oscar walked through the front door.
It doesn’t matter that I only have to see him a handful of times a year. I still dread being forced to spend time with him, no matter how many months have passed between us seeing each other. Oscar might hate his dad; he might despise my mom, but he truly loathes me in a way that is so all-consuming that just the mention of his name makes me tremble.
I don’t know why Oscar has chosen me to be the target of his rage, but since the very first time he came here, he’s made my life a living hell. He’s stolen my toys, destroyed my clothes, ripped up my school projects, and even laced my food with enough laxatives that I ended up in the ER. Angry twelve-year-old Oscar was hard enough to deal with, but as we’ve gotten older, his bullying has changed from simply taking and destroying my things to methodical personal attacks. He’s mean and hateful about my appearance, my personality, and my style.
Oscar Malik has systematically beat me down until just the mention of his name evokes a PTSD-type response that makes me want to curl into a ball beneath my bed and hide.
He’s here right now because it’s Labor Day weekend and my mom and Bruce’s wedding anniversary. They got married a month after Bruce’s divorce from Oscar’s mom came through, and today is their third wedding anniversary.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve overheard Bruce on the phone with Oscar and his mom multiple times, and none of them sounded like happy conversations. I’ve been so stressed about him coming this weekend that I’ve tugged on my hair so much that I now have a bald patch. When he stormed through the front door last night, I hid, but it didn’t take him long to find me.
Mom gave birth to my brother Carson five months after we moved into this house, and Dawson was born a year later. Right now, she’s pregnant for the third time, and this house that had seemed so big when we first moved in is now bursting at the seams.
Oscar hasn’t visited since Christmas, but when he does come, Bruce makes me give up my bedroom so Oscar can have his own space. I hate having him in my room because it just makes my things an even easier target for him, but the last time I tried to tell my mom how much it bothered me, she told me that Oscar visiting was important to Bruce and that I needed to stop behaving like a spoiled brat.
Now, if I know he’s coming, I pack all of my important and private things up and hide them in the basement, so he can’t destroy them or use them to taunt me. At Christmas, he melted all the wires in the back of my brand new karaoke machine and smashed the screen on my cell phone. But that was nothing compared to the way he cornered me after our parents announced that Mom was pregnant again and that this time it was a girl. He lured me into the basement, then held me captive in the corner of the room and told me our parents were replacing me with a new baby girl and that it was only a matter of time before they put me up for adoption.
Oscar Malik is the devil, and no matter how rarely he storms into my life, he always manages to wreak havoc. Honestly, I don’t know why Bruce keeps forcing him to come here, but I know that there was a court date and a judge.
Last year, when Oscar turned fifteen, Mom and Bruce had to go to court. I overheard them talking about how Oscar and his mom had asked the judge to change the custody agreement so he didn’t have to see Bruce or visit here anymore. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but I know the judge denied the change because of something to do with Oscar’s mom.
A part of me wishes that I knew what happened, because after that, Oscar got even crueler. He opened the cage door and let my pet bird fly away. He stole my computer and sent messages and emails to all the girls at my school, pretending to be me. He was mean and cruel to all of my friends, and even though I tried to tell them it was him, not me, they didn’t believe me.
They stopped being friends with me and made sure no one else wanted to be friends with me either. I could have maybe coped with being alone, but when the bullying started, things got so bad that Mom had to pull me out of school, and I’ve been homeschooled ever since.
Sometimes, in the days before he arrives, I wish Mom and I were still in our apartment and that she’d never met Bruce. Sometimes, I wish Oscar would just ignore me the way he does Carson and Dawson. Sometimes I wish one of us would just disappear, because even seeing him a few times a year is more than I can cope with.
With my hands pressed tightly against my ears, I make a promise to myself. When I’m old enough, I’ll leave, and I’ll never see Oscar Malik ever again.
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