While the rest of us were entering adolescence with all the awkward grace of molting swans, struggling with our too-big puppy feet, crooked teeth, and certain features that grew faster than others, only Macon and Sam remained immune.

What a pair they were, pimple-free and perfectly proportioned. Luminous against the normal tarnish of puberty. It wasn’t any surprise that they became an on-again, off-again couple throughout middle school and high school. The beautiful ones.

The ones destined to make my life hell.

Cold and often silent, Macon would usually stare at me as if he couldn’t quite understand why we were sharing the same air. It was one thing we agreed on. Otherwise, we got along like snow and salt.

The first time I saw Macon, he was standing on the great expanse of lawn that stretched toward the manor house that had been in his mama’s family for generations. Clutching a baseball, he watched me as I rode my bike up and down the road. He was skinny as a rail and two inches shorter than me. I’d felt oddly protective of him, believing the look in his eyes was one of vulnerability. I found out quickly how wrong I was.

“Hey,” I said to him, after stopping in front of his house on my bike. “I moved into the house down the way. Maybe you’d like a friend?”

He turned his eyes on me then. Those dark, dark eyes, so brown they were almost black, surrounded by thick, long lashes. Eyes that girls would call pretty and sigh over throughout all our days of school. Cold and calculating eyes, if you asked me. Those eyes narrowed on my face. “You stupid or something?”

His words hit me like a slap. “What?”

He shrugged. “Guess so.”

I didn’t understand this boy. I’d been polite, just as my mother had taught me. “Why would you call me stupid?”

“I’ve lived here my whole life. You think I wouldn’t notice if someone new moved in on my street? You think I need more friends?”

“I was just being sociable. My mistake.”

“Sociable? You talk like an old lady.”

Politeness was clearly for chumps. “You’re a jerk.”

He lifted his chin then, revealing a bruising scratch along the edge of his jaw. “And you’re annoying.”

Whatever I might have said was lost to time, because Sam decided to show up then. Younger than me by a mere ten months, Sam and I were what people sometimes snidely referred to as Irish twins. That had a darker component when they were referring to us, since it was clear to anyone with eyes that I bore little resemblance to the rest of my family.

Blonde hair french braided and gleaming, she smiled. Her missing front teeth made her look like an impish pixie. “Don’t pay any mind to Delilah. Our grandma Belle calls her ornery.”

Which is why I liked Grandma Maeve better.

Sam’s cute nose wrinkled then. “I think that just means grumpy.”