Dear Reader - If you liked Eli, I hope you'll LOVE Kass. Let me know what you think, and please take a second to hit the star button if you enjoy it.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was too smart and too jaded for hope. It's what set her apart. It's what kept her safe.

***

Mr. Burke, my teacher-slash-vice-principal, stands at the front of my World Studies class, tugging down both sides of his suit jacket like he means business. But today I mean business, too. I'm ready. I've done the work and it's good.

A kid in front of me points out the classroom window and I get a whiff of his sour B.O. I cringe away from bending toward my backpack and look to where he's pointing at an orange Mustang in the parking lot. I'm about to turn away, but it's not only the car. There's a woman.

Students murmur about the 302 engine, but I focus on the woman's coat. I recognize that coat. I don't actually recognize the Mustang, but my breath catches in my throat and I stiffen in my seat because I know the woman wearing the ugly plaid coat in the school parking lot. She always loved muscle cars. My legs, my jaw, my whole body goes rigid, like my bones are lined with titanium rods.

"Mom?" I say under my breath, but it comes out louder than intended.

Why is she here, showing up at school out of the blue eight years after abandoning me and Dad? And more importantly, why can't I remember why I don't want her back?

"Miss Bateman?" Mr. Burke, holds an open hand out beside my desk. I look up, my usual self-righteous glare having disintegrated into my face. He's waiting for my essay, but looking at the student seated behind me as if he's already given up on me. That's how much confidence I instill in my teachers.

I want to tell him I did the essay he's asking for, spent five hours on the stupid thing last night. But for the first time in my life, I can't seem to work my mouth.

"Thin ice, Kass," he tells me.

I open my hands to the sides and smirk—the only expression I can force my tightened jaw into—like I'm agreeing with him, or like I'm admitting I chose to party with my many non-existent friends, rather than keeping up on my assignments.

Mr. Burke moves a few paces toward a student who does care, a student who already has his essay in mid-flight toward our teacher's outstretched hands.

Mr. Burke is a control freak, and runs his classes and the entire school like a re-enactment of his former military life. He snaps essays from students in my aisle as I stare back at my mother, not caring one bit about getting a zero on one of my last assignments of the year—one of my last chances at redemption—or the fact that my completed essay is sequestered in the backpack at my feet.

Why is she here in the middle of the day? Did she finally come back for us? Even though I've made plans without her—summer job, then local college with a psych major, still living at home, still taking care of Dad—something about this seems better. Or at least easier.

Counselors haven't helped Dad, so who's to say I'll ever be able to help him, even if I can eventually get a psychology degree? But Mom. She always used to be able to calm him.

And why the hell can't I have a home like everyone else, one I can leave at eighteen and pretend I don't care about, but that's always waiting for me to slink back to if I need it? Not somewhere I'm shackled to by guilt and need.

I study my mother's back, turned away from the school, turned away from me, and wish I could see the expression on her face. Does she miss having a normal family, too? Does she miss us?

I push myself out of my chair and stride for the door.

"Kass!" Mr. Burke bellows from the front of the room.

"Yeah?" The word comes out crusty, like dried syrup or caked-on memories. I keep walking, tuning out his spiel about needing a permission slip, about my record of skipping, about repercussions for my actions. Soon I'm at the main school doors. The security guard must be patrolling another wing, so I push the bar on the door, not slowing.

Twenty feet and I'm at the edge of the parking lot. She still drives around with a smiley antennae ball on her car. She used to tell everyone the little bobble kept her happy. We all could have been sprouting smiley antennae balls like Mickey Mouse ears back then. It made sense before Megan died. Before Dad collapsed into himself and Mom abandoned us. But her driving around with one now? I have the sudden urge to rip the thing from her car and trample it until it looks like gum on the pavement.

She turns when I'm still five car lengths away and I blink twice. It's not her. It's not my mother.

In fact, she's not a woman at all, just a teenager, maybe a year or two older than me. She has blonde ringlets springing out from under her old-lady brimmed hat. She's wearing jeans and a purple T-shirt under her coat, but from the neck up she looks like an old fashioned fairy princess or a cartoon character—ringlets, in a world where so many girls are addicted to their flat-irons.

But it's not only her unconventional hat and hairstyle. The ringlets remind me of my little sister Megan, who forever lives on in my memory as a five-year-old, but who would probably have grown up to look something like this girl if she had lived.

I squint at the similarity. It's not like this is my sister, who died on the street outside our apartment complex nine years ago. I'm not stupid. I saw it with my own eyes.

