“And Skype,” Angie supplied as she stuffed her mouth with another bite of pizza. If she had been anywhere else, with any other two people, my beautiful stepsister would not have been cramming her face with greasy food full of bad carbs. But with me and Caleb, she didn’t care. She knew that with us she was free to be whoever she wanted to be.
“Yeah, Skype,” Caleb said with a nod. “We’ll talk and see each other so much that it’ll be almost like you’re still on the East Coast.”
Because they were both trying so hard, I forced a smile for them and continued to eat my weight in junk food. Angie finally decided on a movie on the satellite’s pay-per-view channel before settling back and reaching for the pack of gummy bears I hadn’t noticed earlier. When I saw the opening credits, I snorted Diet Coke out my nose.
“What?” Angie asked innocently as she produced a napkin so I could clean myself and the comforter up.
Caleb sighed at his sister before wrapping his huge arms around me and pulling my head down onto his hard shoulder. “You have a weird fetish for Jonah Hill, Ang. It isn’t right. Maybe you should start seeing your shrink again.”
With my nose stinging from the Diet Coke now instead of the need to ugly-cry, a small laugh escaped me—the first one in weeks. Rolling my eyes as my stepsiblings continued to bicker at each other, I cuddled against Caleb a little more and soaked up their love for me while I still could.
Chapter 2
Kin
The sun was glaring through my window, forcing a grumpy groan from my throat. Reaching for my extra pillow, I pulled it over my face to block out the light, wishing I could block out the rest of the world in the process.
I couldn’t. I knew that I couldn’t. Didn’t mean I couldn’t wish.
The sound of the alarm on my phone, the alarm on the clock beside my bed, and the pounding on my bedroom door weren’t going to let me block anything out this morning. Grunting, I reached for my phone, silencing it with the swipe of my finger. The alarm on the clock beside my bed was a little more difficult seeing as I didn’t know much about the stupid thing that my step-monster had placed in my room when she had decorated the monstrosity of a room for me. So I reached for it blindly, jerked until the cord came free from the wall and the room was blissfully silent.
The pounding on my door
continued, however. “Go away!” I yelled after lifting the pillow enough to free my mouth.
Apparently ‘go away’ meant ‘please enter at your leisure’ in this freaking house. The door opened and in walked my step-monster. I knew it was her, not because I’d lifted the pillow from my eyes, but from the suddenly overpowering scent of expensive perfume. The same perfume that had filled my lungs just the night before when Jillian had air-kissed each of my cheeks when she had met my father and me at the airport.
Of course there had been about ten cameras flashing as she had greeted me. Cameras that my step-monster had played it up for by greeting her husband with a kiss that had embarrassed me as well as made me want to vomit.
Gross.
“You’re going to be late for your first day of school, McKinley,” Jillian informed me in her cool tone. Honestly, after the warm greeting I’d received in front of the paparazzi the night before, it was a wonder if I didn’t get frostbite from the woman now. Of course, there were no cameras for her to play ‘happy family’ in front of today.
The pillow was suddenly pulled off my face and I glared up at Jillian as she pulled the covers off my bed and then turned and went to turn on my shower. A glance at the clock on my phone told me that I had a good hour before I had to be at school, which was only a ten-minute drive from my father’s Malibu house. Unlike Angie, I didn’t need an hour in the bathroom to get ready to go outside. A quick shower, a change of clothes, and I was set.
Jillian didn’t seem to care when I told her I didn’t need more than fifteen minutes to get ready. So instead of arguing, I crawled out of bed and trudged into the bathroom that was already steaming up from the shower. As I pulled my sleep shirt over my head, I ignored Jillian who was already setting out Dior makeup and some swanky salon’s hair products.
It took me five minutes to shower, most of that time spent on washing my long burnished red hair. When I turned off the water, Jillian gave me an odd look before turning back to what she was doing. A flat iron was already plugged in along with the hairdryer. Raising my brows at them, I dried off and then pulled my hair into a messy knot on top of my head. I grabbed my toothbrush and started scrubbing. Two minutes later I rinsed and walked back into my bedroom to pull on the uniform that I was expected to wear to school every day.
Ugh, I thought, grimacing at the black skirt that wouldn’t reach my knees and the white polo shirt that went with it. There was a black blazer hanging from the back of my closet door. If I was going to have to wear the skirt and blazer, the least they could do was let me wear my own top. So instead of putting on the white polo, I reached for my gray Metallica T-shirt and then pulled on a pair of boots. I didn’t return to the bathroom, just picked up the black messenger bag that had my name and my new school’s emblem on it.
Downstairs I made myself a slice of toast, smothering it in butter and strawberry jam before grabbing an individual sized orange juice. Stuffing the toast in my mouth, I picked up the juice and walked out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front door where my stepsisters were waiting for me.
If you looked at them and then looked at me you would know that there was no chance we could be related by blood. My two stepsisters, Georgia and Carolina, were dressed to kill. Literally. They had so much makeup, hair product, and perfume on that I was sure something or someone had been killed along the way. Maybe a few innocent animals, probably a few college kids who had been guinea pigs for some company to test their products on because the college kids had needed some extra money. All so my two stepsisters could look as beautiful and fake as they did right at that moment.
When they saw me walking toward them, their eyes narrowed. “Mother let you out of your room without your hair done?” Carolina demanded. Of the two she was the younger one, perhaps the smarter one as well. But no less stuck-up than her sister. Georgia, who was my age, was an exact replica of her mother. Down to the cool tone of her voice.
I shrugged as I continued to chew my toast. I only fixed my hair for school for one of two reasons: picture day, or prom. Neither were happening today so there was no way I was doing more to my hair than had already been done. “Who’s driving?” I asked, talking with my mouth full.
Georgia gave me a disgusted look but raised the set of keys in her hands. “I am, since Carolina doesn’t have her license yet. She’s only fifteen.”
“Okay, cool. I’m ready if you are.”
Georgia gave me another once over, sighed disgustedly and opened the door. Outside, the September sunshine was glaring down at me and I reached for my sunglasses from my messenger bag as I followed them to the little sports car already waiting in front of the house. I didn’t attempt to take the front passenger seat. For one, I didn’t want to make conversation with either of them. It was blatantly obvious neither liked me and, believe me, the feeling was mutual. Less than one day on the West Coast and I could already tell that not getting to know my two stepsisters would not have been a regret I would have minded having on my conscious for the rest of my life.
From the backseat of the very expensive sports car, I learned a whole lot about my stepsisters, though. One being that Georgia could not drive for beans. On more than one occasion I closed my eyes and prayed to whatever god still listened to me that I would get to school in one piece. Another thing was that Carolina could text one conversation while talking to her sister at the same time, but apparently Georgia could not drive and talk at the same time. I learned that neither of them had very good taste in music as they argued over which satellite station they would listen to. My poor ears were tortured with the sounds of some R&B dude as we pulled into a spot in the student parking lot that said it was reserved for Malibu Academy’s head cheerleader.
Really? A reserved spot for the head cheerleader? What the hell was a head cheerleader anyway? Did that mean she was the captain? The president of the cheerleading society? Wait, was there such a thing as a cheerleading society?