All too soon, it was my least favorite day of the week. Sunday. The day when the Simmons and Kim all loaded up into the mini-van for their multi-hour trip to the Third Cavalry Reformed Baptist Church. Kim went because afterward they all went to the buffet place and pigged out. I didn't go because not only was I not religious and unwilling to fake it, I'd still be on some version of the cabbage soup diet even at the buffet. A small salad and a bowl of clear soup. No crackers or bread or Goddess forbid, croutons. I hated salad without dressing, too.

Despite being on the cabbage soup diet, I hadn't shrunk all that much. My face was leaner and my muscles more cut, but my waist remained too thick by Ann Simmons' calculations with her scale and measuring tape. My calves bulged with too much muscle from marching with the tri-toms. My body was a mess that Ann Simmons was determined to tidy up. By her standards, I barely looked like a girl, much less the dainty lady she wished that I would become. If only she could transform me into another Mary Beth, she would have accomplished a major good work with an orphan. At least my stubborn ways gave her moaning cred with her church friends.

I sprawled on my tiny twin bed reading texts from Gabby on my ancient phone with the cracked screen while the others loaded up. Ann Simmons knocked and then entered.

"We're about to leave. It's not too late," she said, giving her helmet of ultra-frosted and sprayed mom-bob a pat. "You could come. Jesus still loves you!"

"Thanks, Mrs. Simmons. Maybe next time," I lied.

Her eyes narrowed for a moment before she pasted on a sweet smile and sidled back out of the cramped basement room that Kim and I shared.

"I left you some cabbage soup in the fridge for lunch!" she called out as she climbed the stairs.

I crept out of the bedroom to eavesdrop.

"Is she coming?" Mark Simmons, Ann's husband asked.

"No."

"I don't know how much longer I can live with an unrepentant witch in the house," he complained, his voice going from its forced rumbling bass to a more natural nasal whinge. The door to the garage slammed and the house went silent.

I did my best to stay invisible when Mark was home. He liked to give me long, rambling lectures about my occult ways. He also liked to grab my butt and then claim it was my occult ways that made him do it. He and Ann were business partners as well as spouses, middle-aged real estate agents who oozed fake charm and, I suspected, ran up credit card debt to make themselves look more prosperous than they actually were.

Their house was palatial to me, two stories with an off-limits cavern of a master suite on the main floor and three bedrooms on the top floor, each with its own bath. Mary Beth inhabited two of the top floor bedrooms and the third was Mark's office (also all off-limits). Ann's office was in the "study" on the main floor. Kim and I shared what would have been a large walk-in pantry in the basement if Ann Simmons ever cooked anything but cabbage soup.

The partially finished basement was drafty and unheated. The bathroom was only a rusty old toilet and a tiny shower stall. Our 'bedroom' still bore marks where the pantry shelves used to be and had no closet. Mary Beth often pointed out that neither Kim nor I had any clothes worth hanging, so it wasn't worth the bother to give us a closet.

Kim came in with a portable clothes rack one day when everyone was gone. So far, Ann was pretending like the rack didn't exist. Mark and Mary Beth weren't allowed in the basement, so they couldn't complain about Kim's ungrateful ways. Thank Goddess there was no Mark in the basement. I'd never sleep again if I thought he might be creeping down the stairs.

The "occult" thing was partially my own fault. When the social worker asked what religion I was, I panicked and finally said "Wiccan". Honestly, I had no idea what a Wiccan even was, other than from cool witchy tv shows. I didn't even own a pentacle. But I had to have a religion. Saying nothing had earned me an extra-large dose of stink eye and a speech about how being uncooperative would land me straight in Juvenile detention until I was eighteen.

My mom hadn't been religious, but she dragged me to nearly every kind of church available. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish. Big, little, stodgy or crazy, we visited them all. We even went to a Bahai Temple for a little while.

The only religion we didn't visit was the Muslims, who my mom was deathly afraid of. Every time she saw women in Muslim-looking headscarves or darker-skinned guys with beards, she'd drag me in the other direction, her face white and her eyes wide with fear. She'd never say why they spooked her so much. Maybe it was just too much media exposure after 911. Yet another mystery of my mom that I'd never solve.

My phone bleeped, dragging me back from the edge of a crying jag. Memory lane was not a good place for me, at least not yet. Kim, whose mom was also dead and whose father was in prison for killing her mom when Kim was just ten, said it got easier with time.

I looked at my phone. It was an unknown number.

"Hey." Was all the message said.

Me: "I don't do creepers."

"LOL. I'm not a creeper. I'm Kaiden. I got your number from Gabs."

Me: "You can't call her that."

Kaiden: "Why not?"

Me: "IDK. It's just a thing we do in our group."

Kaiden: "Maybe I want to be part of your group."

Gabby, what were you thinking? The last thing I needed was for Kaiden Preston to have my number. I stared at the phone and reread the messages four times. Then I screenshot the conversation and sent it to Gabby.

Me: "What the hell, Gabs? Why have you gone all traitor on me?"

Gabby: "STFU and be nice. He's a nice guy. You need more friends."

Me: "You called him a perv!"

Gabby: "That's before I got to know him."

I sighed and screenshot that conversation and sent it to Toby.

Toby: "I don't see what the problem is. Kaiden's cool."

My phone buzzed again.

Kaiden: "Want to go to the water garden?"

Me: "Why?"

Kaiden: "You look like you need some outdoor time."

Me: "Fair. K, but I have to be back before 3."

Ann Simmons would give birth to an extra-large cow if she found out that I left the house with a boy on Sunday when I was supposed to be staying in and thinking about repenting of my occult ways. But at that moment, I didn't care. I was going to go spend some time outside, in the sun. With Kaiden, who maybe was nice after all.

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