Page 7 of Bones

This is why I have no one.

Why I’m stuck in the Gideons’ care.

It’s none of my business.

I just need to shut?—

“Don’t eat any pretzels,” I blurted out in a quiet rush, trying to protect the girl who tormented me.

Despite all the materialistic items she’d been spoiled with, it was never enough.

Despite the cruelty she faced from her own father, it never stopped her from dolling it out herself.

Animal droppings in my lumpy bed.

Added holes in my already worn clothing.

Stolen schoolwork.

Stoleneverything.

Gossip and rumors she spoke like truth and gospel until our entire school thought the worst about me.

In the six months I’d lived with the Gideon family, Claire had made my life hell. I could’ve let her face the consequences of her actions. Maybe I should’ve.

Because at my bizarre warning, the three of them glared at me like the freak I was.

“Okay, Satan,” Annabelle muttered.

Claire laughed, but it was nasty. “She wishes. Satan is powerful. He runs hell. Auro-rolf”—she made the end of my name sound like she was barfing—“is just a little demon. She’s a no one.”

Her words cut.

And those cuts grew into gaping wounds when she leveled me with a demeaning stare. “She’s nothing. It’s why none of her family wants her and why she had to come torture me.” She put her hand to her chest. “If God gives his hardest trials to his most loyal warriors, then I must be truly special since he sent me a weird-eyed freakazoid.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

Because for all I knew, she was right.

I didn’t know who I was or where I’d come from. I didn’t know whether I had a loving family searching for me.

Or one avoiding me the same way my foster family did.

Even just the basics, like my favorite color or what kind of personality I’d had, were a mystery. Had I always loved to read? Had I always wanted food so spicy, it gave me the hiccups? My guess was no because, according to Pastor Gideon, that was the devil’s fire at work. But what had my favorite food been before? Had I always been quiet, or was Claire’s treatment of me my own damnation because I’d been a mean girl? Was my…imaginationbecause of the accident, or was it something I’d always been cursed with?

I had no idea.

I only knew two things for certain—or as certain as I could be about anything.

My name was Aurora, and my accident happened on my sixteenth birthday.

Everything else from before that day six months prior was gone.

Try as I might, I couldn’t stop Claire’s verbal blows from landing as violently as her fists might’ve. Actually, I was pretty sure it was worse.

Physical bruises healed a lot faster.

Claire reached out to give my blonde braid a vicious tug before the three of them walked inside, giggling as they went.

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