Prologue
May fourteenth, 1960 was a stormy day, to say the least. The wind was strong to the point that it felt like the lashes of an invisible whip, and it beat upon the windows of the small clinic in Winchester with similar ferocity. Precipitation of unknown specification - it was a bizarre combination of hail, sleet, rain, and snow, pertaining to the least desirable aspects of each type of weather - crashed onto the ground as though it were far heavier than any worldly substance.
Inside the small hospital clinic, a beautiful, red-haired woman cradled a small, plump baby girl. The child had a tuft of violently red hair on her head to match her mother's, fingers that wouldn't stop latching onto things, and lungs that gave everyone nearby a splitting headache. A mere four hours after the little girl was born, and after she had desisted her constant screaming, Lily's sister, Petunia, who had wished fervently for a sister at Hanukah, was holding the long-awaited baby. It was in these moments, as the four-year-old blonde child gazed for the first time into the face of her sister, that Lily's eyes turned green. Unlike, well, unlike normal children, Lily's eyes did not take months to turn slowly into their color. Instead, the moment that Petunia looked into Lily's eyes, the blue eyes that all Caucasian babies possess turned instantly to a bright, deep, emerald-colored green. Petunia had shrieked and dropped Lily on her head.
Perhaps one who looked quickly back on the early lives of Lily and Petunia Evans would see this as the point where the relationship went sour. But that person would have to know the real history behind the Evanses to come to any conclusions.
Seven years after the day she'd met her sister, Lily Evans sat on her knees next to an oak door, pressing her small ear to the wooden framework. Inside, she could hear occasional loud squeals and exclamations of delight from her sister and the three friends who had been invited over. Now, Lily wasn't the type of person who idolized and stalked people like Petunia - self-absorbed, squealing, girls with little brains - but, perhaps for that reason, Lily had never had any close friends. It felt like her last hope to follow Petunia when the older girl had friends over. Normally, Lily could quench this strange desire by deeply immersing herself in some book, but her mother had actually forcibly forbade her daughter from laying a hand on her treasured books. In Mrs. Evans' opinion, Lily spent far too much time emerged in the fantastical worlds of poetry and fantasy. She would be better off, well, better off like Petunia.
It had been all that Lily could manage to convince her parents that, no, she didn't want to invite the peppy, squealing Amanda Blathers over. But in exchange for that small luxury, Mr. and Mrs. Evans had told Lily to socialize with Petunia and company. When the older girls had kicked Lily out (much to the latter's intense gratification), Lily's parents had told her to go right back into the room she and her sister shared. Lily knew that her parents would notice and grow angry if she were in any other part of the house, so she had resorted to sitting out in the hall, until either her sister let her in, or her parents passed by and commanded Lily to go inside.
But a good forty minutes of staring at the burgundy carpet had finally grown tiring; there was only a certain amount of time that the seven-year- old could remain engrossed in her own thoughts, particularly at eleven- thirty at night, the evening after her skull's size felt as though it had diminished considerably from all the time she had spent with the 'Twitter Gang.' So Lily had resorted to attempting to listen to what was going on inside the room. She wasn't the slightest bit interested, but it was better than counting the flecks of brown in the otherwise red carpeting. As Lily sat there, unable to discern anything besides the occasional 'Oh my!', 'You didn't!', 'He never!', etc., her thoughts wandered back to Petunia and why the eleven-year-old hated her so much.
Only vague incidents flew through her mind of times that had proven Petunia's spite, but Lily knew that, thinking back on it, she could find more, if she wanted. There was of course, the dropping-on-head incident, one that, to Lily's complete annoyance, simply had to be brought up every time she entered a conversation. Lily, for one, did not see the humor in being dropped on her own head. It wasn't her fault, and it hadn't lessened her brain capacity that much. At least Lily didn't think it had. She got poor marks in school because she 'didn't care' and 'didn't try'. This was balderdash, but Lily was the only one to think so. She understood the concepts very well, and read into very advanced arithmetic and sciences. But no one knew this. Lily was used to being compared to Petunia at her own expense, and she didn't want to give anyone any more reasons to find her inadequate. They had enough: Petunia was prettier, Petunia was 'smarter', Petunia was nicer, Petunia was more outgoing, Petunia was more popular.the list went on and on.
