Floral pastels and intricate gold detailing decorated the walls of my old room and everything was exactly as I'd left it.  Well, not exactly, as the someone had obviously been in to clean up and the hole I'd punched in the closet wall had been remedied.  Tidied up like brand new, like nothing was wrong.  

That was the family motto, wasn't it?  As long as you pretended nothing was wrong, then there wouldn't be a problem.  Emotions and communication were forbidden words in this family, and I had learned that from an early age. 

I laughed as I remembered the doctor coming for a visit to stitch up my bloodied hand after the wall punching incident.  I had been chided on not suppressing my anger towards my sister after my boyfriend had cheated on me with her.  I was told by my mother that those 'childish urges and emotions' were only going to distract me from my goals, so in order to make good grades and get into an Ivy League school, I had to pretend like I didn't have feelings.  Great philosophy if you ask me.

My mother would constantly ask me what was wrong with me if I was ever in a bad mood at the dinner table, acting as if I didn't have a right to my own feelings.  How could anything be wrong with me when I had a wonderful life with great friends and a ridiculously wealthy family? 

She didn't know about the bullying, the uncertainty, the desperation to fit in, the countless insecurities that every single teenaged girl kept burrowed underneath her skin that poked through at the most inopportune times, she didn't know about the burning desire to know something, anything, about where I came from, who I really was deep down inside. 

Was my mother beautiful?  Was my father handsome?  What ethnicity was I, really and truly?  I was darker, my skin a light gold in the winter that turned into a toasty caramel in the summer, which was my current skin color because of my time spent in the California sun. 

I would study my features for hours in the mirror and stare at people that would pass me by in stores with my parents, pretending I was shopping but really I was comparing myself to them. 

Sometimes I just looked like a white girl who spent too much time in the tanning bed, but my dark hair and dark eyes gave away that I might have been of Mediterranean descent, and it was simply the not knowing that drove me absolutely insane. 

I had begged countless times over and over again to do the genealogy DNA tests but every single time my parents refused, until the tests became so commonplace that someone could purchase them at their neighborhood Target, without a parent's consent.  

So I did it. 

And nothing else was ever going to be the same because of those actions. 

My mother's knocking at my door stirred anger deep and primal within my chest so intense that it almost shocked me.  Swallowing the hatred I felt towards the woman I called my mother, I unclenched my fists and called for her to come in.  

I had hardly had a chance to organize my things for the next day as my school things had already been sent over and I was still waiting for my final pieces of luggage to arrive. 

Bayfield Academy was a boarding school, but that was far too simple a sentence to sum up the prestigious learning facility that Holden's best friend's family owned.  I would be living at the boarding school Sunday night through Friday afternoon every week, spending the weekend with my lovely family just a few miles down the road and then starting the whole process all over again until the cursed semester was over. 

"Hey hon, Vera is here," my mother said, her outfit completely changed into something resembling what I would have worn to a cocktail party, her hemline almost nonexistent.  

"Great, thanks."

My voice was ice towards her as her blue eyes widened in surprise at my tone towards her.  She didn't ask what was wrong, though.  That would imply that something was, in fact, wrong, and that couldn't happen, not in her household. 

Pushing past my mother in the narrow hallway leading to my room, my stomach clenched by itself at the rampant emotions that threatened to boil over in that tension filled moment, but once I was breathing my own air and her scent wasn't suffocating me I could finally reign in those tumultuous feelings. 

I plastered on an easy grin as Vera Jameson strolled in through my mother's front door, the hinges creaking as the object was nearly two hundred years old, refurbished in order to match the modern feel of the 'house', but it was still ancient. 

"Aah!"

"Aah!"

Our matching squeals bounced off the echoing walls and I bounded down the steps to greet her, watching my step so I didn't slide on the marble floors below me, something that I'd done far too many times as a child. 

"You're really home, I can't believe it!"

"I know, I'm surprised you weren't here with the welcoming committee when I made it."

Our bodies slammed into each other as I finally reached her and the hug would have been well worth a trip and fall on slippery flooring just in order to get to her faster. 

I had missed my best friend, way more than I let on. 

Her feminine perfume tickled my nostrils and I pulled back from her in order to inspect her, noticing a very out of character nose piercing sticking out, the silver a stark contrast against her dark ebony skin. 

Her black hair was smoothed down and curled down her back and I realized the difference in her style even though it had only been a year since we'd seen each other in person, not counting the infinite FaceTime calls, but this was a recent change. 

Where before she'd allowed her natural curls to bounce around her shoulders and frame her face, I could tell that her hair had been tucked away and the wig against her scalp seemed painful to wear. 

"What did you do to your hair?!"

"My parents thought my natural hair made me seem 'unprofessional' so they're making me wear it like this for a while, especially for my college interviews.  When did you get so dark?  We're almost the same color now!"

"Sunshine, baby!  So they wanted your hair to be more 'professional', which is a totally disgusting thing to say by the way, but didn't care about a nose piercing?"

