The Year I Became Isabella Anders

  "Yeah, maybe." His forehead creases as he pulls open the door. "Are you driving with him? Or are you meeting him there?"

  "He said I could ride with him . . . why?"

  He shrugs as he holds the door open for me. "Just wondering if it's a date or not." He joins me in the hallway, letting the door go. "Sounds like a date to me, if he's picking you up." He grows quiet as he takes out his phone, glances at the screen, and chews on his bottom lip. "I have to go. I'll see you later, okay?" With that, he strides off down the hallway.

  I watch him until he disappears around the corner, and then I head for my locker, my mind swimming in a sea of confusion, where nothing makes sense, not even myself, which is sadly becoming my motto in life.

  I worked so hard to reinvent myself while I was on the trip, but I'm starting to realize the makeover was solely an outside thing. While I appear to be put together on the outside, I'm still as confused and lost as I was when I left.

  Maybe even more.

  I SPEND THE rest of the day stressing over how upset Kai looked when he left, but the second I walk into my house, my worries for Kai fly right out the window.

  My dad is sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking to Lynn about something while he reads over a piece of paper.

  "Dad, you're home," I breathe in relief, wanting to get on my knees and kiss the ground. Yes! I no longer have to do chores for Lynn and Hannah.

  But when he looks at me, my elation fizzles like flat soda. "We need to have a talk."

  "What do you mean by we?" I ask. "You and me, or . . . ?" I glance at Lynn.

  She twists in her chair and smiles sweetly. "Your father, me, and you are all going to talk." She pulls out a chair and pats the seat.

  I hesitantly walk over to the table, dropping my bag on the floor before I take a seat in the chair farthest away from Lynn.

  Her eyelids lower to slits, but she collects herself and reaches for the sugar dish in the middle of the table. "Your father and I are very worried about you, Isa." She scoops up a spoonful of sugar and adds it to her coffee. "Ever since you went on that trip, you've been acting like a completely different person."

  "You wanted me to go on that trip," I calmly remind her.

  A shrill laugh escapes her lips. "I never agreed that you could go on that trip. I was always under the impression that you were going to spend the summer at your grandmother's, getting a job and working so we would no longer have to spend so much money on you all the time."

  My fingers curl inward as I ball my hands into fists. "I pay for most of my stuff." Which is the truth. Most of my pencils, sketchbooks, and clothes have come from money I've made doing part-time jobs here and there and from the cash my grandpa gave me.

  "Stop lying." She stirs her coffee, sitting in the chair with perfect posture, trying to appear like the calm, picture-perfect woman she's not. "You've been doing too much of that lately."

  "I haven't lied about anything," I say, fighting to keep my temper under control.

  She wipes the spoon clean on the brim of the cup before setting it down on the table. "Maybe lying isn't the right word. But you've been keeping secrets from us."

  I sort through my thoughts, trying to figure out which secret she's referring to.

  "I'm talking about all the snooping you've been doing," she says. "For the last couple of weeks, you've torn this house apart every time your father and I aren't around."

  I glance at the paper my dad was looking at when I walked in. It looks like a receipt from a hotel in Virginia, but it doesn't make any sense, since he was supposed to be in Florida. "How do you know I was looking for something?"

  My dad must notice I'm looking, because he folds up the paper and stuffs it into his briefcase.

  "I have my ways of finding out what you've been up to." Lynn's icy gaze warns me a storm is coming for me, and I'm not going to be able to get out of its path. "But that doesn't really matter. All that matters is that you found what you were looking for."

  "I didn't find it." I feel like I'm walking into a trap. "Hannah left it on my bed, but I think you already know that, don't you?"

  "Isabella, stop lying!" My dad suddenly explodes, slamming his fist onto the table.

  I jump, my heart slamming against my chest. "Dad, I--"

  "Don't you dare make excuses!" He cuts me off, stabbing a trembling finger in my direction. "You had no right to look for your birth certificate. No right at all."

  "I do too have a right." I suck back the tears, refusing to cry in front of them. "It's my birth certificate. And when I turn eighteen in a few months, you would have had to give it to me anyway."

  His face reddens with anger. "You don't even know what you're getting into. Just because you found out about her," he flinches, casting a panicked glance in Lynn's direction, "you think you understand everything."

  "What I understand is that I was lied to for years. That the people I always thought were my family aren't. That this place," I flail my hand around at the kitchen, "wasn't always my home. That all these damn years I spent here, feeling like a fucking outcast, could've been avoided if you would've just let Grandma raise me, instead of bringing me into a family who hates me!" I'm breathing ravenously by the time I'm finished, but it feels so good to get it out.

  The vein in my dad's forehead bulges as he glides his hand across the table and clutches my hand. "You will never talk to me that way again. Do you understand? I won't let you turn into your mother. I won't let you turn into that vile woman who ruined my life."

  His fingers dig so violently into my hand I'm pretty sure I'm going to have bruises. "From now on, you will do everything Lynn and I tell you." He lets me go and pushes back from the table. "And as far as I'm concerned, she is your mother." He looks at Lynn before storming out of the kitchen.

  "What did you think was going to happen?" Lynn says as I work to get oxygen into my lungs. "That he was going to tell you he was sorry and that deep down he really loved your mother?" She rolls her eyes at me when I say nothing.

  "Your mother was a terrible person who did terrible things to people, and we've been trying to make it so you didn't end up like her." She scoots back from the table, looking at me with hatred as she grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. "But from what I can see, you're going to end up just like her. Rotting in a grave that no one visits." She drags me with her as she heads for the doorway. "Now, you're going to come with me and paint over that god-awful painting you put up on that wall."

