Chapter 1: Seeing Things

I didn't know if I'd been followed home or not: the snuffling outside the door had stopped long before the pores on the ceiling tiles stopped circling one another. It was probably for the best that I'd bowed out early—else, I didn't know if I could have stumbled home. Theater kids know how to get baked.

The doorbell cam was just for show. The Kimber family was too cheap to pay for the subscription. They didn't understand apps, or even router placement. So if I wanted to know, I'd have to get up, schlep it all the way to the front door, and physically open it. Not happening.

It had flickered like a shadow and padded with a heavy THUD THUD sound that made me think it weighed more than a high school girl could hold at bay. For me, that limit was, like, forty pounds. Terriers, those were more my speed.

I thought about the rest of the blunt in my pocket and tucked it under my box spring. Just in case.

Either I was going insane, or I'd found my new favorite hallucinogen.

The walk home was cold, minus my backpack and hoodie within. I have thin blood; always have. It's one of nature's little gifts. Anything but summer is just too cold at night, and this year even June decided to be cold before it started raining for two days straight. It was an uncomfortable 68 degrees.

Listen, some people are comfortable in subzero temperatures. Other people are the reason sweater vests were invented. I'm one of those people. I like sweater vests. They keep my spindly little arms from getting cold while my bird-body has a chance to amass warmth. With my thin blood, you know? I know what I look like, but I’m not a starving orphan. It’s one of those things I’m learning to like about myself, just like the guidance counselor said.

Sorry, I lied to you.

I went to her to talk about a career path, and she assured me that I would "grow into my feminine beauty." Thanks, Claudia, that means a lot. But could we please talk about whether I should actually try to get an accounting degree?

When you live on the edge and have a highly unstable lifestyle, you learn to value the idea of a stable one. I thought about the army, but then I considered how many push-ups I can do and how far I can run, and I thought again. So, no. Not the army.

My thoughts kept circling back to accountants. Tax preparation, clerical work—the people who take a whole box of receipts and make sure all the data gets input correctly. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.

It’s extremely boring stuff.

Nobody wants to be an accountant, which means there will always be someone paid to do it, and paid more than nothing. I could also be a plumber; nobody wants to do that either, and they get paid well. But I don't want to be a plumber, even though I'm told my small frame would be an advantage for getting behind fixtures. It's number three on my list.

Anything that requires a college degree is way down my list. When you grow up poor, you get a nose for scams. Actually, that's not true. I should say that if you grow up poor, you’re highly motivated to make decisions as if you have a nose for scams, because if you slip up even once, you'll kick yourself so hard. And my mamas didn't raise no fool.

I've noticed that people with degrees don't always make more money. I know because I’ve asked. Imagine an awkward teenager walking up to people and saying, "Hey, do you make good money?" I did it. And no, they don't.

Of course, what I actually want to do is so hopelessly out of reach that I’ll never get there. But every night, under the covers right before I go to sleep, I picture it anyway: swarms of little doggies and cats coming to me with broken legs or mange, and leaving with a new bounce in their step and a new lease on life. I would be a terrific vet. I totally would.

But becoming a vet is a lot like becoming a doctor. The problem is, for vets, the patients don't have any way to make money. Their loved ones have to reluctantly cough up the bill. It’s like being a doctor, but with less money.

If I wanted that, I might as well just be a doctor.

But if I become a doctor, I have to worry about getting sued, so I should be a lawyer. But if I become a lawyer, I have to deal with AI eroding the profession horribly in the next twenty years.

And I don’t want to go into tech; I’m content to be a power user. Once I leave high school, I am never taking a math class again.I am never taking a math class ever again as soon as I leave high school. Unless, of course, I become an accountant.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Most people have parents, or at least a parental figure—an adult they could run to for help. I’m pretty sure, though, that in this particular house, the only one who would stand and fight—whether it was a burglary or someone breaking down the front door—would be me. Everyone else would run. And I'm a hundred pounds soaking wet, with a hoodie on.

Today, without one, I probably looked like a period French girl: I was wearing one of those goofy little striped shirts you see in World War II movies. It covered my skin, but the fabric was cotton, and way too thin. I tried complaining about the cold once, and they just pointed to the eighty percent humidity outside and said, "If you're cold in this, you need to eat more steak."

Well, I'm not going to eat a steak. I'm a pescatarian, dammit.

I went inside and stripped the thing off. A hot shower for me, then bed. I'd clean the kitchen in the morning. The shower tiles swam up and down like tetris blocks while I convinced myself I could get it done before lunch tomorrow. They're not an early-rising family, but neither am I a morning person: but if I did it now I’d run into ‘dad’ and the gremlins, so I'd just do it in the morning.