"Rebellion."  It was all she had to say, shrugging her shoulders in explanation as she did so.  Maybe I'd get one next.

We laughed and joked about the slight differences in our appearances and everything flowed and felt exactly how it used to, the atmosphere comfortable and gentle.  

And then there was a knock at the door and that carefully curated happiness was wiped clean.  

"Mother, there's someone for you at the door.  Come on Vera, I just have go grab my bikini, did you bring yours?  I have some extras..."

She lifted up her bag in her hand with a sheepish and somewhat guilty smile and I knew that it was because of the contraband alcohol she'd schlepped in with her. 

We laughed together as she helped me pick out my favorite bikini, a very cheeky black bottom that I wouldn't normally wear but since it was just Vera I wasn't too worried, and a matching strapless black top with some silver beading that pushed my slightly above average chest up.  It was normally a bathing suit I would have worn alone and only for sun bathing purposes so I didn't end up with strange tan lines, but since it was just going to be the two of us I didn't mind. 

Vera had been in my life since we were in diapers, and while she was bisexual, we had come to the conclusion a long time ago that she was most definitely not interested in me and I wholeheartedly agreed, and while we wouldn't ever change in front of each other for respect for the other, wearing skimpy things around each other didn't make either of us uneasy or feel weird.

I emerged from my modernized ensuite bathroom wearing my bikini and crochet cover up while simultaneously pulling my almost waist length dark brown hair into a high ponytail and grabbed the waterproof speaker and prepared to make a quick dash through the freezing cold weather to make it to the pool house that was located right around the side of the massive house.

"Ready?"

"Damn, girl!  Yeah, just not ready to hear about everything I'm missing right now at Lachlan's."

My eyes widened in surprise at her words. 

"What?"

"Since when do you go to parties at Lachlan Brooks' house?  He used to torture the both of us...?"

Guilt filled her expression and I fake gasped. 

"Tell me you didn't go there with him!"

"Not him..."

I had to think for a minute. 

"No.  His sister?  Vera, he is literally such an asshole..." I groaned out in irritation at her, but I couldn't really blame her.  

Blythe Brooks was Lachlan's younger sister by about a year, and was one of the only openly lesbian girls at Bayfield.  It was slim pickings for Vera.

"I know, but she's amazing!"

She gossiped with me as we made a break for the pool house, leaving out the back door and ignoring the obnoxiously loud music coming from the den and just what that meant for what my mother and her 'friend' were doing, my hands trembling as I carried Vera's huge bag and waited while she keyed in the code to open the doors to the toasty warm pool house.  She even knew the code to the main house, but I didn't let my mother know that.

The hot tub was bubbling underneath its cover and I sighed in contentment as I flipped the multicolored lights on, leaving everything else dark and sank down into the frothing water, Vera already coming around the other side with a plastic cup filled to the brim with sweet pineapple juice and vodka. 

"Cheers."

"Wait.  What are we cheers-ing to?"

"Um, well-"

"Wait.  Your homecoming!  Duh!"

We laughed and clinked plastic together as I turned the volume up on the portable speaker and laid it on the ledge, laying back and relaxing my shoulders as I bobbed my head in time to the music blaring beside us. 

I had needed this.  I had spent so long being filled with angst and anger and stewing with the information inside of me that I had yet to divulge.  I wasn't going to tell Vera, though.  This was too big, too damaging and too vile to ever be spoken aloud except to the people who had enabled it to happen, and I was playing the long game.

I also didn't know how she might react if she knew the truth, about the extent of the reprehensible acts my parents committed and the aftermath of what those acts created, the burning truth that singed everything it touched, including me.  Especially me.

I focused on taking shots, allowing the scorching liquid to eviscerate every intrusive thought that infiltrated my mind, escaping from the usually locked down box in the back of my mind.  I drank to forget what a total mistake I really and truly was, just like I did in California.  Drink, party, blast my music as loud as it would go, read until five in the morning, anything to keep my mind off of the truth.

So that night I drank.

We drank and laughed and talked for what felt like hours, my body growing numb and tingly, and I had to pull myself out of the scalding water every so often so that my body didn't overheat.  The alcohol was making my rational brain a little foggy and one of our favorite songs came on and we started screaming it at the top of our lungs. 

"Ouch, my ears.  Who is that singing, is it Vera?  I know it's not-"

The new voice added to the mix wasn't female, and it was a voice that I distinctly remembered as the one that incessantly teased me the six months leading up to my departure to California. 

Lachlan Brooks was somehow standing in front of us as we sang at the top of our lungs, a case of expensive beer in one hand with his other draped around a gorgeous blonde I recognized as my sister's best friend and Vera's step sister Jenna, wearing a fur coat over her red bikini which was somehow even skimpier than my own, his face a mix of surprise and shock. 

The surprise and alcohol combined made me act uncharacteristically rude towards them, but I couldn't help it.  It was Lachlan, after all. 

"The fuck are you doing here?"