I'm pretty sure I've never seen this girl before, and yet our eyes stay locked for a weirdly long time. I'm vaguely aware of Mr. Burke behind me, hollering from the school doors, but something isn't right here and I can't pay attention to him just yet.

I walk toward the girl, barely feeling the ground beneath me.

"Kass!" Burke calls again from the school doors. Then something about fifteen more minutes of class and needing an explanation.

But I can't wait fifteen minutes and he's not the only one who needs an explanation. I've been working hard to get my grades up, to be on time, and attend every single one of my classes. Ignoring him could mean not graduating, getting some gas station job, and probably living with my batty father forever. It all just doesn't matter at the moment.

"You're Kass Bateman?" ringlets-girl asks, her voice tougher than I expect. I give a single nod, still trying to get a handle on the situation. She looks me up and down, from my black spiky hair to my death metal t-shirt. From the chains on my belt loops to my combat boots.

"Who the hell are you?" The words are mine, but my voice sounds like I've swallowed a bottle of goopy white glue.

"I'm..." She blinks her eyes away, raises her eyebrows, and then looks up like she might find the answer in the sky. "Well, I'm your sister, I guess," she says.

I don't allow my anger to flash. "Right. Okay." I let out a bitter laugh, like the fact that she's trying to dub herself my dead sister doesn't bother me in the least. I turn to leave.

"Not that sister." Now an eye roll. "Look, Abigail hooked up with my dad before you were born. She suffered from really bad post-partum depression and ended up leaving us."

I glower. "Gail? You mean my mother, Gail?" I eyeball the coat again. It's not possible there's more than one of those monstrosities in the world.

She nods. "I found a photo album with all sorts of pictures of you and Megan when you were younger. Mom didn't want to tell me anything, but I pretty much forced her to, and once I got her talking, she wouldn't stop. We had a fight when I said I wanted to meet you, and... well, have you seen her?"

I hate the swelling of something like pride that rises up at hearing my mother wouldn't stop talking about me, even if she doesn't talk to me. "Gail was talking about me?" I try to ignore the betrayal I feel that my mother never bothered to mention this other family of hers, or didn't even want this girl who's apparently my sister to meet me. The betrayal of her going back to them when my family needs her. I grit my teeth to hold back the overwhelming urge to ask exactly what my mother had said about me, and simply reply, "Seems unlikely."

The girl glances from one end of the school to the other. I haven't thought about Megan in ages, and I'm surprised at the twisting of guilt that still wrenches my gut.

In an instant, the rightness of the situation comes over me. Of course my mother chose another family. Of course she doesn't want her other daughter anywhere near me. Not after what I'd let happen to Megan.

I turn to see Mr. Burke glaring out his classroom window—afraid to leave the other twenty-nine, but unwilling to take his gaze from his one wayward sheep. Part of me doesn't want to give Burke the satisfaction of skulking back into his classroom, but less of me wants to stick around and listen to this whack-job's reasons of why she thinks I'm still important to my mother.

I let out a long breath. "Look, you're obviously confused if you think we're related."

And the girl does look confused, staring between two lines on the pavement on either side of me, back and forth, over and over again, like she's trying to figure out where she went wrong. "Our mom...she said—"

"Look, my mom obviously doesn't want you near me," Five minutes ago, I didn't even know this girl existed, didn't even know I had any living siblings, and still, the need to prove that I know my mother better than she does overwhelms me. "Gail tells stories, and I don't know what the hell she's told you, but..." I change tracks before she can jump on this and tell me things I don't want to hear. "Look, whatever your name is—"

"Hope," she tells me.

Hope? "Isn't that just the icing on the cake," I murmur under my breath. By her squinty-eyed look, she either can't hear me or can't make sense of me, which pretty much makes us even. "Okay, so, Hope. I haven't seen Gail in years. I'm not looking for another sister. Now thanks for screwing up my essay mark and goodbye."

I push through the school doors still snarling. The door clunks shut behind me, and the security guard is making his way over, open-mouthed, ready to say something, but then he stops. He knows better than to prevent me from coming into the school.

I try to shake off my rage, because what if this Hope girl is lying just to get a rise out of me? People at school do that sometimes—start rumors that I knifed somebody or got caught sucking off a teacher. It's a game, to find the tough goth girl's weak spots. I perfected my poker face a long time ago, learned that saying nothing works much better than any kind of rebuttal. Does this ringlets-girl really even know my mother? Maybe I should have asked some pointed questions, like when she was born and how long Gail's been back living with her.

The last thing I want to do right now is face Burke, and I consider all the things I've done in the past to get out of class when I've needed to—pulling fire alarms, faking injuries, setting off smoke bombs in the bathroom.

