Chapter 1

Renascence

Noun:

The revival of something that has been dormant

I was supposed to be a good girl.

But good girls don’t hang around by the dumpsters smoking cigarettes. Good girls don’t take sleeping pills to sleep the entire weekend away. Good girls don’t fail classes in their senior year of high school.

And yet here I was, sitting awkwardly like a pathetic loser in a winter session class to make up the credits that I would need to graduate. If you had told me a year ago that I would be here like this, fucked up and failing out of high school then I might have laughed at you.

I miss how that feels, too. I miss how it feels to laugh.

I’d moved here in the summer from Napa, California. I’d grown up in the heart of wine country spending every summer sprawled out underneath the wide expanse of the hot sun, sucking the juices of dark grapes from my fingers. I’d laughed so much back then. I’d laughed until it hurt to laugh any more.

“You’re dribbling again, Gracie,” Emma would tell me. She was my best friend, my partner in crime—but just innocent stuff like stealing cookies before dinner and terrorizing the housekeeper. My twin sister, born only three minutes after me. And for that, I’d always been the big sister, and her, little sister. We’d run through the valley in the blistering heat waves, our long brown hair flowing behind us as we raced between the vines and the trees.

We were already eighteen before our senior year. Our mother had held us back a year when we were little. To enjoy us in our youth a little longer, she had said. But we all knew it was because she couldn’t bear to be alone in that big empty house with dad lost in the vineyard all day. We would turn nineteen in the middle of our senior year in January, a year older but a year behind.

Emma had looked so beautiful that summer, ripe in her youth, finally growing into her delicate features. If you didn’t know us back then you wouldn’t have been able to tell us apart. But those who did know us knew that Emma was kinder, sweeter, more vocal, and of course, just a quarter of an inch shorter, stunted in the womb. She was the first to stick her hand out to strangers, smiling big with her dimples and saying, “Hi, I’m Emma. This is my sister Grace. We’re from Craft Valley Vineyard & Winery.”

“Miss Craft, please come to the front of the room and tell us a little about yourself.”

The memories all faded. The summer, the thickly sweet scent of grapes, the blue open sky. And Emma.

I blinked. I was here now, shivering in a classroom in Nebraska, shaking because Emma was not here to introduce me. Emma would never be here.

The teacher, a woman that looked neither stern nor kind was raising her eyebrows higher with each passing second. I stumbled out of my seat and walked quietly to the front of the classroom.

This wasn’t right. I was the shy one. I was the quiet one. I couldn’t do this like Emma could.

“Miss Craft?”

I swallowed but my throat was closing.

“My name is Grace. I moved here four months ago from California.” I said it all so quickly that I wondered if anyone had even understood.

“What are your hobbies, Grace?”

“Wine.”

The class snickered. My face flushed red. Stupid, I felt so fucking stupid.

“Please explain to me how wine is a hobby.” The teacher did not look at all amused.

“I grew up on a vineyard,” I said. “I know a lot about wine.”

The teacher surveyed me for a moment, probably wondering if I was trying to trick her and make a fool of her, but she seemed to believe me because a moment later she smiled.

“That’s great, Grace. Maybe you can do your speech on that at the end of the winter session. I’m sure we would all like to know the educational aspects of wine.”

She looked very no-nonsense after that, staring right into the eyes of all the kids who were still fidgeting and giggling.

“You can go back to your seat. Miranda, please come up. You’re next.”

I was back in my seat before I let myself take another breath. My ears were ringing. This stuff, walking up to the front of a classroom full of people? This wasn’t really my forte. Emma would have breezed through it. She would have made everyone laugh—in the good way: with her, not at her. She would have made friends right there without ever having to shake a hand. People were just drawn to her.

But she wasn’t here now. She would never be here.

I wanted to lay my head down on the desk and sleep, but the teacher just intimidated me too much. She wasn’t mean, I guess, but I didn’t want to cross her.

“Wow Mrs. White, how many months along are you?”

Miranda was up there now, sucking up to teacher like the little bloodsucking leech that she was. She had braided her black hair like a schoolgirl, plaid skirt and knee-high socks to match even though the temperature was practically in the negatives outside. She was the girl that had pushed a burning cigarette into my backpack on the first day of school back in September. I’d been stuck with her the first semester of Creative Writing and now here we were again in the winter program, making up for the Fs we both got; her for being genuinely fucking stupid and me for being too depressed to care.

I hoped Mrs. White would see right through her, but she didn’t. No teacher was immune to Miranda Cox’s charm. To me, a person who knew what she was really like, her last name was laughably ironic.

