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MY GRANDMAMA ONCE TOLD ME that love and hate are the sas experienced under different circumstances The passion is the sa that bubbles in your chest? Same I didn’t believe her until I htmare

Then htmare became my reality

I thought I’d escaped hiotten I ever existed

But when he caht possible

And just like a domino—I fell

Ten Years Ago

I’d only been inside the mansion once before, when o That day, I stood rooted in place on the sa that never creaked

That first tihest floor in the world?”

She failed to hest heart in the world

I couldn’t for the life of me understand why people with sohouse Ten bedrooym and a dramatic staircase The best amenities money could buy…and except for the tennis court and sixty-five-foot pool, they were all in black

Black choked out every pleasant feeling youiron-studded doors The interior designerfroiant iron chandeliers hanging fros Even the floor was so dark that it looked like I was hovering over an abyss, a fraction of a second froness

A ten-bedroo in it—two of them barely ever there—and the Spencers had decided to house e It was bigger than our clapboard rental in Richinia, but until thatway

Not anymore

Everything about the Spencer ned to intimidate Rich and wealthy, yet poor in so ht

I stared at my shoes—the tattered white Vans I doodled colorful flowers on to hide the fact that they were knock-offs—and sed, feeling insignificant even before he had belittled me Before I even knew him

“I wonder where he is?” Mama whispered

As we stood in the hallway, I shivered at the echo that bounced off the bare walls She wanted to ask if we could get paid two days early because we needed to buy er sister, Rosie

“I hear so from that room” She pointed to a door on the opposite side of the vaulted foyer “You go knock I’ll go back to the kitchen to wait”