Chapter 17
Emily's POV
The dress had been hanging at the back of my closet since sophomore year. It was a dark green cotton shift with short sleeves, and it hit just above my knee. I’d bought it secondhand for three dollars because I needed something other than a hoodie for a school presentation I can barely remember. I hadn't worn it since. Every time I opened the closet, I looked at it and found a reason not to.
Tonight I put it on.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror for longer than I'd like to admit, turning slightly to one side, then the other. It fit well enough. The sleeves were short, but the bruises on my arms had faded to a dull greenish yellow by now, low enough contrast against my skin that you'd have to be looking for them.
I pulled my hair out of its usual low ponytail and left it down, which immediately felt like too much, and then I reminded myself that nobody at this party knew what "too much" looked like on me. Nobody had a baseline to compare against.
That was either a comfort or a warning. I wasn't sure which.
Ethan knocked at eight on the dot.
Mom answered before I could reach the door. By the time I came out of the hallway, the two of them were already talking in the entryway—Ethan telling her what time he'd have me back, Mom nodding with an expression that was cautiously approving in a way she probably didn't realize was visible. When she saw me, she stopped talking mid-sentence.
"You look nice," she said. There was genuine surprise in her voice that she didn't bother hiding.
"Thanks." I grabbed my jacket off the hook by the door.
Ethan looked over his shoulder. I watched his expression do something brief and unguarded before he smoothed it out into a smile. "Ready?"
"Yeah."
Mom touched my arm lightly as I passed. "Text me when you get there."
I said I would, and then Ethan held the door open and we walked out into the October evening, and for approximately four minutes I felt something close to a normal eighteen-year-old going to a party on a Friday night.
Then we arrived.
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The house belonged to a senior named Derek whose parents were apparently away for the weekend and whose understanding of "small gathering" differed significantly from mine. There were at least sixty people crammed into a living room that had been cleared of furniture, the bass from the speakers registering in my sternum before we even reached the front door. Someone had strung patio lights along the ceiling. A girl was dancing on the kitchen counter.
I stopped on the front porch.
"You okay?" Ethan said beside me.
"Fine." I adjusted the strap of my bag. "It's just louder than I expected."
"We can go somewhere else if you want."
"I said I'm fine." The words came out sharper than I meant them to. I took a breath. "Sorry. Let's just go in."
He didn't push. We went in.
The first forty-five minutes were exactly as bad as I'd predicted. Within ten minutes of arriving, I'd catalogued the three girls who looked at me and then whispered to the person next to them. And the two who looked at me and then looked at Ethan and arrived at some visible conclusion that made their expressions harden in a way I recognized immediately as territorial. One of them was a cheerleader whose name I didn't know, and she spent the better part of an hour in my peripheral vision, her glare so consistent and unsubtle that it almost became funny.
Ethan stayed close. Not hovering—nothing possessive or performative about it—just near enough that I wasn't standing alone in the middle of a crowd, which I was beginning to understand was his version of giving me an anchor without making a production of it. I didn't tell him I appreciated it. I didn't have to.
Then someone said my name, and I turned.
The girl who'd spoken was short and round-faced with box braids and a smile that took up more than her fair share of her face. She was holding a cup of soda and she was looking at me with the open, uncomplicated friendliness of someone who hadn't yet learned that strangers were usually complications in disguise.
"You're Emily, right? From Mr. Patterson's econ class? I sit two rows behind you. I'm Sofia." She extended a hand, actual handshake and everything, which was so formal and earnest in the middle of a house party that I almost smiled.
I shook it. "Yeah."
"I love your dress. Seriously, that green is perfect on you." She said it the way people said things when they meant them—no pause, no scan to check my reaction, just the statement delivered and done.
Something in my chest did an odd little shift, like a gear catching that I hadn't realized was loose. "Thank you."
"Where'd you get it?"
"Secondhand store. Last year, I think."
She looked genuinely delighted by this. "Okay, I need to know which one, because I've been looking for something that color for months." And then she was asking about thrift stores and I was answering, and then she was telling me about a consignment shop on Fifth that I'd never been to but apparently had an incredible selection of vintage pieces, and somewhere in the middle of that conversation I forgot to hold my shoulders at the height I usually kept them at in crowds.
Ethan drifted away to talk to some of his teammates.
I stayed with Sofia and, after a while, the small cluster of girls she was with—none of whom I knew well, none of whom seemed to know or care about my father. We talked about the class and the teacher's habit of starting every lecture with a quote he attributed to economists who had definitely never said it, and about a movie none of us had seen but all had opinions about, and about nothing in particular.
It wasn't exactly comfortable. I was still aware of every exit, still tracking the noise level and the proximity of people I didn't know. But it was manageable. More than manageable, actually. There were moments—brief, surprising—where it was almost easy.
The cheerleader caught up to me near the stairs when I'd excused myself to find the bathroom. She stepped into my path with the practiced casualness of someone who'd done this before, and this time she wasn't alone. Two other girls flanked her, both with the same sharp-edged smiles that made my pulse kick up immediately.
Three against one. My brain catalogued it automatically—exits, witnesses, whether anyone would intervene if this went badly.
"You're the girl who's been with Ethan this week," she said. It wasn't a question.
"We're classmates." I met her eyes, keeping my voice level even as my heart started hammering. "Can I get through?"
"Classmates." She said the word like she was tasting something rotten. "That's cute. You know, I've been wondering what he sees in you. I mean, everyone knows about your dad, right? Killed a guy? That's some real white-trash shit."
One of the girls beside her laughed—high and cruel. "Oh my god, I forgot about that. Her dad's literally a murderer. And he used to beat her, didn't he? Like, constantly?"
My stomach went cold. I could feel my hands wanting to shake, so I curled them into fists at my sides where they couldn't see. Don't react. Don't give them anything.
"Maybe that's the appeal," the first girl continued, taking a step closer. Her perfume was too sweet, cloying. "Daddy issues and all that. Ethan probably feels sorry for you. You know, charity case."
The cheerleader leaned in, her voice dropping to something falsely sympathetic. "Does he know what your dad did to your mom? I heard she used to show up to work with black eyes. Broken ribs once, wasn't it? How fucked up do you have to be to stay with someone like that?"
"Real fucked up," the third girl supplied. "But I guess that's just how trashy people are. They don't know any better."
My throat was tight. I could feel the familiar panic trying to claw its way up—the one that came with being cornered, with nowhere to go, with people bigger and meaner and more powerful closing in. Breathe. Count the exits. Bathroom's ten feet behind them. Front door's downstairs. Someone would hear if you screamed.
But I didn't scream. I straightened my shoulders instead and forced my voice steady. "Are you done?"