“I’m seven months along. My husband and the faculty didn’t want me taking the winter session, but I’m pregnant, not handicapped. I wanted to teach while I still have the chance.”

I hadn’t even realized Mrs. White was pregnant. I’d always assumed she was just a little on the plumper side. Then again, I’ve only known her for about three and a half months.

Miranda was smiling so hard that I wanted to punch her. She engaged Mrs. White in the stupidest conversation. Boy or girl? What are you going to name him? What hospital? Wow, really? My dad’s one of the leading surgeons there! Oh by the way, did you know that I’m a fucking slut?

I shut my eyes. I wanted the class to be over already. I wanted to get home and get into bed and sleep and sleep until high school was over.

One by one, all the kids that had failed some class in the first semester went up to the front and told us about themselves. I’d been going to school with these kids for an entire semester and I couldn’t even remember half their names, much less their hobbies.

Mrs. White partnered us up into groups of four and had us all talk about our plans for the future. The classroom was buzzing with “college” and “career” and “travel” and other things I just couldn’t see for myself. A year ago I would have said Yale. I would have said it because that was what Emma had always wanted and whatever Emma did, I did too.

I could hear Miranda’s whiny voice in a group a few seats over. She was undoing her braids as she talked. “I applied to NYU so it’s really important that I make up the credits,” she said, running her hands through her hair. The three guys in her group were all commending her for pursuing higher education. She just wants to go there so she doesn’t have to fuck morons like you in middle-of-nowhere Nebraska anymore.

I felt a hand on my arm. It was a girl from my group. Her hair was dyed all pink, and her fingernails were neon green, but her eyes were kind. I used to wonder how she got away with it, but I guess being the Police Chief’s daughter had a lot to do with it. Small towns are so weird.

“What do you want to do after high school?” she asked me.

“I want to go back to Napa Valley and continue the family business.”

It was a lie. There was no more Craft Valley Vineyard & Winery back in California. Dad left us in his grief. Mom brought me here to live with my grandparents. The vineyard and winery had been sold and renamed by the new owners. I couldn’t go back. There was nothing to go back to.

The class ended when Mrs. White rang a stupid little bell on her desk. She told us all to be prepared because the real work would start tomorrow. I wasn’t surprised to find myself groaning with the rest of the class.

Then I was the first one out the door, shrugging my winter coat on as I passed a sea of gray school lockers. The kids behind me were all hanging back, chatting and joking with the people they’ve probably known since kindergarten. I was never going to fit in here.

I turned a corner sharply, eager to get to my car before Miranda could catch up to me and stick another cigarette on me. I was rushing so quickly that I ran right into a brick wall—no, wait—it was a person. A very tall person.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. I was humiliated to find that I’d been knocked to the ground.

A big, slender hand reached out to help me up. Nervously, I took it and got to my feet.

“Are you hurt?” A male voice asked.

My heart was racing from embarrassment, but when I looked at him, it stopped.

For a moment the world stood still. The sun and the grapes and Emma all came rushing back. The car crash in August, the blood in my mouth, sweeter than any grapes. Emma in the passenger seat singing along to the radio. The truck had hit us so suddenly. The music had stopped. The world had stopped. Just like this.

He was staring at me, his brown eyes flecked with green and gold. His voice was low, quiet and deep. His hand was warm. His words were kind.

“Are you hurt?” he asked again.

I pulled my hand from his and bolted.

“Grace? Grace, wake up, honey.”

It was Mom. I could make out her slender form in the darkness. She was wearing the beige silk robe that she had worn every day back home in the valley. I could almost pretend for a moment that nothing had changed.

Grandma switched on the light and stood at the doorway. She looked concerned.

With the light on, I could see the pink walls and the white furniture that was not mine. This was Mom’s old room, from when she had been a child. Grandma hadn’t altered it at all.

“Come on down for dinner, Grace,” Grandma said. She walked away, leaving me in the kiddy pink room with Mom.

Mom rubbed my back soothingly. It used to make me feel better when I was little. There was a mirror propped up against the wall, and when I looked into it, I could see my face. But I could also see Emma’s.

I blinked back the tears. Mom’s back rubs couldn’t make this better.

Mom bent down, kissed my forehead and got up to leave.

“We’re waiting on you for dinner,” she said softly.

When she was gone I forced myself out of bed. I changed into my pajamas just to be rid of the jeans I had worn to school. As I brushed my hair, I thought about the man that had made the world stop.

He was very tall, I remembered, maybe too tall. His chest had been all hard planes and muscle. And his hands had been slender, calloused but soft, like an artist or pianist’s hands. I don’t know why, but I was kind of obsessed with them.

I don’t even know who he was. I’d never seen him before.