Another instance Lily remembered was the time when she and Petunia had been helping their mother to bake latkes, the winter before Lily turned five. Well, it could be counted as helping if one twisted events a little: Petunia spent most of the time debating whether or not to get her hands 'starchy' from the potatoes. Lily, on the other hand, dove into the flour sack the moment they began and twirled happily around the kitchen, using the exotic movements of a made-up dance and leaving glittering trails of flour everywhere she stepped. Mrs. Evans had really been the only one who got much done. But any work going on had been completely interrupted when Petunia decided that she wouldn't mind helping a little, as long as she didn't have to touch anything with her bare hands. She had stepped forward and Lily, still twirling and not expecting her sister's decision, had crashed into her.
It was like a scene out of one of the horrible sitcoms that Mrs. Evans watched so much: Before she slid across the floor, Petunia grasped the edge of the batter-bowl with her fingers and caused it to catapult across the room and land, perfectly, on her own head. Potatoes covered the eight-year- old from head to toe, and the powdery flour that Lily had been sprinkling everywhere seemed attracted magnetically to Petunia's form. Needless to say, that incident had gotten both Petunia and Mrs. Evans very angry with Lily, though Lily didn't understand how it was her fault and why it really mattered that much. She did accept that it was a tad unusual that the bowl had landed so perfectly on Petunia's head, despite the blonde girl's sliding movement across the floor, but Lily pushed it aside as mere coincidence.
Once, when she was six, Lily had been curled in her favorite rocking chair, reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Well, more like pretending to read; Lily loved looking at the words on a page even if she couldn't completely decipher their meaning. Strangely enough, for a girl who wound up loving books so much, she was very slow on mastering how one begins to interpret the words. Mr. Evans had brought the books back from America after a business trip there, and though they had originally been for Petunia, the older girl never read anything. Lily had 'abducted' (her phrase of the week; for a little girl she was very literate) the book from her sister's dusty shelves and was almost-reading over the first few chapters of 'Little House on the Prairie.' However, before she could get very far, an enraged blonde girl stomped into the room and snatched the book from Lily's hands, slamming it down on the stone hearth and hereby breaking the spine.
"W-what did you do that for?" an equally infuriated Lily had half-yelled.
"It's my book, It's my stuff, don't touch it!" Petunia had replied, her lengthy neck protruding even further than Lily had seen it do before, giving her a very ugly look that differed immensely from her 'youthful beauty.'
Normally the younger sister would meekly give up the glory of 'winning' one of their little arguments to Petunia, but not that day, she wouldn't. Lily could very well remember how mad she'd been. The words on the book's pages were really making sense now, and the small girl wanted to keep reading them.
"If I don't touch it, who will? You never read anything, Daddy just got you a book because he's ashamed at how stupid you are!"
"I'm stupid? I'm stupid?! This coming from the six-year-old who can't even read, and sits there looking at the pictures to amuse herself and make herself think that she's smart?" Much as she hated the leisure, Petunia had learned to read when she was three. "I only don't read because I know how smart I am, and wish not to flaunt it in other people's faces!"
"There aren't that many pictures in Little House On The Prairie! And at least I don't spend the day twittering madly with people at least as dumb, if not more, than myself! Books, even those I can't read, are far better than the company of a stupid, jealous sister, and her idiot, simpering friends!"
At these words, Petunia was flabbergasted. She wasn't particularly bright, and from her point of view the redhead (a good three heads shorter than Petunia) was very intimidating and an excellent arguer. To top it off, Petunia was one of the few people that did know Lily was smart; she often forced her younger sister to do her simple homework.
While the older girl muddled through confused thoughts, Lily enjoyed a few more moments of her sister's goldfish-like mouth, and then flounced away at the proper dramatic moment.
