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CHAPTER ONE.Pilot
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THE SUN AND THE MOON. The orange tabby and the black cat. Two sides of the same coin. Opposites, and yet truly they had very few differences.
You could say that's what made them best friends.
Hazel Greenwood and Sadie McCullough were the type of friends you'd think were soulmates. Their lives intertwined by a pretty gold ribbon as they stumbled into each other's worlds. They became each other's worlds. Best friends who could spend weeks at each other's houses. Invited on family vacations. They were the only friends they didn't have to ask permission to see or invite over. A bonus sister in each of their households.
The two of them both moved into a small town in Virginia in the sixth grade. From the moment they met, they became best friends. You often didn't see one without the other. Their houses were a few streets down from each other, leading to many nights of one sporadically showing up at the other's front door.
Hazel's dad moved to Mystic Falls, Virginia after getting a job offer to run the local library. So, Hazel joined her father in the move. Her mother and stepdad, Rachel and Joseph Manson, lived just outside of town, raising Hazel's little step-sister and her older step-brother. The library was one of Hazel's favorite parts of the town. Though she didn't read as much as she would like, she loved being surrounded by stories and pieces of history. She also loved having an easy summer job helping her dad organize the shelves and repair damaged books.
Sadie's family moved in the same month as the Greenwoods to be closer to their own family. Sadie's mom was the younger sister of Mayor Richard Lockwood. And though Sadie often pretended her cousin, Tyler, didn't exist, the girl often had to deal with him at the town events. At every party, dinner, or fancy gathering, Sadie would stand in between Tyler and her own mom, smiling in photos as if she were part of this picture-perfect family. But she never felt that way. Not when Tyler was as problematic as they come and his own parents were privileged assholes. Part of it made her blood boil.
Luckily for Sadie, her summer vacation spent little time with the Lockwood family, and more with the Greenwoods and the Manson's. If Sadie wasn't working at the local library, she was at Hazel's house watching movies and eating junk food. The last two weeks of summer, she and Hazel had been on vacation with Hazel's mom, exploring France and all of its tourist attractions. But summer was ending, most people back home for their first day of school in the morning. That included both the McCullough and her best friend.
Hazel sat in the corner of her bedroom, curled up in a papasan chair with a book in hand. Nighttime had settled on her town, and the streets were quiet as kids prepared for their first day of school in the morning. Their last day of summer was filled with overdramatic despair and frowns. Hazel herself didn't mind. She had always loved school. A stable routine, a natural way to be social (for someone who often didn't like being social), she was a natural learner, and it just made her feel more content.