But God, his eyes—

“Grace!” It was Grandma, calling up from the foot of the stairs.

The brush fell from my hands. Grandma gave me a look for the pajamas but didn’t say anything. Grandpa said grace (ha ha) and we all bowed our heads, even though Mom hadn’t touched a Bible since she’d left twenty years ago and I’d never known anything about Christ except that Christmas was supposed to be his birthday (but wasn’t) and for some reason, we were the ones who got presents.

Mom had been raised in this strict, religious family. Grandpa beat her when she brought home bad grades. Grandma told her that bell-bottoms were for heathens. They wouldn’t let her go to any of the school dances, even though Mom was pretty enough to have been prom queen. It was no surprise to anybody that Mom moved out after high school. She went to San Francisco and waited tables for three weeks in a restaurant until my dad walked in one day and fell in love with her big blue eyes and tiny waist. Dad waited until her shift was over to take her to go see a movie. Then he took her home to the big open house in the heart of wine country to cook her dinner. And she just never left.

They were married within four months.

Emma used to talk about a love like that, her eyes dreamy as she wondered what it must feel like to find your soulmate. She talked about how we were circles and when we were born, our souls were already cut in two so there was this other part of us, this other person, without whom we would always be incomplete. When she put it that way, I always thought that meant Emma was my soulmate.

“You’re too much, Gracie!” She’d laughed when I told her. Not in a mean way, but in the way that made me feel good because I knew she wasn’t really laughing at me, just laughing because she thought half the things I said were innocent enough to be endearing.

“Close your eyes,” she’d said, and then she’d covered my eyes. “Think really deeply. Find him. What does he look like?”

“Emma—Hell, I don’t know,” I’d said, feeling silly.

“It isn’t a trick question, you goose. Just close your eyes and think. Is he tall?” Emma had always had a thing for tall guys, ever since a tall kid named Jonathan Peters kissed her in the second grade. I don’t know how he was the one to set the standard, but that was the way it had been with my sister. She’d always been childishly poetic like that.

A figure materialized in my head. Suddenly I felt that I knew what Emma meant. “Tall,” I said slowly. “Very tall.”

“Get closer to him. He’s your soulmate after all. What color is his hair?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

I honestly didn’t know what to say, so I thought about my own hair. “Brown, I think.”

In my mind, I was walking towards him. He was first just a dark shadow, looming over me in a great big shadow, but then I could make out his hands, slender, beautiful...

My eyes snapped open. Grandma looked concerned again. Grandpa wasn’t looking at me. Mom had her face in her hands.

“Did I miss something?”

It was silent for a moment before Grandpa spoke.

“You are expected to answer when spoken to.”

My face turned red. “I-I’m sorry.”

“She’s just tired,” Mom said in a helpless tone.

Grandpa looked like he wanted to slap her for interfering. “I will not tolerate any disrespect under my—”

“Now, now,” Grandma spoke up. “Go on upstairs, Grace. Your grandfather might be the one who’s tired tonight.”

Grandpa glared but didn’t say anything. Grandma was the only one who could soften him. I gave her a grateful look and fled from the dining room.

It seemed like I was always running away from something.

That night I laid in the darkness and imagined the tall, mysterious stranger beside me. I imagined his hands on my waist, trailing fingers over my bare midriff, slowly drawing patterns across my skin until the room felt hot as summer. His lips found my neck, the hollow of my collarbone, kissing up along my jaw until he reached my ears.

“Are you hurt?” It was hardly a whisper, hoarse and breathy.

His body was pressed against mine, so big compared to my small frame. His hand found my face, stroking my hair away before his lips were hot on mine, kissing away every last thing that had hurt me. His movements were urgent, unplanned and beautifully right. He belonged here.

“I need you,” I whimpered.

His fingers slid under my pants and rubbed my underwear against the sensitive skin there until I cried out.

“Are you hurt?“ His voice echoed.

Again and again, his hand cupped and squeezed and rubbed my mound.

My toes were curling. Pleasure was building up inside me, deliciously and painfully bringing me closer to the release I needed so desperately. I was aching.

“Are you hurt?“ And this time his voice was fierce, commanding. His fingers slid underneath my panties, found my swollen bud and circled it. I came, starry-eyed and shaking, soaking my panties.

The room was dark when I had finished. It was the first time I’d touched myself in months. The orgasm had been better than the fluttering one I’d had a year ago when some guy, too insignificant to name now, had taken my virginity. My chest ached with the emotions, the loneliness rushing into my bones, and I felt for a moment that they could shatter, turn to dust, leaving my body the nothingness that matched my mind.

Are you hurt?