Lily had thought that she had outdone herself, put Petunia in her place, but she wound up getting in trouble; Petunia had told Mr. and Mrs. Evans that Lily had walked in and slammed her book on the floor, not the other way around. Petunia also seemed to have derived some cock-and-bull story about Lily, insisting that the younger girl had done something to make Petunia unable to speak. No amount of explaining on Lily's part could get her out of the coming punishment. She tried saying, again and again, that she wished she could shut Petunia up occasionally, but unfortunately didn't possess the power. The other members of the Evans' household deemed Lily's story childish and dishonest. For some reason unfathomable to Lily, Petunia remained jealous and angry long past the duration of Lily's punishment. Lily tried to be good-natured toward her sister, but it was difficult when Petunia was, well, such an idiot! And she thought I was good at arguing? Lily remembered thinking as she underwent her punishment of helping to bake pie after pie in a hot, crowded kitchen, for her mother's catering service.
Lily's thoughts were interrupted when the door she was leaning against flew open and she collapsed onto the ground. She'd been leaning against it without noticing, and when it opened inwards she fell back onto someone's feet.
"LILY!" Came a shriek from behind the now-horizontal redhead. Lily sat up. "Look what you've done! LOOK AT IT!" A foot, presumably the one she had been laying on before, was thrust directly into Lily's face. Before she had lain back on it, the toes of this foot had been painted a deep, bluish, hunter green. Lily recognized it as a batch of the homemade polish that was the result of a mother-daughter activity that had happened the summer before. Lily had participated as well, but the nail polish was soon discovered to be most temperamental: it always got on carpets and never came off one's nails. Petunia, for some reason, loved it. She'd been scandalized at Lily's quick removal of her own and had spent a most unPetunia-like afternoon rooting through the trash bin, looking for it. However, her attempts had proven futile, so Petunia had gone back to using her own at every available chance.
Now, however, Petunia's toenails were completely smeared up, and much of the polish was missing. Lily felt the back of her own scarlet hair and realized that this was where the rest of the polish was. The redhead looked back up at the still-screeching Petunia. By this time, however, Mrs. Evans had shown up, and she didn't look happy.
"Lily, what have you been doing? Your father is trying to watch the evening news!" Mrs. Evans asked her youngest daughter.
Lily was bored. Lily was tired. Lily had nail polish in her hair. Lily was not happy.
"WHY DO YOU ALWAYS BLAME EVERYTHING ON ME? IT'S NOT MY FAULT! IT'S NEVER MY FAULT! PETUNIA KICKED ME OUT OF THE DAMN ROOM AND BECAUSE YOU'RE SUCH HORRIBLE PARENTS I KNEW YOU WOULD YELL AT ME IF I WENT ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE HOUSE. AND THEN PETUNIA OPENED THE DOOR, I FELL BACK, AND SHE PRACTICALLY HAD A SEIZURE BECAUSE HER BLOODY NAILS ARE RUINED!" Lily screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Lily Jacqueline Evans! Where did you learn such language? I will not tolerate this in my house. If you were a little more agreeable, you would have been in the room, having fun, and none of this would've happened. Go to your ro-go to the attic."
"It's-it's not my fault," Lily said softly. As she walked away, she couldn't restrain the sobs that poured from her chest, portraying a most unusual depiction of the normally courageous, independent girl. She broke into a run and climbed up the rickety staircase to the attic.
Collapsing on an ancient trunk, Lily cried her heart out. The small girl never cried; not after being a baby who wailed so much. But now she cried for everything. Her parents treating her so poorly, Petunia's constant abuse, and the dislike everyone at school felt for her. Her soul had been eaten at for so long without her realizing it that the final blow caused her to break down completely. By the time Lily had gotten control of herself, her vocal chords were sore and her small nightgown was very damp. Vainly trying to wring this out, Lily glanced around the attic. She almost reached her hand up to the light switch, but the moon was so beautiful and gave off so much light that she decided against it. Instead, Lily glanced down at the trunk she was sitting on. It was made of polished wood and faded red crushed velvet, and was very large. It could easily have fit Lily inside, along with a good number of her favorite books. The lock was so ancient and rusted that it was barely hanging on. When Lily's pale, moonlit fingers brushed against it, the handle disintegrated completely. Lily bent down, the light of adventure kindling in her heart, and ran her fingers over the barely visible gold letters. If she squinted carefully enough, she could see that they spelled out Jacqueline Monique Evans, the name of her great-grandmother. Lily took a deep breath, overcome with the excitement of finding some family treasure, and pushed the lid open.
