Chapter 1I Stole a Bone to Survive and Built My Own Empir

Everyone agreed on one thing: I was the unwanted kid.

My parents divorced when I was small. My father vanished, my mother remarried, and the only person who ever cared for me, my grandmother, passed away.

The year she died, she left me a run-down shack and exactly $214.37.

I survived on the kindness of neighbors to walk out of the deep country, and I financed my education with student loans.

During my internship, I worked myself into the ground and secured a decent job, which turned into a full-time position upon graduation. I’ve been hustling ever since.

This year, with the final holiday bonus check, I finally paid off every last debt. I had saved my very first nest egg.

As the clock struck midnight and the fireworks exploded outside, ushering in the New Year, I made a promise to myself.

My rotten life was over. The good one? It was finally my turn.

* * *

The day they buried my grandmother, everyone in Black Creek assumed my mother would take me with her.

After all, I was only thirteen. In this world, outside of her, I had no one left.

I thought so too. I packed my worn backpack and stood by the door, waiting for her to tell me it was time.

Instead, she shouldered her suitcase, walked straight past me, and boarded the Greyhound bus.

She didn't look back until the bus vanished around the last dusty bend in the road.

It was as if my arrangements—my life—had never once crossed her mind during her entire visit.

I walked back into the small, dimly lit house and, by pure instinct, called out:

“Grandma, I feel sick.”

The house answered with a dead, hollow silence.

That was the moment the realization hit me: Grandma was buried under the cold, hard dirt. From now on, I was the only thing breathing in this house.

Fear, cold and sharp, rushed in like a tidal wave.

What was I supposed to do?

I sat on the front porch stoop all night.

When the sun finally rose, I grabbed my backpack and went to school.

My eighth-grade history teacher, a kind woman from the city, once told me that education was the only road out of the mountains.

If my mother wouldn’t take me, I would walk myself.

My classmates looked at me strangely.

“Why are you still here, June?”

“Are you really just… alone?”

I didn't want their pity, and I definitely didn't want their mocking faces. I stood taller than my five feet and lied loudly.

“Mom says pulling me out of Northwood Middle now would mess up the transfer credits. I’ll finish eighth grade here, then she’s moving me to the city.”

It was a dignified lie. It sealed their lips.

Life had to continue.

I learned to build a fire in the old iron stove and cook for myself. I learned to haul water from the well to water the meager vegetable patch. I survived day after day on the last of Grandma’s flour and the sweet potatoes from the field.

Until one night, I heard the sound of shattering porcelain from next door.

My neighbor, Bella, was crying, and her father was yelling. They were fighting over the $100 needed for her GED study materials.

I huddled against the wall, listening, a creeping dread chilling me to the bone.

In two years, I would be going to high school. High school was in the county seat, and it wasn’t free. I had to pay tuition and buy books.

If I couldn't come up with the money, would I be stuck here?

What then?

Bella gave me the answer.

The next morning, before the sun cracked the horizon, she was gone.

She carried the faded backpack that used to hold her textbooks. Today, it held her few clothes.

She was heading south to work in a construction site—to earn money for her family, specifically the money for her younger brother’s eventual wedding down-payment.

Watching her silhouette disappear into the fog felt like a raw wound inside me. I couldn’t follow her path.

I wanted to read. I needed to learn.

But where would the money come from? The $214.37 Grandma left wouldn't last the year.

The only person who could help was my mother, Brenda.

I remembered the time my little brother, Caleb, hugged my stepfather, Roy, begging for a new remote-control truck after getting a perfect score on a quiz.

Mom’s eyes crinkled with love, and the next day, he had the most expensive toy on the market.

What if I got a perfect score? What if I was the top student in the entire school?

Would Mom, just for the sake of appearances among the extended family, throw a little tuition money my way?

It was a lifeline, and I grabbed it with both hands.

I attacked my books like a madwoman that semester. I studied during class, and at night, I did problem sets by candlelight. When I felt my eyes close, I pinched myself hard.

At the final exams, I really did earn the top spot.

The villagers were stunned.

“The wild child with no oversight, pulling first place?”

“Working the field and hitting the books—the girl’s got fire in her bones.”

Marge Dawson, the mayor's wife, a kind neighbor, leaned on the fence, cracking sunflower seeds.

“Take that award to your mom, June. Maybe she’ll finally buy you a new coat for Christmas.”

I looked down at myself.

I was wearing Grandma’s patched-up, black denim jacket. The sleeves were frayed at the cuffs, the lining peeking out.

I hadn't had a new item of clothing since I was six, before Caleb was born, when Mom used to bring me a bright red dress for the holidays. It was long gone now.

I had relied on hand-me-downs from cousins for years. But Grandma’s death had severed those family ties, too.

I was facing the winter wrapped only in a dead woman's clothes.

As the holidays approached, the migrant workers started coming home. Bella returned, too, looking polished and wearing expensive-looking clothes.

I spent every afternoon waiting beneath the old oak tree at the edge of the village.