Chapter 1 - The Dress
The first thing I saw was white fabric on my bed.
The second thing I saw was the scissors in Mia's hand.
My graduation dress had been cut from the neckline to the hem.
I just stood there.
For months, I had worked closing shifts at Dawson's Coffee, skipped movies, packed lunches, and saved every tip in an envelope under my desk. The dress cost $684 after tax. It was the first expensive thing I had ever bought with money I earned myself.
Now it looked like confetti.
Mia leaned against my doorway and smiled.
"It was hideous anyway. I did you a favor."
My hands started shaking.
"Why?"
She shrugged. "You make everything about you. Graduation. Scholarships. Dad bragging about you to everybody. I got tired of it."
Her mother, Lauren, came down the hall.
She looked at the bed.
Then at the scissors.
Then she put one hand on Mia's shoulder.
"Claire, don't make a scene. She's seventeen."
I stared at her.
"She cut up my dress."
"And screaming won't put it back together."
That sentence hurt almost as much as Mia's smile.
I had lived with Lauren for six years. Six years of being told I was sensitive, dramatic, difficult, ungrateful. Six years of watching every argument end with me apologizing because keeping peace was easier than asking my father to choose.
Then the bedroom door slammed against the wall.
Dad stood there.
Michael Dawson was still wearing the navy suit he had planned to wear to my graduation. His car keys were in one hand.
He took in the shredded dress.
The scissors.
Mia's face.
Lauren's hand on her shoulder.
"What happened?" he asked.
Nobody answered.
Mia finally rolled her eyes. "It was just a stupid dress."
Dad walked past me into Mia's room.
He came back holding the new designer handbag Lauren had bought her two weeks earlier.
Mia's face drained of color.
"Dad?"
He looked at the bag, then at the scissors.
What he did next shocked all three of us.
He ruined the bag.
Then he set the scissors down and said quietly, "It's just a piece of leather, right?"
Lauren screamed his name.
Dad pointed toward the stairs.
"Pack a bag. Both of you."
Mia started crying.
Lauren stared at him.
And I thought that was the moment everything changed.
I was wrong.
Because Dad had not come home early for my graduation.
May you like
He had come home because the school counselor had called him about an email I supposedly sent.
An email I had never written.