And treasure she found. Not gold from foreign places, not jewels of unknown origin, not deeds to wealthy property. No, this was the kind of treasure that Lily desired above all else: books. Ancient, well kept, leather and cloth covered books. There was Jane Eyre, Treasure Island, Our Town, Crime and Punishment, The Importance of Being Earnest, a whole collection of Jane Austin books, numerous pieces by Dickens, at least a half-dozen Shakespeare plays, and many others. There were easily twenty-five or thirty books, nearly all age-old classics. Some came from as early as Jacqueline Monique's childhood, while others were as new as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. And upon opening each one, Lily found signatures of the authors. She held Moby Dick to her chest, breathing in the wonderful, slightly musty scent that pervaded both the books and the chest. After she had reveled in the beauty of the volumes she'd found, Lily glanced into the trunk one more time. At the edges of the maroon cushioning, small leather pouches rose up the sides of the chest. Inside these were all sorts of amazing things: feather quills from all sorts of birds (cardinal, swallow, snowy owl), ink in colors like green, scarlet, and blue, and yellowed parchment. Some of this was blank, but the rest had beautiful, loopy cursive writing and was gathered into a bundle. Dates occasionally adorned this, and though Lily couldn't read French, she could tell it was a diary.
A smile to rival the tears Lily had been experiencing before spread across her face. This was beautiful. There actually was someone in her family she could relate to - many someones, for these books were from at least three different generations. She did belong, in some strange twisted way, to this family. Clearly Jacqueline Monique had loved reading, just like Lily did, for many of the signatures in the books were addressed to her.
Lily did not know how long she sat there, cradling the French diary, and staring up at the gigantic moon. Eventually, it occurred to her that someone might think to come looking for her. Not, of course, because they cared where she was, but because they thought she might do something to the attic. After piling all of Jacqueline's things into the trunk, Lily resolutely pushed it towards a back wall, behind the giant portrait of a ladle her crazy uncle Howard had painted. She winced slightly at the scratching noises the trunk made on the floor, but the few times that she did pause revealed that no one in the rest of the house was stirring. Brushing the dust from her hands, Lily walked downstairs. She rather wanted to sleep in the attic; unlike many such places the windows gave it great openness, but she wanted a blanket or something else that might warm the cold floor. The only blankets in the attic were moth-infested and smelled of her Great-aunt Charlimae.
On her way back from the hall closet, Lily paused slightly at the family room door; the flickering light she could see within looked as though they were coming from a television, but she knew everyone was asleep. Much as it annoyed her that she noticed as much, Lily knew that Petunia breathed differently (in a less forced, high-pitched kind of way) when she was sleeping.
Lily set down the blankets at the doorway and stepped inside. What she saw froze her heart even more than the way her parents treated her. Petunia was sitting, curled up in a ball with her head in Mr. Evans's lap, on the couch between him and Mrs. Evans. All three were asleep. Mr. Evans had his arm draped gently over his wife and daughter, while Mrs. Evans's hand rested on Petunia's blonde hair. They made the picture of a perfect family. Mr. Evans's blonde hair and horse-like jaw was identical to his daughter's, and Mrs. Evans bore the body structure of her daughter: both had long necks and very skinny limbs. Lily glanced down at herself. The only similarity she bore to her parents was her mother's crimson-colored hair; no one knew where her green eyes had come from. Lily secretly hoped that she had inherited them from Jacqueline Monique. Thinking about her appearance reminded Lily of the nail polish encounter. She reached back and felt the sticky substance. It had completely encrusted a few strands of her hair; it seemed as though it were permanent.
After switching the television to off, Lily glanced once more at the sadly perfect picture the rest of her family made, then went off to sleep in the attic, alone.
