Cinder & Ella

Chapter 1

I can't remember many specific details of the accident, but the fear I felt that day is still crystal clear in my memory. I have nightmares all the time. They're always the same—a few blurry images and a mesh of chaotic sounds, but I'm paralyzed with terror so strong I can't breathe until I wake up screaming. The dread itself is the main focus of the dream.

If the sun weren't blaring so rudely into my face, and my body didn't ache from the five-and-a-half hour flight from Boston, I'd have thought I was back in my dream. I was that terrified as I sat in the driveway looking at what was to be my new home.

So far, I'd only seen the view from the car between the airport and my father's house up in the winding hills above Los Angeles. It was enough to know that LA was nothing like Boston—despite what the traffic on the freeway would have me believe.

I wished it were only the change of scenery that I was scared of. I spent eight weeks in intensive care and was then in a rehab center for another six months. Eight months of hospitalization total, and now I was being released into the care of the man who'd walked out of my life ten years ago—him and the woman he'd left me for, along with the two daughters he'd replaced me with.

"I should warn you that Jennifer has probably cooked up some sort of welcome home surprise."

"Not a party?" I gasped, my terror exploding into something that might finally kill me. I never thought I'd live through a hell most people couldn't even imagine, only to be offed on my first day out of the hospital by a group of random strangers wanting to welcome me home.

"No, of course not," my father assured me. "It's nothing like that. Your new rehabilitation team stopped by last week and prepped the whole family. Jennifer knows meeting a lot of new people will be too overwhelming at first. I'm sure it will be just her and the girls, but there's probably a nice dinner waiting for you along with welcoming gifts, and possibly decorations. She's very excited to meet you."

I couldn't say the same.

When I didn't respond, my dad glanced at me with that look of helplessness he'd been watching me with since I came out of my coma and found him sitting beside my hospital bed. It's a look that is seventy percent pity, twenty percent fear, and ten percent awkwardness. It's as if he has no clue what to say or how to act with me—probably because he hasn't seen or talked to me since I was eight.

He cleared his throat and said, "You ready, kiddo?"

I would never be ready.

"Please don't call me that," I whispered, working hard to speak around the lump suddenly clogging up my throat.

He blew out a long puff of air and tried to smile. "Too old for that now?"

"Something like that."

In truth, I hated the nickname because it reminded me of Mama. She always called me her little muñeca, or baby doll. When I was about six, Dad started calling me kiddo. He said it was because I needed an American nickname too, but I think it was because he'd been jealous of the relationship I had with Mama even back then.

"Sorry," Dad said.

"It's fine."

I opened the car door before the awkwardness choked us to death. Dad came around the car to help me get out, but I brushed him off. "I'm supposed to do it."

"Right, sorry. Here."

As I moved my legs out one at a time, he handed me my cane and waited as I slowly pulled myself to a stand.

It took effort, and it wasn't pretty, but I could finally walk on my own again. I was proud of that. The doctors hadn't always thought it would be possible, but I pushed through the pain and regained a lot of my range of movement. The scars were bad enough. I didn't want to be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of my life, too.