Page 5 of Catch the Sun

His shoulders slump when he turns to look at me, his gaze dull and tired. “What’s wrong?”

“I forgot my stone. The one I picked up at the playground today with Max.”

“It’s just a stone, Ella. You can find another one.”

“But…that one was special. Max found it for me.” My bottom lip wobbles as the tears burn. “We have to go back and get it. Please, Dad.”

He smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’ll mail it to you, kiddo.”

Puffing out a sad sigh, I turn around and walk away, dragging my suitcase behind me. When I make it to the front of the house, I stop and look down at the orange flower still tucked inside my hand.

It’s already dying.

And my father never does mail me that stone.

Chapter 2

Ella

Ten years later

Age 17

There’s a dick in my mouth.

Not a real one, of course. It’s a drawing of a hairy penis scribbled with Sharpie onto a photograph of me singing karaoke one summer, my mouth wide open, making it the perfect picture to use when depicting a phallic-shaped object jutting between my lips.

Groaning under my breath, I make a mental note to lock down my Facebook account.

Maybe I should delete it.

I snatch the photo off my locker and pick at the tape before crumbling it into an angry wad and stuffing it in my back pocket.

Classmates snicker behind me. Snide whispers float through the hallways, causing my stomach to pitch. I glance down at the cream-and-tan linoleum tiles and blow out a breath.

Ella Sunbury: the weird new girl, who went from riches to rags. The sister of a murderer. The broken teenager who was forced from her pretty house made of bricks and shingles and shlepped over three hours away to the small town of Juniper Falls, where everyone judges her.

Where everyone hates her.

That’s what people see when they look at me. That’s what they think they know based on news reports, rumor mills, and gossip trains.

And I suppose they’re not wrong—I’m all of those things.

But those things are not all I am.

I stretch a piece of chewing gum from between my teeth and twist it around my index finger until the digit is woven with neon-yellow ribbon. Students shuffle past me, muttering nasty comments under their breath.

“She was probably his accomplice.”

“I bet she bought him the gun with her million-dollar weekly allowance.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t piss her off. First-degree murder runs in the family, after all…”

Before I can make a hasty retreat to my next class, someone bumps into me from behind, and I nearly topple forward, no thanks to the extra weight on my back from the dozens of books stuffed into my orange Vera Bradley book bag that I couldn’t bear to sell in the auction.

I catch myself on my locker door with anoomph.

“Sorry,” a voice says, snatching my elbow to keep me steady.

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