Wild Berries 🍓 Fezco

Prologue 🍓

Natalie Eastman was told from a very young age that she was smart. She was to do great things, like cure cancer or make Mars habitable.

Natalie was taught to cook by her grandmother, a grouchy old woman who used more salt than her heart could handle, and to clean by her mother, a proper lady, proper wife, and a proper bitch.

When she turned fifteen she made her own cake and her mother decorated it. Fifteen candles were burning on that ugly cake, black wicks curled into themselves and wax pooled on top of ugly magenta icing. Natalie had asked for purple. She blew out half in one breath and when she was rushed to extinguish the rest, she grabbed a handful.

The tears didn't come till later.

At six months old her parents were rewarded for having a cute baby. Rewarded with twenty five thousand dollars. Natalie was on commercials for months, little chubby cheeks stuffed with blended green beans and preservatives. She giggled for the camera and pooped green for weeks. They say that's normal for babies.

In middle school Natalie was bullied. Not for being fat, or emo, or ugly, but for those commercials. The day before winter break she opened her locker to find green mush spread all over her books, the walls of her locker, and her gym clothes.

Nate Jacobs stayed after school and helped wipe the slimy green sauce off of her advanced math book. He walked her home and promised he wouldn't let anyone do anything else to her.

Natalie hates the color green.

To the Eastman family, beauty is almost as important as intelligence. Almost. Natalie's mother taught her nothing about beauty, yet told her she would get nowhere in life unless she was beautiful. Marcus Eastman would do her hair daily. Half of her blonde ringlets would fall loose on her back, the other half held up tightly with a clear elastic and a silk bow tied expertly.

Every Christmas, Natalie's gifted with expensive beauty products. Foundations in frosted glass bottles and heavy eyeshadow palettes. But mascara... mascara's different. Natalie's never met a mascara she didn't like, whether it's five dollars or fifty two, she likes them all.

So what if she chose LashBlast over Better Than Sex? They all do the same thing!  Maybe she's just dramatic, but Natalie prefers to see the black streaks on her cheeks more than the bruises Nate will leave on her when he rants about Maddy.

She likes how hard she has to scrub to get the residue off.

Rue Bennett was invited to Natalie's ninth birthday. The cake was purple and had pink butterflies. All the little girls she went to school with swam in the pool and watched as Natalie opened numerous gifts. Toys from her peers and books from her elders... she's smart, remember?

When Rue's dad died, Natalie was offered some pills. She already took Adderall to "help her study", but this was new. This was Xanax. This was OxyContin. Maybe Natalie didn't take enough, or the dose just wasn't high enough, but the Xanax just made her feel calm, not euphoric. But the Oxy? The OxyContin made her feel happy, numb, and at ease.

When Rue ran out, so did she... so she looked. Her grandfather's chronic back pain and hefty insurance plan left him with as many OxyContins as he wanted, and Ralph just gave her the bottle when she asked if she could use it to study the chemical makeup and how the bonds mend. At the dinner table her grandparents told the room they had a pharmacist on their hands.

Pharmacists don't test their product.

🍓

up top is the book cover so u can see it in better quality <3
leah