  I can barely breathe. Barely think. Barely make sense of what she said.

  My mom's a bad person?

  She did terrible things?

  I'm going to end up just like her?

  She's dead?

  I have to get out of here.

  "No!" I shout, wrenching my hand from her hold. "I'm not going to paint that fucking wall. It's my wall. And I like the painting."

  She doesn't seem shocked by my outburst. If anything, she seems pleased, like she's gotten everything she's wanted. "Just like your mother," she says.

  I shove her, not enough to do much, but it still shocks her. Before she can say anything, I run out of the kitchen and down the driveway. I think about running to town or texting Grandma Stephy or Indigo to come get me, but before I can get that far, Kai appears at the corner of the sidewalk.

  He starts to turn away the moment he spots me, but then he notices the tears in my eyes and rushes for me. "What's wrong?"

  I shake my head. "I can't . . ." I suck in a huge breath of air. "I can't . . ." I start to sob hysterically and my legs buckle. "My mom's dead."

  Kai catches me before I hit the ground and pulls me against his chest. I pull back, feeling moronic for having a meltdown in front of him, but he only presses me closer and lets me cry into his shirt.

  "It's going to be okay," he says, smoothing his hand up and down my back. "I promise."

  I wish he was right. I wish this was all a bad dream or something that I could eventually get over. Maybe one day
I will. Maybe one day it won't hurt so badly. But right now, the pain is suffocating way more than the shell I used to live in, and I'm unsure how to make it go away or if it'll ever go away completely.

  So I do the only thing I can do for now. I cry as hard as I can, letting it all out, grateful Kai is there to keep me from falling down completely.

  KAI

  I DON'T KNOW what to do to help her. All I know is that I wish I could take her pain away.

  I've always had a soft spot for Isa ever since seventh grade, way before her girly makeover. But I fucked that friendship up by being a pussy and not standing up to my friends. I'm not like that anymore, though, haven't been for a while.

  Over the last year, I've tried to become friends with Isa again, but every time I opened my mouth, she'd get pissed off. She's the only girl that's ever called me out on my bullshit, who's cared enough about me to ask if I'm okay, and one of the few girls who hasn't tried to use me to get to Kyler. And it pisses me off that he's trying to date her now. He didn't even give her the time of day until a few weeks ago, and he still has no clue what makes Isa so amazingly different from everyone else.

  God, what I'd give to kiss her again, like I did in the driveway; only this time, we'd both be sober. I almost did it while we were in the tree, but I chickened out, because she hesitated. I know what that hesitation means. It means she didn't want to kiss me, and more than likely, she was probably thinking of Kyler.

  Fucking story of my life.

  "Kai, I think my mom's dead," Isa whispers.

  Her face is still pressed to my chest, and it hurts like a bitch, because I'm pretty sure T broke a rib when he punched me earlier today. The punch was just the start of things if I can't come up with the money I owe him. Or that Bradon owes him anyway. Somehow, I got caught up in this fucking mess, because I stupidly vouched for Bradon, even though I knew I shouldn't. And now I'm the one T's coming after.

  "Why do you think she's dead?" My fingers travel up and down Isa's back and my touch seems to soothe her.

  "Lynn just told me she was." Her voice is hoarse. "She said she was a bad person and that she is rotting in her grave now."

  I shake my head. Fucking Lynn. That woman is a bitch, just like her Mini Me Clone daughter. "Isa, you know Lynn could be lying to you? She's not a reliable source."

  "Yeah, I know." She sniffles into my shirt. "But what if she's not lying? What if she's telling the truth?"

  I think about the papers I tucked away in my back pocket about an hour ago, the papers Big Doug gave me from all the information he dug up on Isa's mom.

  "But she might not be." I want to tell her what I know, but I'm worried she'll completely break apart if I do it right now. Isa's a strong girl--she's had to be with all the shit she's put up with at home--but this is big. If I wait a few days, she'll be able to handle the news better, and that might give me enough time to get some more information on why her mom's in jail in Virginia. The papers said for murder charges, but didn't give all the details. I'm not buying the story yet. If there's one thing I've learned over the last couple of months, it's never assume things are what they appear to be.

  "Why do your stomach muscles keep tightening?" she asks, pulling back to look at me. Her eyes are swollen and she's got the whole raccoon look going on, but she still looks beautiful. "Am I hugging you too hard?"

  I snort a laugh. "Yeah, your tiny little arms are giving me booboos."

  That gets her to smile, but then she instantly frowns as her eyes well up again.

  "Hey, I have an idea." I drape my arm over her shoulders and steer her toward the house. "How about we go inside, get you some chocolate, and watch Zombieland." I know she won't refuse, because sugar and zombies are the key to her heart.

  "Thanks, Kai, you're such a good friend," she says, wiping her eyes with her sleeves. "Seriously, I don't know what I'd do without you."

  My lip twitches at the friend reference, but I remind myself that it's for the best, at least until I get this shit with T sorted out, because the last thing I want to do is drag her into that mess. After that, though, all bets are off. That kiss in the tree will happen, but when she's ready.

  She may think she likes Kyler, that he's the one for her, but she's wrong. Kyler doesn't get her like I do, doesn't know how to make her laugh, doesn't know how to talk comic book and superhero crazy talk with her like I do.

  I just hope one day she realizes that.

  The Year of Falling in Love (Isabella Anders, #2)

  JESSICA SORENSEN IS a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author who lives in the snowy mountains of Wyoming. When she's not writing, she spends her time reading and hanging out with her family.

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  ISABELLA ANDERS SERIES: The Year I Became Isabella Anders Thank you for reading.

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  The Year of Falling In Love (Coming Soon)

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