May fourteenth, 1960 was a stormy day, to say the least. The wind was strong to the point that it felt like the lashes of an invisible whip, and it beat upon the windows of the small clinic in Winchester with similar ferocity. Precipitation of unknown specification - it was a bizarre combination of hail, sleet, rain, and snow, pertaining to the least desirable aspects of each type of weather - crashed onto the ground as though it were far heavier than any worldly substance.
Inside the small hospital clinic, a beautiful, red-haired woman cradled a small, plump baby girl. The child had a tuft of violently red hair on her head to match her mother's, fingers that wouldn't stop latching onto things, and lungs that gave everyone nearby a splitting headache. A mere four hours after the little girl was born, and after she had desisted her constant screaming, Lily's sister, Petunia, who had wished fervently for a sister at Hanukah, was holding the long-awaited baby. It was in these moments, as the four-year-old blonde child gazed for the first time into the face of her sister, that Lily's eyes turned green. Unlike, well, unlike normal children, Lily's eyes did not take months to turn slowly into their color. Instead, the moment that Petunia looked into Lily's eyes, the blue eyes that all Caucasian babies possess turned instantly to a bright, deep, emerald-colored green. Petunia had shrieked and dropped Lily on her head.
Perhaps one who looked quickly back on the early lives of Lily and Petunia Evans would see this as the point where the relationship went sour. But that person would have to know the real history behind the Evanses to come to any conclusions.
Seven years after the day she'd met her sister, Lily Evans sat on her knees next to an oak door, pressing her small ear to the wooden framework. Inside, she could hear occasional loud squeals and exclamations of delight from her sister and the three friends who had been invited over. Now, Lily wasn't the type of person who idolized and stalked people like Petunia - self-absorbed, squealing, girls with little brains - but, perhaps for that reason, Lily had never had any close friends. It felt like her last hope to follow Petunia when the older girl had friends over. Normally, Lily could quench this strange desire by deeply immersing herself in some book, but her mother had actually forcibly forbade her daughter from laying a hand on her treasured books. In Mrs. Evans' opinion, Lily spent far too much time emerged in the fantastical worlds of poetry and fantasy. She would be better off, well, better off like Petunia.
It had been all that Lily could manage to convince her parents that, no, she didn't want to invite the peppy, squealing Amanda Blathers over. But in exchange for that small luxury, Mr. and Mrs. Evans had told Lily to socialize with Petunia and company. When the older girls had kicked Lily out (much to the latter's intense gratification), Lily's parents had told her to go right back into the room she and her sister shared. Lily knew that her parents would notice and grow angry if she were in any other part of the house, so she had resorted to sitting out in the hall, until either her sister let her in, or her parents passed by and commanded Lily to go inside.
But a good forty minutes of staring at the burgundy carpet had finally grown tiring; there was only a certain amount of time that the seven-year- old could remain engrossed in her own thoughts, particularly at eleven- thirty at night, the evening after her skull's size felt as though it had diminished considerably from all the time she had spent with the 'Twitter Gang.' So Lily had resorted to attempting to listen to what was going on inside the room. She wasn't the slightest bit interested, but it was better than counting the flecks of brown in the otherwise red carpeting. As Lily sat there, unable to discern anything besides the occasional 'Oh my!', 'You didn't!', 'He never!', etc., her thoughts wandered back to Petunia and why the eleven-year-old hated her so much.
Only vague incidents flew through her mind of times that had proven Petunia's spite, but Lily knew that, thinking back on it, she could find more, if she wanted. There was of course, the dropping-on-head incident, one that, to Lily's complete annoyance, simply had to be brought up every time she entered a conversation. Lily, for one, did not see the humor in being dropped on her own head. It wasn't her fault, and it hadn't lessened her brain capacity that much. At least Lily didn't think it had. She got poor marks in school because she 'didn't care' and 'didn't try'. This was balderdash, but Lily was the only one to think so. She understood the concepts very well, and read into very advanced arithmetic and sciences. But no one knew this. Lily was used to being compared to Petunia at her own expense, and she didn't want to give anyone any more reasons to find her inadequate. They had enough: Petunia was prettier, Petunia was 'smarter', Petunia was nicer, Petunia was more outgoing, Petunia was more popular.the list went on and on.
