His mouth turns up. He’s thirteen and I’m ten and he thinks he’s so much bigger. “Calla, are you paying attention?” My mother draws my attention away from Dare, and I try to focus on her words. What had she been saying? She sighs because she knows I have no clue. What she doesn’t know is that even now I feel Dare’s stare on me, it’s on my skin, it’s warming me, it’s warning me, it’s… “Calla, you have to listen to Sabine more. She’s here for your benefit. She knows what is best for you. She’s been telling me that you hide your pills, that you don’t want to take them.” I gag from the mere memory of how my pills get stuck in my throat, their waxy coating sticking on my tongue. “They taste awful,” I say defensively. My mother looks sympathetic, but she is still firm. “Calla, do you know that if you’d been born even a hundred years ago, you’d be the village lunatic?
