“See these, Luna?” My mom sits down beside me on the sofa and starts flipping through the photo album, scrutinizing each page. “Look at how she’s dressed. Look at the people she’s hanging out with. Don’t they look horrible? Doesn’t she look miserable?”

I nod, but I don’t agree at all. If you ask me, Aunt Ashlynn looks pretty damn happy in most of the photos, smiling and laughing with people I assume are her friends. I wonder if she’s still happy now or happier even.

“What happened to her?” I stare at a photo of her on the beach with a group of friends. She’s wearing cutoffs and a bikini top, her head thrown back in laughter. She looks so happy, so carefree, like she’s saying to hell with her parents and their rules.

My mom’s jaw ticks as she slams the album shut. “How would I know? I haven’t spoken to her for almost fourteen years.”

“Don’t you ever miss her, though?” I ask. “And wonder where she is? If she’s okay?”

“No one misses Ashlynn. No one misses those who choose to go against their family’s values.” She rises to her feet then shoves the album back onto the shelf beside the mantle. “I’m going to go cook dinner. Go work on your homework until it’s time to set the table.”

“But I already did my homework.”

“Well, do extra credit, then,” she snaps then leaves the room.

I steal the album off the shelf, take it to my room, and spend the rest of the night pretending to do my homework while I flip through the album some more. I’ve never had a chance to look at it alone. Usually, it’s a punishment tool for my mom. Being by myself with plenty of time to absorb each moment captured in the photos, I get a sense of peace looking through it.

Right before I put the album back on the shelf, I remove the photo of my aunt Ashlynn at the beach and hide it under my mattress. As I fall asleep, I vow to myself that one day I’ll get over my fear of my parents and live my life the way that I want to. Be as happy as Aunt Ashlynn was in the photos.

The next day, I attend church with my family then return home and help my dad clean out the garage. We don’t talk. My father and I rarely do. I used to think it was because he was a man of few words, but when he’s around other adults, he can be quite chatty.

The lengthy, dragged-out week gives me plenty of time to overanalyze what’s going to happen with Grey when school starts up again. What is he going to say to me about what happened? Maybe I’ll luck out, and he won’t say anything at all.

By the time Monday rolls around, I’m forced to face the inevitable. I have to go to school and face Grey, and I’ll be wearing an outfit pre-selected by my mom when I do.

When the sun comes up, she bursts into my room and picks out a pair of tan slacks two sizes too big for me along with a cardigan that buttons up to the neck. She even searches my bag to make sure I’m not trying to sneak any clothes with me.

“Remember to come straight home after school,” my mom reminds me as I grab the car keys from the wall hook. “And I don’t want you leave the campus until school gets out, even for lunch. I’ll be checking your phone to make sure you don’t. And I’ve called the principal, as well, to let him know you’re not allowed off campus.”

I grind my teeth until my jaw aches.

“You did this to yourself.” She stops stirring the pot to yank on my sleeves and unroll them. “I don’t even want to know how you got ahold of clothes like that, but I’m guessing it’s from those friends of yours.”

She often puts the blame on my friends whenever I do something wrong, as if I’ve fallen in with the wrong crowd. But I’ve been friends with the same people since elementary school, and she knows this.

“It wasn’t my friends.” I get a granola bar and a bottle of juice to take with me, so I don’t have to stick around and eat breakfast with her. “I bought those clothes myself.”

“That makes it worse.” She crosses her arms and stares me down. “That means you made bad choices on your own, that you’re the bad person. You can’t blame that on anyone else.”

“I don’t since I’m my own person,” I mutter quietly enough that she can’t hear me.

“What did you say?” she asks as she reaches into the pocket of her apron.

“I said I’m going to be late for school if I don’t get going.”

“Fine.” She withdraws her hand from her pocket, and her fingers are enclosed around my phone. “I’m only giving you this back so we can keep an eye on you. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t let you have it.”

“Thanks.” I snatch the phone from her and make an escape for the door.

“Remember who you are, Luna!” she shouts.

She’s said the same thing to me every day for the last five years. I want to tell her that I don’t know who I am, but I’m definitely not the daughter she wants. Like always, though, I remain silent and nod before I close the front door.

Once I climb into the car, I text Wynter, one of my best friends on the planet, has been since second grade. We were the first two members of our group of five friends. It all started with us, a bottle of nail polish, and Wynter coaxing me into rebelling for the day. Although, it didn’t take that much effort on her part.

“We can use fingernail polish remover before you go home,” she said as she painted my nails a bright pink shade as we sat under the slide at our school playground.

I was awestruck by the color. It was the first time I’d ever felt pretty in my life. “This is fun. And it looks so pretty. Like princess-worthy pretty.”

“It’s totally princess worthy,” she said with a huge grin on her face.

I smiled, but then my happiness faltered. “I just wish my clothes matched.”

“One day they will,” she promised me.

And she made good on that promise the day I turned seventeen, and she bought me a new wardrobe, which now is nothing but ashes.

Me: Can u bring me some clothes please?

Wynter: Oh, my God! She gave u your phone back!

Me: Yep. But only so she could keep track of me.

Wynter: She’s so crazy. And FYI, I was already planning on bringing u some clothes.

Me: Ur the best. I feel so bad that u gave me all those nice clothes and now they’re gone. It was such a waste.

Wynter: It’s not your fault your parents are cray-cray.

Me: I know, but I wish they weren’t. Their punishments aren’t even in the realms of normalcy.

Wynter: Ur telling me. Remember that one time they made you write I Will Not Color On My Walls a thousand times?

Me: That one was pretty bad . . . I hated that u were there and had to see me do it.

Wynter: I felt so bad for you. And it never made any sense to me. I mean, they made you write it on the wall and then paint over it. I was like, seriously, wth? Why would u have her write on the wall about not writing on the wall?

Me: I never understood it, either. But I still don’t think it’s as bad as burning an entire wardrobe. And now she’s got that stupid tracking app on my phone.

Wynter: Ari’s on that. Give him a few days, and I’m sure he’ll have some kind of way that we can get around it.

I smile for the first time in three days.

Ari is one of my close friends, has been since sixth grade when his family first moved to Ridgefield. Since his family didn’t grow up here, a lot of people treated him as an outsider. My friends and I, being outsiders ourselves, took him in and showed him the inner workings of our middle school.

I actually have four people I consider my best friends. Together, we make up a group of five very different people who somehow work together. Ari is our computer genius who’s really into school and getting good grades. Whenever we have a computer crisis, he’s there to hack into whatever we need him to do. He once even changed Wynter’s math grade from a D to a C so she’d pass Algebra.