Another instance Lily remembered was the time when she and Petunia had been helping their mother to bake latkes, the winter before Lily turned five. Well, it could be counted as helping if one twisted events a little: Petunia spent most of the time debating whether or not to get her hands 'starchy' from the potatoes. Lily, on the other hand, dove into the flour sack the moment they began and twirled happily around the kitchen, using the exotic movements of a made-up dance and leaving glittering trails of flour everywhere she stepped. Mrs. Evans had really been the only one who got much done. But any work going on had been completely interrupted when Petunia decided that she wouldn't mind helping a little, as long as she didn't have to touch anything with her bare hands. She had stepped forward and Lily, still twirling and not expecting her sister's decision, had crashed into her.
It was like a scene out of one of the horrible sitcoms that Mrs. Evans watched so much: Before she slid across the floor, Petunia grasped the edge of the batter-bowl with her fingers and caused it to catapult across the room and land, perfectly, on her own head. Potatoes covered the eight-year- old from head to toe, and the powdery flour that Lily had been sprinkling everywhere seemed attracted magnetically to Petunia's form. Needless to say, that incident had gotten both Petunia and Mrs. Evans very angry with Lily, though Lily didn't understand how it was her fault and why it really mattered that much. She did accept that it was a tad unusual that the bowl had landed so perfectly on Petunia's head, despite the blonde girl's sliding movement across the floor, but Lily pushed it aside as mere coincidence.
Once, when she was six, Lily had been curled in her favorite rocking chair, reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Well, more like pretending to read; Lily loved looking at the words on a page even if she couldn't completely decipher their meaning. Strangely enough, for a girl who wound up loving books so much, she was very slow on mastering how one begins to interpret the words. Mr. Evans had brought the books back from America after a business trip there, and though they had originally been for Petunia, the older girl never read anything. Lily had 'abducted' (her phrase of the week; for a little girl she was very literate) the book from her sister's dusty shelves and was almost-reading over the first few chapters of 'Little House on the Prairie.' However, before she could get very far, an enraged blonde girl stomped into the room and snatched the book from Lily's hands, slamming it down on the stone hearth and hereby breaking the spine.
"W-what did you do that for?" an equally infuriated Lily had half-yelled.
"It's my book, It's my stuff, don't touch it!" Petunia had replied, her lengthy neck protruding even further than Lily had seen it do before, giving her a very ugly look that differed immensely from her 'youthful beauty.'
Normally the younger sister would meekly give up the glory of 'winning' one of their little arguments to Petunia, but not that day, she wouldn't. Lily could very well remember how mad she'd been. The words on the book's pages were really making sense now, and the small girl wanted to keep reading them.
"If I don't touch it, who will? You never read anything, Daddy just got you a book because he's ashamed at how stupid you are!"
"I'm stupid? I'm stupid?! This coming from the six-year-old who can't even read, and sits there looking at the pictures to amuse herself and make herself think that she's smart?" Much as she hated the leisure, Petunia had learned to read when she was three. "I only don't read because I know how smart I am, and wish not to flaunt it in other people's faces!"
"There aren't that many pictures in Little House On The Prairie! And at least I don't spend the day twittering madly with people at least as dumb, if not more, than myself! Books, even those I can't read, are far better than the company of a stupid, jealous sister, and her idiot, simpering friends!"
At these words, Petunia was flabbergasted. She wasn't particularly bright, and from her point of view the redhead (a good three heads shorter than Petunia) was very intimidating and an excellent arguer. To top it off, Petunia was one of the few people that did know Lily was smart; she often forced her younger sister to do her simple homework.
While the older girl muddled through confused thoughts, Lily enjoyed a few more moments of her sister's goldfish-like mouth, and then flounced away at the proper dramatic moment.