I settled in to read after my shower, once the hot water heater had recovered from the beating it took from my current "mom." I put that word in quotes for a reason.

I’m a foster child—sort of. I'm seventeen and in the system. I don’t think of myself as a child, and I truly hate it when people tell me to call them "mom." But "mom" liked her long, long hot showers, so I had to wait.

After my turn, I took out my tablet and pulled up today’s mystery read. For those of you who are uninitiated, it’s basically the "I’m Feeling Lucky" button of books. Every night, I click it, read something horrible, and then go to bed.

Today's entry was campy romance—the Clocktower Gardener. Pretty cover—climbing roses, and all four of the main cast for the love quadrangle on the front cover, all four rugged or stunning, as appropriate, and wearing mostly foreground roses. I flicked through the intro paragraphs with my fingers. Mrs. Huxley had a lot to say about objectification and sexualization; she would just love this. Maybe I’d print it off and shove it under her door while she was asleep. We got "pert," "nymph," "quivering," “yearned,” and "limpid" all in the first paragraph. This author was a keeper. I was going to finish the whole thing.

Snuffling at the door.

I was not going to sleep tonight, was I?

I glanced at the box spring and sighed. Sober me couldn’t ignore the stray dog at the door.

I’m a bleeding heart.

"Don't be cute, don't be cute, don't be cute," I chanted like a mantra under my breath.

I grabbed a handful of dog chow for bribery. Just for safety's sake, I also grabbed the pepper spray and the "reachy-grabby-stick thing" that "mom" used to clean under the sofa.

I’m soft, not an idiot.

It wasn’t cute.

It was also not a dog.

Pigs in America are usually one of two deeply differentiated extremes: gigantic meat pigs, or the tiny, half-melted-looking toy pigs which can still weigh a hundred pounds or more. This was firmly item B on that list.

It was hideous.

I fell in love immediately.

"I can’t keep you," I told it sternly.

It looked at me through squinting eyes. I was certain it couldn’t see me well, but it appeared to confirm to its satisfaction that I was unlikely to eat it.

Little did he know.

I left the stick-grabby thing. Pigs are strong; it would just break.

I pocketed the spray, too. He could just kill me, and I couldn't stop him.

But.

If I fed him, he wouldn't want to.

"You’re sleeping in the hedges," I told the pig. "And in the morning, you can hoof it on up the road, and I won’t tell anyone."

I used to love the bushes. The house was on one of those goofy lots where four people tried to make a square but got the angles wrong. A utility easement came along and made the problem worse, until they finally just decided to hide the whole mess under a landscaping feature.

Tom, the neighbor, set up sprinklers that drained through there about a year ago. Despite my fervent prayers, he had yet to die and/or leave his garden shed unlocked, so I lost my retreat from "mom" to his lawn care.

A pig would be so happy in it, though.

Maybe.

"Are you a dirty piggy?" I ask, remembering an obscure bit of internet pig lore. "You’re a dirty piggy. You’re a dirty piggy who goes squeeing for half an hour," I tell him.

Pigs have very long orgasms.

I felt oddly happy about remembering that.

I poured out a pile of kibble but kept one piece for myself.

The pig watched me.

I mimed eating the piece in my hand, then made it disappear.

It let out a thoughtful oink. I wickered back at it like a friendly horse—I’m a soprano; I can't do a proper pig oink. They're all deeply basso.

I pulled the kibble from behind its ear and showed it to the piggy. It sat down in amazement.

Creepy.

"That's too smart, piggy," I said, finally feeding it a piece. "Too smart. It's like you have object permanence or something."

He nudged my hand and licked me, then made a beeline for the pile, stepping squarely on my toe.

I didn't even remember my Converse in my rush to the door. Pepper spray, yes. Converse, no.

They wouldn't have saved me.

Pigs walk on four knives. Per foot. You didn't know that, did you?

But iIt's literally true.

Well. It hurts.

I screamed. I didn’t mean to; I was even embarrassed. I heard it echo off the neighbors' houses, amplified by the strange geology of our neighborhood at the edge of the high-power lines.

Ow. Right. My alibi: I'm asleep and have been for hours.

I took a deep breath and sprinted for my window. I keep it lubricated and unlocked.

(Except when everybody's away from home, obviously. I'm not a psychopath.)

When the hall light fell on me, I was actually asleep. This may confuse you.

So: when I was twelve, I found an ancient forum about polyphasic sleep. My "mom" at the time was so glad to find it wasn't porn that she didn't tell me not to try it. So I did. After three weeks of less than four hours of sleep a day, I became able to hit REM sleep almost instantly upon my head contacting the pillow.

It also works during driving school, math, history, and physics class.