"Talk about being able to dish it out but not take it," I said. "Don't go whining to Mommy, you little brat."

"That's enough, Lucy!" said Mara. "When I tell your father that--"

"Oh, sure, bring my father into this." I made my voice high-pitched and whiny. "Oh, Doug!

Doug, darling. Come home quickly. You'll never believe what Lucy's done this time. Let me get

you the phone, Mara. Let me get the phone so you can tell him all about his terrible daughter."

This was so typical. I knew she'd never tell him the Princesses had called me selfish and

unhelpful. She'd make it sound like they'd been all, Hey, Lucy, how was your day? and I'd

responded, None of your business, you selfish brats.

"I think your father has a right to know how his daughter behaves in his absence," Mara said. Her voice was threatening.

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Talk about unfair. I could feel myself starting to cry. I blinked rapidly, trying to hold back the

tears. "How about how they behave in his absence?" I pointed across the table.

"The way the girls behave is between them and me," said Mara. "I'll discipline them."

"Oh, please," I said. "If you look up discipline in the dictionary, it doesn't say, 'Take shopping for new clothes.'"

Mara threw her napkin down on the table. "I will not be spoken to like that in my house."

"Oh, so now it's your house." There was nothing I could do to stop the tears from running down

my cheeks. I pushed my chair back and stood up. "I knew all that stuff about it's being 'our'

house was a load of crap."

"How dare you!" hissed Mara, standing up, too. "You go to your room right this minute."

"You're not sending me to my room," I said, half sobbing and half yelling. "I'm choosing to go there because it's as far away from you as I can get!"

When I got to the basement I tried to slam the door shut, but since it opened out, that wasn't

really possible. I had to settle for pulling it closed behind me as hard as I could. I paced around

the room, seething. I had never hated anyone as much as I hated Mara. I wished I was the kind of

person who could commit a murder and make it look like an accident. I wished I was the kind of

person who could commit a murder and not make it

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look like an accident. What did I care if I went to jail? Could life in prison really be that much

worse than life with my stepmother?

Finally I collapsed on my bed and tried to calm myself by letting my eyes get lost in Matisse's

fluid shapes and colors. It didn't work, though. I just lay there, hating Mara and my stepsisters,

until suddenly it occurred to me that I didn't even know the name of my dad's hotel in San

Francisco. There was no way for me to call him unless I first went to Mara and got the number. It

scared me. What if I wanted to talk to him and she wouldn't let me? And even if I could get to

him, what if he wouldn't help me?

I put on my headphones and let whitechocolatespaceegg blast my thoughts out of my brain.

Sometime later, fully dressed and with the lights still on, I must have fallen asleep.

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Chapter Fourteen

I woke up before my alarm went off and lay in my bed for a while, watching the minutes

advance from forty-eight to fifty-five. Then I went upstairs to get some orange juice. On the

kitchen table was a note in Mara's spindly handwriting.

lucy, your father and I expect you home right after school.

I stood there, reading and rereading the note, like it was in some foreign language in which I

wasn't yet fluent.

At eight o'clock, the game that would determine whether or not we made it to the state

championship was going to start, and approximately two hours later, Connor and everyone else I

knew at Glen Lake would be celebrating at Darren Smith's house. Darren's party was going to be

huge. No, not huge. Gigantic. Mind blowing.

Earth shattering.

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I'd already missed the second-biggest party of the year because of Mara. No way was I missing

the biggest. What were the odds I'd come home from school, have a civilized conversation with

my dad and Mara about last night's fight, and then be allowed to go to Darren's party? My

parting shot at Mara floated before my eyes, as if the fight had been close-captioned for the

memory impaired, it's as far away from you as I can get!

No one but me was up yet. I went back downstairs, took a three-minute shower, got dressed,

"forgot" my cell phone on my bed and threw a mind-blowing, party-worthy outfit into my bag

before slipping out the back door. Rather than risk being cornered by Mara's Mercedes at the bus

stop, I walked the mile and a half to Glen Lake, arriving at school almost an hour early.

All morning I sat in my classes feeling like a fugitive. Twice someone knocked on the classroom

door, once in English and once in chemistry, and handed a note to the teacher. Each time I

expected her to look up, catch my eye, and read out loud from the slip of paper, Lucy Norton,

you are grounded for the rest of your life. Pack up your things; the police are waiting for you in

the principal's office. It took me until lunch to realize how stupid I was being. No one was

coming to get me, certainly not before three-thirty, when they could reasonably start expecting

me home. Once I stopped seeing myself as an escaped convict, the day stretching out before the

eight o'clock basketball game started to feel interminable.

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What was I going to do between two-fifty, when my last class was over, and game time?

"Hey, what are you doing after school?" I asked Madison.

"Doctor's appointment," she said, breaking off a piece of my chocolate-chip cookie and popping

it in her mouth.

Jessica wasn't allowed to go to the game unless she went straight home from school and worked

on a history paper. In the space of ten minutes, I went from having two viable after-school

options to having none. Though maybe hanging out at Jessica's or Madison's wouldn't have been

such a good idea anyway; that was the first place Mara would look for me once it became clear

I'd disobeyed her.

When last period ended, I stayed at my easel while everyone else packed up. Since I didn't have

anyplace else to go, I figured I might as well try putting the time to good use. The class slowly

filed out, leaving me alone with my sketches. The problem was I still didn't really understand

what Ms. Daniels wanted from us. Now I stood facing yet another blank sheet of paper and

chewing on my eraser, trying to decide if it was morally suspect to open other people's drawers

and steal their ideas. When the door to the studio opened, I looked up. Maybe it was Connor; I'd

called his cell from the pay phone by the gym to see if he wanted to go for a drive before the

game. By "go for a drive," I meant "make out," the only

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activity in the universe that could possibly have gotten my mind off my deeply troubled home

life.

It wasn't Connor, it was Andrea, this totally annoying girl who's in Ms. Daniels's figure-drawing

class. When no one's in the studio, she likes to come in here and talk on her cell. She looked at

me, decided I was no one, and reached into her bag. Then she went over to the sofa, threw