Chapter 1

1: 1

In Greenhollow we have a custom.

When a child turns eighteen, the parents hand back all the holiday cash they've saved up over the years. We call it "returning the principal."

After that, whether you stay in town or go out to make your own way, you put down your own roots.

On Dylan Fox's birthday, in front of the whole family, Mom passed the savings book to him.

Inside was every dollar of holiday money—mine and his—saved from the time we were small.

I was carrying the dish I'd just cooked to the table when it hit me that my own eighteenth birthday had come and gone three whole months ago.

That day, Mom had sent me to the shop to restock. She didn't even boil me a bowl of noodles.

I set the plate down and asked, "Mom, what about my share?"

Her chopsticks stopped. "It went to your brother's tutoring. We're one family—what's this yours-and-his?"

Dad looked up too. "A girl marries into another family someday. What do you need savings for?"

But just last year they'd told the relatives, "Both our kids' holiday money, not a cent touched, all set aside."

So it turned out their two kids were really just Dylan, counted twice.

I stood up and gave a little laugh, and my tears fell into the dish.

Since my principal had already paid off his, then whatever I owed this family was settled too.

...

I laid a piece of braised pork in Dylan's bowl. Mom didn't even lift her head.

"Why are you standing around? Go cut the cake and hand it out to everybody."

I didn't move. I turned and went back to my little room, the converted storage closet.

The door had barely shut before the room behind me erupted.

Mom's voice came right through the wood. "A few days of book learning and now she's putting on airs? Getting jealous of her own brother!"

Dad muttered his agreement. "We've spoiled her. Couple extra days working the shop and she'll straighten out."

Dylan grinned around a mouthful of cake. "Sis is just a cheapskate."

Sitting on the hard board bed, I stared at the faded strip of peachwood over the doorframe.

Mom always said peachwood held down restless things. When a girl's heart got wild, it had to be pressed down good and proper.

I used to think she was just scaring a kid.

Now I understood. The one she'd always wanted to hold down was me.

At two in the afternoon, Dad's shout came up from downstairs.

"Gladys Fox! Get those thirty boxes of frozen chicken out here, now! The restaurant's calling for them!"

I changed into an old T-shirt and went down.

I reached the door of the freezer when a cramp twisted through my stomach.

Holding onto the doorframe, I said quietly, "Dad, my period started, my stomach hurts. Could you have Dylan help move them?"

He was on the phone with the restaurant owner. He heard me out, then just hung up.

"Your brother's hands are for holding a pen and getting into college. He's not hauling boxes."

"It's only a few boxes, I really—"

"Quit whining!" He threw the delivery slip on the ground.

"The afternoon your mom had you, she was still ringing up sales in the shop. You think you're more precious than she is?"

Dylan came down too. "Sis, if you don't want to do it, just say so. Why make up excuses?"

Mom stuck her head out from the back kitchen. "Always something with you! Move them fast and get back here to make dinner. It's your brother's birthday—he wants a big shared dinner tonight."

I looked at the three of them. One sitting, one leaning, one calling out orders from behind the kitchen.

I pushed open the freezer door, and the cold poured straight into my bones.

Thirty boxes of frozen chicken, one by one, I carried them out.

By the twentieth box I was crouched on the floor, catching my breath for a long time, the cuffs of my pants already soaked through with blood.

I went back to my room, changed into another pair of pants, and kept going.

And it came to me, all at once.

This was never my home. This was Dylan's home.

That night, the three of them ate their big dinner out in the living room.

Lying on the bed in the storage room, by the faint light of my phone, I opened the map.

From this small town to the state capital, four hundred kilometers.

Two and a half hours on the high-speed train.

Outside, Dylan tore open his presents, and Mom laughed. "You've taken your principal back. You're a grown-up now."

For eighteen years, the truth is, I envied him.

Envied that he never had to fight to prove himself to be loved like a child.

But at the end of all that envy, there was only a dull ache left.

This is my last summer in Greenhollow.

The moment the acceptance letter comes, I'm gone.

At least this once, I'm going to live for myself first.