“Oh wait!” Hannah exclaims with a laugh. “I do remember you hanging out once or twice with that freak who always wears mismatched shoes. But I think she’s into girls . . .” She taps her finger against her lip. “Wait, is she your girlfriend?”

I can’t control it any longer. I swallow the chicken and drop the fork. “Leave Lana out of this. She’s a nice person, unlike you.” I drop my voice and utter the nickname I know she hates, “Super Bitch.”

“Mom!” Hannah whines, slamming her palm onto the table and sending the salt and pepper shakers toppling over, along with my mother’s wine. “Isa called me a bitch.”

My father and mother stare at the mess on the crisp linen tablecloth then my mother glares at me.

“Isabella, you can go to your room now,” she says as she scoots back from the table.

“But I didn’t do anything.” I try not to sound whiney, because it’ll only piss her off more. “Well, not anything that she didn’t do.”

“And you don’t get any dessert,” she says, ignoring my protests as she strides to the kitchen door.

“I’m really sorry,” I tell her as calmly as I can, “but she did call me a loser.”

“You’re such a liar.” Hannah flips her blonde hair off her shoulder and flashes me a smirk when no one’s looking.

My mother looks at my father in that way that says you take care of her then she slams her palm against the door and whisks out of the room.

“Isabella, your mother said to go to your room, so go to your room.” He speaks robotically, as if he rehearsed the words. He avoids eye contact with me, staring at his plate. “And no dessert.”

He rarely looks at me, and I haven’t ever figured out why. I asked him about it once, but he pretended like he didn’t hear me and hurried out of the room, leaving me to draw my own conclusions. My very overactive imagination has conjured up quite a few borderline crazy ideas, ranging from him thinking I look like a hideous beast, to him fearing I secretly possess the superpower to change anyone who makes eye contact with me into a human corpse.

Knowing there’s no way my father’s going to cave on my punishment—since we’ve been in this same situation at least a hundred times—I stand up. “Okay.”

“And apologize to your sister,” he adds, still staring at his chicken like it’s the most fascinating thing in the world.

Only when I turn my back to Hannah do I mutter, “Sorry.” Otherwise, her smirk will drive me bat shit crazy.

As I’m walking out of the room, my mother returns with a towel to clean the mess up, along with a platter of red velvet cupcakes.

“Why are you still here?” she asks me as she sets the platter down at the end of the table. “I told you to go to your room.”

With a heavy sigh, I bid farewell to the cupcakes and leave the dining room, trying to convince myself they probably taste like burnt cardboard, even though my mother’s won ribbons for her fan-freakin’-tastic cupcakes.

An hour later, I’m sprawled across my bed surrounded by homework, my sketchbook, and a few of my favorite novels. My Chemical Romance is playing from the stereo, and my balcony doors are open, letting a warm May breeze blow inside. I’m still trying to convince myself that my parents don’t hate me. That all their anger and bitterness toward me is simply because they don’t understand me. That their partialness to my sister has nothing to do with me. But it’s hard when my dad won’t even look at me, and every time my mother speaks to me, it’s either to ground me or to tell me what a disappointment I am.

I lie in bed lost in my thoughts until my belly grumbles. God, I wish I could at least have just a taste of those red velvet cupcakes. But if I’m caught sneaking into the kitchen, my butt will be grounded. It might be worth it, because seriously, my body’s about to have a lack-of-sugar conniption fit.

Ugh!

I roll off my bed and do an awesome zombie impression as I crawl across my floor toward my dresser. “Must . . . get . . . sugar . . .”

When I reach the dresser, I hoist myself to my feet and raid the top drawer for some old Halloween candy I stashed there months ago. I find a half eaten bag of jellybeans and a half eaten chocolate bar that doesn’t have a wrapper, and I devour both of them.

Turns out the chocolate bar has the gross addition of almonds. I instantly dry heave, realizing why the candy bar was only half eaten to begin with.

“Gross!” I search for a trashcan to spit it out, but I have no clue where mine ended up, so I trip out onto the balcony and spit out the mouthful of candy over the edge.

It takes me about two seconds to realize what a stupid idea this was for three different reasons:

1. My sister is hanging out in the driveway, which is right below my window.

2. The chocolate I just spit out has landed on her head.

3. She’s talking to our neighbor, Kyler Meyers.

Kyler Meyers. What can I say about him other than he’s gorgeous, popular, the star quarterback, and smart. Like, he takes AP classes and has a 4.0 GPA kind of smart. I’m also in love with him, have been since I was eight years old and he stopped Hannah’s ring of minions from picking on me during recess.

“Hey, just leave her alone,” he said when he stumbled across us at the playground.

They had me trapped on the top of the slide and were threatening to push me down it. It wouldn’t have been a big deal except there was a giant mud puddle at the bottom. Somehow, Hannah had managed to scare all the rest of the kids away, so no one was around to witness what was about to go down. Even the recess monitor was MIA.

Hannah had crossed her arms and raised her brows at Kyler. “Why’re you sticking up for her, Kyler? She’s a loser.” She stepped toward him and batted her eyelashes. “How about you just go back to playing football with your friends and leave us alone.”

Kyler glanced at me then around the empty playground. For a moment, I thought he was going to bail, but then he stepped around Hannah and her friends and offered me his hand. “Come on, Isa.”

I took his hand and he helped me to my feet. When they’d chased me up here, I’d fallen down and scraped up my knees, but I hardly felt the pain as he held my hand and guided me off the playground.

He only let go of my hand when we were a safe distance away from them. “Are you okay?”

Unable to find my voice, I nodded.

“You should try to stay away from her,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Hannah and her crew, who had targeted a new victim.

“Okay.” I managed to get one word out and was super proud of that.

He offered me a smile before heading back to the field to play football with his friends, oblivious to how much his good deed meant to me. It was the first time someone had stuck up for me. Ever. And I’ve been in love with him ever since.

I know my crush won’t ever go anywhere, but I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. Deep down, I get that I’m not really in love with Kyler, especially since sometimes he does things that make me hate him. But in love sounds so much less porn star-ish than in lust.

The playground isn’t the only time he’s done something nice for me, though. There’s so much more to my in lust crush than that.

When I was in eighth grade, he gave me a rose on Valentine’s Day.

“Hey, Isa, I have something for you,” he said as he jogged across the middle school parking lot toward me.

I paused when he said my nickname and gaped at him spastically with half a brownie in my mouth. He was a year older than I was, and I couldn’t figure out why he was talking to me. Not only was I Hannah’s loser younger sister, but I was in middle school and he was in high school.

“Happy Valentine’s Day.” He stuck out his hand, and his fingers were wrapped around the stem of a red rose.

I cautiously glanced from the rose to him then gulped the brownie down. “Is this a trick?”