“Some of us have to work for a living,” Dad replied in a cold, cutting tone.
The sliding glass door opened behind me, and I turned to see my stepsister, Hannah, walk out onto the deck. The voices of our fighting parents became momentarily louder—“Thoughtless!” “Selfish!”—before Hannah firmly slid the door shut behind her. She was holding her white Persian cat, Madonna. The cat took one look at Willow and hissed evilly.
“Hey,” Hannah said.
“Hi,” I said.
“Is it just me or are they getting worse?” Hannah asked.
“It’s not just you,” I said. Richard and Peyton had been fighting a lot lately. And I knew all too well what they were fighting about: me. Peyton hadn’t wanted me to move into the beach house with them the previous year. My continued presence had been a source of conflict.
“I’m sick of it. And it’s stressing Madonna out. She keeps getting hair balls,” Hannah said, collapsing into the chair next to mine. Madonna didn’t look particularly stressed out. Her flat, malevolent eyes were still fixed on Willow. Willow—who was terrified of the cat, despite being larger, equipped with fangs and bred for hunting—shrank back and skulked behind my chair.
“Coward,” I said, patting Willow reassuringly. “Are you all packed and ready to go?”
Hannah’s investment banker father and stepmother lived in Manhattan. She flew up to see them several times a year, and was leaving the next day for a weeklong visit.
“No, but I can finish tonight,” Hannah said.
“I thought you were going out with Emmett,” I said.
Emmett Dutch was Hannah’s boyfriend, and a year ahead of me at Geek High. I’d had a crush on him for years, and was heartbroken when he and Hannah first started dating the previous year. Thankfully, I was over that now. I had Dex, and besides, Emmett and Hannah made a really cute couple.
“He canceled,” Hannah said moodily. She crossed her arms and stared out at the ocean. “He has to work.”
“Where’s he working this summer?”
“At the Sno-Freeze,” she said.
“That’s where he worked last summer, too,” I remarked, then flushed when Hannah looked at me, surprised. I’d never told her about my former feelings for Emmett, so she had no reason to know that I’d spent two years of my life gathering every nugget of information about him that I could find. “Geek High is small. Everyone knows everything about everyone,” I said quickly.
Hannah nodded, accepting this explanation. “He was promoted to assistant manager. Emmett was really excited about it because he got a raise, but basically it means that when anyone calls in sick, he gets stuck working their shift. It’s so incredibly lame. He’s worked every night this week, and now I’m not going to get to see him before I leave on my trip.”
“That’s too bad,” I commiserated. I pushed the pizza box in Hannah’s direction. “Want some pizza?”
Hannah’s nose wrinkled. “Do you know how many fat grams are in one slice of pizza?”
“No idea,” I said.
“A lot,” Hannah said ominously. “I have to lose ten pounds.”
“Are you insane? You don’t need to lose weight.”
“I do if I’m going to be a model! Do you know how tiny those girls are?” Hannah said.
“I didn’t know you wanted to model,” I said. I thought my stepsister was certainly pretty enough to model. In fact, she was annoyingly pretty. While I was stuck with a tall and gangly body, frizzy hair and a too-big nose, Hannah looked like a princess straight from a Disney fairy tale. She had long, platinum blond hair, large blue eyes, a tiny button of a nose, and perfect rosebud lips. It was no wonder that Emmett Dutch, god of Geek High, had taken one look at Hannah and fallen madly in love with her. “I thought models were really tall, though.”
“Kate Moss isn’t,” Hannah said defensively. “She’s five-foot-six, my height exactly. Well, minus an inch or so.”
“Oh. Well. Good for you,” I said, trying to be supportive.
Hannah nodded. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked.
“That depends,” I said. “How juicy is it?”
Hannah leaned forward, her blue eyes now bright with excitement. “Jackie has arranged for a photographer she knows to do a photo shoot with me. He’s going to put together a portfolio for me so I can start auditioning for modeling jobs.”
I’d never met Hannah’s stepmother, but even so, I’d always been a bit jealous of her relationship with Hannah. Jackie seemed to truly adore Hannah, and treated her like the daughter she’d never had. It was a stark contrast to how the Demon barely tolerated my presence in the beach house.