But it's too late. Burke meets me in the hallway. He stops suddenly, not expecting me back, that much is clear, but it doesn't take him long to blink, reset his brain to my history, and finally spit out some words. "What do you think you're doing, leaving in the middle of my class?" His voice is tentative, like his words are testing the pressure points of my emotional state.

I let out a loud huff, unable to deal right now, and push past him.

This is enough to bring us back to our normal "working relationship." He trails me into his classroom, coming back to his demanding voice, and ranting the whole way about rules and expectations.

I've never told him about my unusual family situation, never wanted to use it as an excuse for my poor behavior. I learned a long time ago how to fake my mother's disappointed voice every time the school called, promising, "Yes, I know Kass can be a handful, but I'll talk to her."

By the vice-principal's reddened face, I assume he's working himself into a tizzy, reminding himself of every single time I've sat in his office and shrugged off his questions. I drop into my desk chair, stare down at my sparse scrawl of notes, and will my eyes to come into focus. Sidelong glances come at me from all directions, but I don't have the energy to stare them down today. Burke is still ranting and his words start to make their way into my brain again. Rules. Disrespect. Fail, fail, fail.

I won't look up. My brain is jumbled, because something about Hope seemed so much like Megan.

I have a sister. The sudden unbidden thought kicks me in the stomach. I glance out the window and she's still there, staring in my direction like she knows exactly which classroom, even which desk I'm in.

When I hear the word Expulsion, I look up.

Burke marches over so he's right beside my desk, right in my face. He angles his head from side to side like he's silently cracking his neck. "That's right, Miss Bateman. You want to disrespect me? I'd be happy to arrange for you to leave this school." There's an unspoken "finally" at the end of his sentence.

I open my mouth to a dry puff of air. No, I don't want to get kicked out. At least I don't think I want that. But I seriously cannot concentrate. "I—I need to go home," I say in a voice so soft, so confused, so completely unlike me, I'm tempted to look around and see if someone else said it.

"You what?" Burke booms. His eyebrows pull together making a vein in his forehead throb, but before he can say anything else, the guy one seat back jumps out of his chair and stands between me and our vice-principal.

Other than borrowing a pencil from him at the beginning of class, I've never spoken to the guy. Elijah Andrews, I think is his name. He's a quiet academic guy, a senior, I'm pretty sure, and he's as terrified of me as the rest of the student body. Judging by how quiet he is, I think he's terrified of life. But apparently he's not afraid of Mr. Burke.

"Sir, I'm sure Kass doesn't mean any disrespect."

Burke's eyes practically spring out of their sockets toward Elijah, but he stands his ground, unfazed. Any other time, Elijah's line would sound downright ludicrous. Of course I mean to disrespect. I always mean to disrespect. But right now I don't know what the hell I mean, and I'm ecstatic for someone, anyone, who's willing to form a sentence on my behalf.

I can't for the life of me figure out why Elijah's doing it.

"I know how hard family stuff can be," Elijah goes on, quietly, undaunted by our teacher's glare. He glances over his shoulder at me and when our eyes meet, there's something deep and endless about his. They're dark brown and warm, and something else I can't quite place. Hurt? Sad? He turns them back to our teacher before I can figure it out. "Some things are more urgent than class."

I try to shake off the weird moment and glance back to the parking lot. Hope is still there. My sister.

Mr. Burke studies Elijah for a long second and either our vice-principal is also getting lost in his eyes or something unsaid is passing between them. Obviously, Elijah has told Mr. Burke his story, whatever it is. Elijah keeps his eyes on the vice-principal's and doesn't flinch. I finally find it within me to bend toward my backpack and at least pull out my essay. I slide it across my desk.

After an endless pause, Burke snaps it away, without acknowledging me or it, then turns on his heel and marches back to his desk. I can already picture him adding a bright red "F" to the front, without even reading it.

"Everyone stays until the bell. No one's leaving early." Mr. Burke shoots a pointed look back at me. "No one."

All the students, including Elijah, eventually turn back to copying notes from the projector. The room's about as quiet as a chicken barn at feeding time—little scratchings of movement.

My emotions bounce between anger and confusion.

The class keener is sticking up for me. My mother has another daughter. I have a sister who reminds me way too much of Megan.

Suddenly, the life I knew and understood, the one that I'd grown to accept as normal, even if I felt shackled to it, is out of reach, like all I can do is claw after it.

Because this girl? She's going to change everything.

I don't know how I know this, but I do.

I'm already into chapter 3 and excited to share it with you soon! Don't forget to hit the star button and leave me a quick comment of what you like or don't like so far.