Lily had thought that she had outdone herself, put Petunia in her place, but she wound up getting in trouble; Petunia had told Mr. and Mrs. Evans that Lily had walked in and slammed her book on the floor, not the other way around. Petunia also seemed to have derived some cock-and-bull story about Lily, insisting that the younger girl had done something to make Petunia unable to speak. No amount of explaining on Lily's part could get her out of the coming punishment. She tried saying, again and again, that she wished she could shut Petunia up occasionally, but unfortunately didn't possess the power. The other members of the Evans' household deemed Lily's story childish and dishonest. For some reason unfathomable to Lily, Petunia remained jealous and angry long past the duration of Lily's punishment. Lily tried to be good-natured toward her sister, but it was difficult when Petunia was, well, such an idiot! And she thought I was good at arguing? Lily remembered thinking as she underwent her punishment of helping to bake pie after pie in a hot, crowded kitchen, for her mother's catering service.
Lily's thoughts were interrupted when the door she was leaning against flew open and she collapsed onto the ground. She'd been leaning against it without noticing, and when it opened inwards she fell back onto someone's feet.
"LILY!" Came a shriek from behind the now-horizontal redhead. Lily sat up. "Look what you've done! LOOK AT IT!" A foot, presumably the one she had been laying on before, was thrust directly into Lily's face. Before she had lain back on it, the toes of this foot had been painted a deep, bluish, hunter green. Lily recognized it as a batch of the homemade polish that was the result of a mother-daughter activity that had happened the summer before. Lily had participated as well, but the nail polish was soon discovered to be most temperamental: it always got on carpets and never came off one's nails. Petunia, for some reason, loved it. She'd been scandalized at Lily's quick removal of her own and had spent a most unPetunia-like afternoon rooting through the trash bin, looking for it. However, her attempts had proven futile, so Petunia had gone back to using her own at every available chance.
Now, however, Petunia's toenails were completely smeared up, and much of the polish was missing. Lily felt the back of her own scarlet hair and realized that this was where the rest of the polish was. The redhead looked back up at the still-screeching Petunia. By this time, however, Mrs. Evans had shown up, and she didn't look happy.
"Lily, what have you been doing? Your father is trying to watch the evening news!" Mrs. Evans asked her youngest daughter.
Lily was bored. Lily was tired. Lily had nail polish in her hair. Lily was not happy.
"WHY DO YOU ALWAYS BLAME EVERYTHING ON ME? IT'S NOT MY FAULT! IT'S NEVER MY FAULT! PETUNIA KICKED ME OUT OF THE DAMN ROOM AND BECAUSE YOU'RE SUCH HORRIBLE PARENTS I KNEW YOU WOULD YELL AT ME IF I WENT ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE HOUSE. AND THEN PETUNIA OPENED THE DOOR, I FELL BACK, AND SHE PRACTICALLY HAD A SEIZURE BECAUSE HER BLOODY NAILS ARE RUINED!" Lily screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Lily Jacqueline Evans! Where did you learn such language? I will not tolerate this in my house. If you were a little more agreeable, you would have been in the room, having fun, and none of this would've happened. Go to your ro-go to the attic."
"It's-it's not my fault," Lily said softly. As she walked away, she couldn't restrain the sobs that poured from her chest, portraying a most unusual depiction of the normally courageous, independent girl. She broke into a run and climbed up the rickety staircase to the attic.
Collapsing on an ancient trunk, Lily cried her heart out. The small girl never cried; not after being a baby who wailed so much. But now she cried for everything. Her parents treating her so poorly, Petunia's constant abuse, and the dislike everyone at school felt for her. Her soul had been eaten at for so long without her realizing it that the final blow caused her to break down completely. By the time Lily had gotten control of herself, her vocal chords were sore and her small nightgown was very damp. Vainly trying to wring this out, Lily glanced around the attic. She almost reached her hand up to the light switch, but the moon was so beautiful and gave off so much light that she decided against it. Instead, Lily glanced down at the trunk she was sitting on. It was made of polished wood and faded red crushed velvet, and was very large. It could easily have fit Lily inside, along with a good number of her favorite books. The lock was so ancient and rusted that it was barely hanging on. When Lily's pale, moonlit fingers brushed against it, the handle disintegrated completely. Lily bent down, the light of adventure kindling in her heart, and ran her fingers over the barely visible gold letters. If she squinted carefully enough, she could see that they spelled out Jacqueline Monique Evans, the name of her great-grandmother. Lily took a deep breath, overcome with the excitement of finding some family treasure, and pushed the lid open.
