On second thought, perhaps I'd better not start at the very beginning. Lizzy can't make herself think about it, and it would be unfair of me to use my supreme power as both author and narrator to make her.

Lizzy walks away from Owen, closing her mind's eye against the tempest of...memories. It hurts even more that there wasn't a tempest. Just a blink of an eye. A straw that was enough to break a bridge.

After what seems like an eternity, she opens the door to her house. It's silent and empty. Everything's packed into boxes, far too clean. It's too big a house for a little girl all alone, they all agree. Lizzy doesn't. She thinks that it's hypocritical of them to expect her to be an adult one moment, a child the next. She doesn't have the energy to argue, though.

She grabs the box she's looking for and takes it down the street to another house. She doesn't have a key to this one, but she knows the password for the automatic garage-door opener, and she sets down the box so she can type it in. 

"Hello, Lizzy. How was your day?" 

Lizzy shrugs. She doesn't want to sound ungrateful by telling the blunt truth to the person who's given her a place to stay and not be alone. At the same time, though, she's tired of lies.

"Is there any news on Mom?" Lizzy mumbles the words as a sort of formality. There's no news. If there had been any news, Mrs. Redgrave would have called her, even during school hours. 

"Her...condition hasn't changed, but the doctors are hopeful. They have a new solution."


The doctors are always hopeful.


They always have new solutions.


So far...


None.

Of.

Them.

Have. 

Done.

A.

Thing.

Prologue

The scene begins somewhere in rural Indiana, where an abandoned pickup truck sits by the side of a highway. All the tires are flat, including the spare, and all the windows have been shattered. The hood has been torn off, and various auto parts litter the road and surrounding farmland.

A horrible accident? No, even the casual passerby who knew very little about cars would have to think that this destruction is far too thorough to have happened by coincidence. Of course, at this time of night, this far out in the country, there aren't likely to be any passersby, not until tomorrow morning, bright and early.

Before we start on how the truck was uncovered, however, let us begin at the beginning, with how the truck came to be by the side of the road in the first place. The beginning, as it happens, is the story of a seventeen-year-old girl named Lizzy.

*******

Lizzy's headphones are turned up a bit too loud. She knows it's bad for her ears, knows all the statistics of teenage hearing loss, but right now she doesn't care. She needs the music, like it were food or water. She needs it to block out the world around her, just for a while.

She walks down the street, past the place where--

"Lizzy! Hey! Lizzy!"

She turns up the volume another notch or two and quickens her pace. She doesn't want to talk to anyone, not here, not now, especially not after--

A hand on her shoulder. She shakes it off, dislodging one ear bud in the process. She can't pretend to ignore him now.

"What do you want, Owen." Her voice is devoid of emotion, but her icy gaze makes it clear that she would rather be anywhere else, talking to anyone else.

"Look, Lizzy, this is getting ridiculous. I know you're mad about September. I suppose you have every reason to be, but..."

"But what?" Lizzy practically spits out the words. "My house is empty, Owen, and you can thank yourself and that group of dirty, rotten, no-good troublemakers you call your friends."

Owen winces. "I haven't associated with Garth or Paul or TJ in months. What do you want me to do?"

"Go away." Lizzy answered instantly and held up a hand before he could say anything else. "You might not be friends with them any more, but you were friends with them when it mattered."

"Everyone makes mistakes!"

"Yes, and mistakes have consequences. In this case, those consequences were my parents, and I don't want anything like that to every happen again. Now go away."

...

Oops. I seem to have made an error. This is not, in fact, the beginning.