Page 1 of Hell Gate

CHAPTERONE

LILY

Raindrops splatter the windows of the orphanage matron’s beat up station wagon, falling from the wet autumn leaves of sycamore trees lining the road. Mrs. Talbot, my new guardian, manages the girls’ home we’re on our way to. We haven’t spoken for fifteen minutes since she picked me up in front of the tiny Amtrak station at the center of town. Dead air fills the car to the point I’m worried about suffocating.

The severely dressed woman took one judgmental look at my sharp winged eyeliner and thick thighs on display in a pair of fishnets beneath the black distressed shorts hugging my round ass and rolled her eyes.

Bitch. Sorry I don’t subscribe to dressing in an oversized shapeless sack to hide my body, because god forbid anyone else saw my curves. No one spontaneously combusts because they get a little self-conscious seeing a girl with big tits and a soft stomach confidently rocking short hemlines and low-cut tops. I wear what I’m comfortable in—screw anyone who has a problem with it.

My fashion sense is the one thing about me I still show the world.

It’s not like I expected anything different, though. That’s life in the system. Battered from riding the revolving door of foster homes to orphanages and never fitting in wherever I’m placed thanks to my history. They stopped sticking me with foster families years ago after too many…incidents.

Troubled, that’s the word used most often in my file.

Lily is withdrawn…Lily is too much to handle…Lily got into fights at school…Lily started a fire again.

It’s always the reason I ended up returned, like an unwanted Christmas present. A reject, that’s me.

With stiff movements, I pull the cuffs of my burgundy sweater down over the scarred skin on the back of my clenched hands. The burns from the house fire healed, but they left my flesh ravaged by fine red and silver lines that run from my fingertips to my elbows. I don’t remember everything about that night, only brief flashes of the worst parts. The scars are my permanent reminder of it all—that terrifying night surrounded by deadly flames, the look on my foster brother’s face, how there’s something not right with me.

An uncomfortable lump thickens in my throat as I push my hands into my lap and trace the edge of my thumb along one of the scar paths through the sweater. For a moment, my vision blurs from the sting of tears. Pursing my lips, I blink them away and stare at the sad little town we drive through. I’ll never let them fall again.

I don’t have any way to explain it, but whenever I allow my emotions to get away from me, weird things happen. I’ve trained myself to be less—dull down everything about myself. This way I don’t set myself up for failure and the pain of rejection.

The strange oddities that follow me everywhere scare people. Hell, they scare me. I have no explanation for the impossible things that happen around me when I’m out of control.

I’ve bounced from one group home to another for two years. I liked the one in Philadelphia, but thanks to overcrowding, I won the lottery to be shipped out of the city to Brim Hills, PA to make room for younger kids.

The town looks depressing as hell. One main road cuts through it with old red brick buildings sporting the cracked paint of faded business signs from when this place was in its heyday. That’s got to be at least sixty years ago.

In Philly there were things to do. Bumfuck Nowhere, Pennsylvania seems to offer the scintillating options of a library, a movie theater running two movies from months ago, and a pitiful looking diner. Great. This is about to be the most boring month of my life stuck in this dead town stalled in the past.

By now I’ve accepted I’m going to age out of the system. There’s no happy ending in a forever home, not for me, not after the fire. Whatever. My eighteenth birthday is soon. This is one more little bump in the long pockmarked road of my miserable life.

A month in the girls' home here is my final stop before I’m kicked out of the last place that is required by the state to take me in.

Then I’ll be on my own.

Sink or swim.

I swallow. The haunting memory of my foster mom’s voice is like a gut punch out of nowhere. Anytime I remember her favorite phrase, all I taste is the earthy well water the tub was filled with. A shudder threatens to overtake me, and I struggle to fight it off.

Mrs. Talbot flicks her eyes at me and her austere frown intensifies. She probably thinks I’m a junkie in need of my next drug fix. A lot of girls in the Philadelphia home have gone down that path. It’s scary how easy it is to get your hands on any of it in Philly or the short train ride across the bridge to Camden. I won’t touch the stuff. I’m already messed up and no amount of self medicating will fix me or numb whatever’s screwed up about me.

We pass a sign stating the Brim Hills coal mines are permanently closed. It’s a faded blue, tagged with graffiti.

“Why did the coal mines close?” I’m not sure what spurs me to ask. It’s not like I really care. Simple curiosity to satisfy a bored mind.

She draws in a harsh breath and shakes her head, lips pressed so firmly together the wrinkled skin around her mouth pales. “Don’t ask about the mines. Those damn death traps are cursed.”

“Um, okay.”

“Drove this town into Hell.”

The hissed words seem to be directed at herself rather than carrying on normal conversation. She clutches the steering wheel in a death grip and her teeth grind.

I drop my head back against the seat with a sigh. “Sorry I asked.”

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