school I’d attended for the last two years, I turned, taking one last look at the building. The steps leading to the main door were empty. Silence surrounded me, and for a second I wondered whether I could make it work. Maybe I could ask for help.
No.
I shook my head and spun around. I wouldn’t ask for help, not again. I could handle this. I could take care of my little brother. I could be there for my mom and make her better. I could make her see that this wasn’t the life she should live. I’d be the support she never had.
My head was a whirr of thoughts as I hightailed it home. Music was blasting as I was ten feet from our apartment on the first floor, mixed in with the wailing cries from the currently unnamed baby. She hadn’t even bothered to call him anything but “boy.” Yet another reason I was needed at home and not at school.
I pushed inside, screwing my face up at the smoke filling the room, and darted right to the baby.
Strangers filled the apartment, people I didn’t know, and I knew then that I couldn’t waver anymore. I couldn’t leave this baby alone with her while I was at school all day. I needed something else, I had to be the adult in a situation that I never should have been.
I had to drop out of school.
CHAPTER 1
LUNA
I pulled the last box from the rental car and spun around, determined to start a new chapter in my life. It wasn’t until I was halfway across the makeshift parking lot that I halted on the concrete ground littered with weeds sprouting through the cracks.
It was scary, for more reasons than I could comprehend.
I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, and with what most people would assume a limited life experience.
Most people were wrong though.
Very wrong.
I’d witnessed and been part of more things than anyone could dream of.
I’d watched my parents take so many drugs that they’d had to have their stomachs pumped.
I’d witnessed them overdosing and tried to bring them back from the brink.
I’d been both the victim and a perpetrator of theft.
I’d lied.
I’d cheated.
But it was so that I could survive. Each day had been a war I waged, not sure where my next meal would come from. And now we were all here, moving into a new apartment, taking the first step in our new lives.
My gaze drifted to the third floor and to the door in the middle of the walkway. The green paint was peeling, one of the numbers was upside down. All it needed was a missing screw, a job Dad has said he would do, but I still had my doubts.
Both Mom and Dad were on one of their clean spurts, no drugs, no alcohol, no parties in the middle of the night. It had been three months so far—the longest they’d ever gone—but that didn’t mean I was getting my hopes up. I’d done that once when I was twelve, and I’d promised myself I never would again after they relapsed.
I just hoped this time was different.
“Hey, lady!” a small voice shouted. “Why are you standing there?”
I glanced down in the direction of the voice and raised a brow as a boy stopped next to me, turning to look where I was. His dark-brown hair was a little long to suit his face, his straight nose led up to knowing eyes. Eyes that seemed to grasp me and not let go. He couldn’t have been more than seven, but the way he stood told me he didn’t live the life of a normal seven-year-old. He was wise beyond his years, something that I understood.
“I’m looking at my apartment door,” I told him, shuffling a step closer.
“Why?” He tilted his head back and stared at me, waiting for an answer. But I wasn’t sure what I was meant to tell him. I didn’t know why I was standing here staring at my door, but what I did know was that I wasn’t ready to go into my apartment just yet. I needed a minute—just a little time to collect my thoughts.
“Because…” I bit down on my bottom lip, glancing around the building. The apartment building had four floors, but it wasn’t one of those fancy ones that you saw on the TV shows. No, this was the kind that most low-income families lived in. The entire building was like a giant L shape with all