Page 4 of The Hallows Queen

I’m young, I’ve got nice tits and a high tolerance to alcohol. I want to bethatgirl for a while.

Who knows, maybe in the future I’ll want to settle down and do boring shit like make pot roasts, but I’m fucking twenty-three. I want to act like it. I want to have orgasms so good that I black out and get so drunk off mixed drinks that I sleep on the beach.

“Plus, don’t you want to act crazy one last time before you become the biggest interior designer in the west?” I say to Katie, who turns to look at me again. “Remember the fun we used to have?”

She laughs, throwing her head back. “I remember waking up on a bench in the quad after a molly bender, getting kicked out of Chipotle for public intoxication, and having a run-in with chlamydia.”

I snort. “And you learned a very nice lesson about condoms.”

“I hate you.” She laughs.

* * *

I metmy parents when I was fourteen. I had just started 8thgrade at Johnson Middle School and had just been kicked out of my thirteenth foster home in five years. I had given up on getting adopted, since the older you get, the less likely it is that anyone will want to adopt you. You’re damaged goods at that point, and I was just trying to get from day to day until I turned eighteen and I was free of the system.

I wasn’t like all the other kids in my school. I was the only one in my grade without a family, and it showed. I wore knockoff shoes, and my backpack was falling apart, because most of the foster parents I had had in my life cared more about their own families, only giving the foster kids the essentials when we really needed them.

I was moved into a group home after my last foster parents said I was an unmanageable child, which is code fortoo old to push around. The group home was all girls. There were four of us to a room and we slept on bunk beds that had seen better days.

“Penelope, you have an interview.”

Aninterview– that’s what the group home called meeting a potential family, like we were applying for a job or a scholarship, like it was something we actually wanted at this age. I wrapped my dark brown hair into a bun on top of my head, wiped the day-old eyeliner under my eyes, and made sure I was wearing a clean shirt. Even though I had lost all hope for a family, I still wanted to look good. I still had that teensy,tinypart inside of me that thought,what if this is it?

I followed the group mom into the dining room, where an older couple was sitting, their hands together on the table.

“Mr. and Mrs. Leyton,” the group mom greeted them, “this is Penelope.”

I had never seen a smile so warm and welcoming as the one that flashed back at me when I set my eyes on my mom for the first time. She looked like she belonged in heaven. She stood first, then my dad, and they took their turns holding their hands out for me to shake.

“It’s nice to meet you, Penelope,” my mom said, her smile still cutting across her face as she sat back down. “Why don’t you sit down with us?”

I nodded, suddenly feeling like something was attacking my nervous system as I pulled a chair out a few feet from them and sat.

She put her hand on her chest. “I’m Colette, and this is my husband, Stephen.”

“Nice to meet you,” I mumbled, looking at my hands where they were crossed over the tabletop. I’d been in so many of theseinterviewsat this point, I had lost most of the excitement. They never chose me in the end, so what was the point?

“Where are you from, Penelope?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Here, I guess.”

“You’ve been in Williston your whole life?” she questioned.

“No.” I shook my head. “I just got here. I was in Macon before this, Franklin before that, a few more places too.”

“Which one has been your favorite?”

I could tell she was trying to get me to warm up with questions that didn’t matter, but I played along. “Any of the places that were close to the beach.”

“We love the beach,” Stephen said, putting his arm over his wife’s shoulder and smiling. “We live in Luxington Beach, just on the Atlantic.”

“Really?” I met his gaze, feeling myself getting excited despite my wariness. It was working. They were making me warm up to them, even though I walked in wanting to just get it over with. His eyes were a deep blue, and I studied them, seeing my reflection in them from across the table.

“You’ll love Luxington Beach. The sand is white, and the water is always a nice temperature,” Colette added, smiling.

I swallowed hard. “Please don’t pretend you’re actually going to take me in. I know that I probably wasn’t what you were expecting.”

I tucked my hair behind my ear and looked at Colette in time to see her frown. “What do you mean,what we were expecting?”

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