And treasure she found. Not gold from foreign places, not jewels of unknown origin, not deeds to wealthy property. No, this was the kind of treasure that Lily desired above all else: books. Ancient, well kept, leather and cloth covered books. There was Jane Eyre, Treasure Island, Our Town, Crime and Punishment, The Importance of Being Earnest, a whole collection of Jane Austin books, numerous pieces by Dickens, at least a half-dozen Shakespeare plays, and many others. There were easily twenty-five or thirty books, nearly all age-old classics. Some came from as early as Jacqueline Monique's childhood, while others were as new as J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. And upon opening each one, Lily found signatures of the authors. She held Moby Dick to her chest, breathing in the wonderful, slightly musty scent that pervaded both the books and the chest. After she had reveled in the beauty of the volumes she'd found, Lily glanced into the trunk one more time. At the edges of the maroon cushioning, small leather pouches rose up the sides of the chest. Inside these were all sorts of amazing things: feather quills from all sorts of birds (cardinal, swallow, snowy owl), ink in colors like green, scarlet, and blue, and yellowed parchment. Some of this was blank, but the rest had beautiful, loopy cursive writing and was gathered into a bundle. Dates occasionally adorned this, and though Lily couldn't read French, she could tell it was a diary.
A smile to rival the tears Lily had been experiencing before spread across her face. This was beautiful. There actually was someone in her family she could relate to - many someones, for these books were from at least three different generations. She did belong, in some strange twisted way, to this family. Clearly Jacqueline Monique had loved reading, just like Lily did, for many of the signatures in the books were addressed to her.
Lily did not know how long she sat there, cradling the French diary, and staring up at the gigantic moon. Eventually, it occurred to her that someone might think to come looking for her. Not, of course, because they cared where she was, but because they thought she might do something to the attic. After piling all of Jacqueline's things into the trunk, Lily resolutely pushed it towards a back wall, behind the giant portrait of a ladle her crazy uncle Howard had painted. She winced slightly at the scratching noises the trunk made on the floor, but the few times that she did pause revealed that no one in the rest of the house was stirring. Brushing the dust from her hands, Lily walked downstairs. She rather wanted to sleep in the attic; unlike many such places the windows gave it great openness, but she wanted a blanket or something else that might warm the cold floor. The only blankets in the attic were moth-infested and smelled of her Great-aunt Charlimae.
On her way back from the hall closet, Lily paused slightly at the family room door; the flickering light she could see within looked as though they were coming from a television, but she knew everyone was asleep. Much as it annoyed her that she noticed as much, Lily knew that Petunia breathed differently (in a less forced, high-pitched kind of way) when she was sleeping.
Lily set down the blankets at the doorway and stepped inside. What she saw froze her heart even more than the way her parents treated her. Petunia was sitting, curled up in a ball with her head in Mr. Evans's lap, on the couch between him and Mrs. Evans. All three were asleep. Mr. Evans had his arm draped gently over his wife and daughter, while Mrs. Evans's hand rested on Petunia's blonde hair. They made the picture of a perfect family. Mr. Evans's blonde hair and horse-like jaw was identical to his daughter's, and Mrs. Evans bore the body structure of her daughter: both had long necks and very skinny limbs. Lily glanced down at herself. The only similarity she bore to her parents was her mother's crimson-colored hair; no one knew where her green eyes had come from. Lily secretly hoped that she had inherited them from Jacqueline Monique. Thinking about her appearance reminded Lily of the nail polish encounter. She reached back and felt the sticky substance. It had completely encrusted a few strands of her hair; it seemed as though it were permanent.
After switching the television to off, Lily glanced once more at the sadly perfect picture the rest of her family made, then went off to sleep in the attic, alone.