blaire greene, the girl who loved

chapter one

Blaire Greene liked to think of herself as a sensible person. She wasn't superstitious in the slightest. She didn't believe in ghosts, was never scared of the monsters that might lurk in the dark even as a child, and magic? Don't speak of it.

So you could imagine how she might feel at the situation she found herself in.

It started when her mother excitedly announced that they were moving... again. For what might actually be the hundredth time. Yes, London was grey and dreadfully dull. She had no friends, school hadn't started yet, and their only neighbors had one foot inside the grave.

But, well... for every downside there was an upside. She never had many friends in the first place, but school could change that. She was eager to see how British education differed from American education, and that old lady across the street (who might just be filthy rich) had been kind enough to offer a hefty bit of money to help keep her house clean. She practically lived in a wheelchair, though she could walk, it was extremely painful for her.

And her mother had promised. This was the last house, the last move. This was the place they would make into a home.

Her baby sister, Wysteria Greene, had kick-started this promise. She was only six years old, and hadn't handled their last move well. Wysteria stopped eating, playing, smiling. Worried, Blaire had forced that promise out of her mother using a great deal of guilt-trippping. If their mother actually cared, she would have made that decision herself.

And Wystie was finally getting better! She had made a friend at the park the other day, was starting to tentatively warm up to food again, and she had actually been laughing and running around the past couple days.

So when their mother, pleased as can be, broke the news– Blaire just blew up at her.

"You have always been so selfish!" Blaire had screamed, and that had led to an argument that had her thankful that all her neighbors' hearing was shot to high hell. They stopped when she heard her sister crying in the hallway.

"We aren't moving." Had been her final words, before she went to comfort her anxious sister.

At least, those had been her final words until two days later.

She was already stressed out of her mind because Wystie had taken several steps back in progress. She wasn't eating anymore, stopped smiling and would even burst into tears randomly. She didn't even want to go to the park anymore, staying in bed and clinging to Blaire's old stuffed monkey. Her days were dutifully spent coaxing her into eating, and reassuring her that this was their home now and they wouldn't be moving.

"Your big sister will take care of everything." She had promised, stroking her blonde curls, so unlike Blaire and their mother, who both had dark straight hair.

She had (apparently) wrongly assumed that  that would be the last of it. They used to fight like that all the time, of course, but not since her mother had made that promise. She was just testing her limits, surely she wasn't actually considering it.

But, lol and behold, she was approached by their mother who was clutching a pamphlet in her hands. She set it down in front of her on the kitchen table.

"I was thinking Brazil." She had said casually, like she was talking about the weather and not something that had caused great strife between them.

Blaire couldn't have stopped herself even if she had given a bit of time to think it through. She slapped her mother. Hard.

Her mother's grey eyes were wide with shock, and Blaire's equally grey eyes mirrored that. She had never hit anyone before, and especially not her mother.