I don’t know why, but those words stuck with me. Maybe because it was all I’d heard him say. It echoed in my mind over and over again until the sleeping pill’s effects put me into a dreamless sleep.

I woke up shivering the next morning, my breaths coming out in icy mists in the cold pink room.

My grandparents’ house was old, really old, with no central heating to keep the rooms warm at night. It truly felt like the middle of nowhere sometimes. The closest neighbor was over a mile away. There’s still a barn out back with some farm animals, but they’re just chickens and goats and shit. My grandparents have this one horse, Barnum, but he looks almost as old as them and is blind in one eye.

My grandparents are retired now, but they’re still spry. Sometimes I watch them working out on the farm, shoveling manure and feeding chickens, and I feel like I’m watching some old movie, one that I’m not a part of. Even in my own life, I’m an outsider looking in. If a movie was ever made of me, I wouldn’t even be the main character.

I’m that invisible.

I wish Mom would have at least set us up in an apartment in town, maybe someplace with quaint shops I could have explored or lamp-lit streets I could have walked down at night when I couldn’t sleep. But I know that even if Mom won’t ever say it, money’s been tight since Dad left us. Last I heard he was in the French countryside, caught up with French wine like some psycho.

Mom doesn’t resent me for it, but I know Dad left because of me.

“It’s all your fault. Jesus, Grace, you don’t get it, do you?”

That’s what he said to me the night he left. I shouldn’t have tried to stop him, but I did it anyway for Mom’s sake. I remember her sitting on the couch, a dead far-away look in her eyes, drinking a fucking glass of wine, oblivious to the shit-storm around her. She didn’t even flinch when dad slammed the door on his way out.

I don’t think she ever cried after the funeral. It was like she’d cried enough for one lifetime, and her body just couldn’t produce any more tears. Dad left and all she did was wash her wine glass and watch TV until she fell asleep on the couch. It was like nothing had happened, like Dad and Emma had never even existed. I think that’s how she learned to cope with it; she just pretended that she was okay until she could convince herself that she was.

I tried doing that, but it’s hard to erase a twin, especially a person like Emma. It’s like she’s everywhere, looking back at me from every mirror. The way I walked, the way I talked, even the way I breathed was exactly like her. I can’t let her go because letting her go would be letting go of myself. I’ve taken some pretty drastic measures— smoking cigarettes, failing classes, fucking up my life, but it isn’t enough. She had all the qualities of a leader, and I had always been a follower. Without her, I don’t even know how to be myself because I was never myself — I was only following her, becoming her, and now I can’t escape it.

I don’t want to think about Emma anymore. I am so sick and tired of everything. The only distraction I’ve had in months had been from running into a complete stranger in the hallway yesterday. I’d held on to that one interaction, replaying it over and over again because that was the most exciting thing to have happened to me in a long, long time. My mind was in a haze, wrapped up in visions of warm hazel eyes that made my heart squeeze and my stomach drop.

Even now as I was driving the old truck that wouldn’t quite warm up, I was getting red in the face just thinking about him. Who was this guy?

It was snowing today. I was bundled up for the cold, but I wasn’t sure if I’d really done it right. After a lifetime under the California sun, it was something I still hadn’t mastered. How many layers are too much? How many are too little?

The school lot was almost empty, save for two or three cars. They were all parked as close to the front doors as possible. It was supposed to be winter break now for all the good students. The lazy, stupid kids would all be here soon, ready for the winter session to make up the credits to graduate. It was a new program that the school had started, reserved now only for seniors and juniors. It was implemented to help more of us graduate, something about breaking the stigma of small towns producing worthless rejects into society or something. All bullshit to me. They didn’t really care if we graduated. They just wanted better funding from the state.

I parked the truck and fumbled in the glove compartment for my cigarettes. Before I got to this piece of shit high school I had thought that smokers were gross.

I blew a thick ring of smoke. I am gross, but this place is too fucking unbearable without something to take the edge off.

The kids from my class were starting to pile in, shivering as they ran from their warm cars to the school. I waited for Mrs. White’s silver Prius. Two cigarettes later, I started to wonder whether she would even show.

I checked my watch. It was ten past eight. If she wasn’t in there by now my classmates would have left. I checked around me. All their cars were still there.

Maybe Mrs. White’s husband had dropped her off or something?

I spritzed myself with perfume, popped in a breath mint and stumbled out of the truck, sprinting to keep warm. God, please let her excuse me for being tardy. I hated the thought of her stern eyes staring daggers into me.

It was dead silent when I entered the class. No one even looked up.

Well, no one except for Miranda.

“You’re late, loser,” she mouthed. I made a very rude gesture with my hand that would have scandalized my grandmother.