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DAISY SUTHERLAND WAS HAVING A rotten night, and not just because she'd been dropped in the middle of Nowhere-Land, Maine, to spend the rest of the summer in absolute solitude.
Well, not solitude exactly. Surely her aunt and uncle would allow her to leave their god-forsaken house, but everything good and fun and worthwhile was all the way back in Colorado, and she was here, instead of there.
But really, her current rottenness had less to do with Nowhere-Land, and more to do with the fact that her goddamn bedroom window was jammed shut. She'd been working at it for the past seven and a half minutes, and still, it refused to budge.
Old paint knocked against the sill with every push, landing in her hair and on her bedsheets while she shoved against it, trying to pry it from its place. The wood groaned against her in the way that old houses do, almost as if it were trying to fight back. The rest of the home was like that, too. Ancient and creaky, as if, whenever the wind blew, there was a small chance it would topple in on itself.
She worked at it for what seemed like another ten years—but in actuality was only two minutes—before figuring to stick her fingers between the window frame and the sill, and, using all her upper body strength, pull it apart
The window finally gave way, thrusting up against the top of the mantle with a thud loud enough to rattle the entire house.
Daisy stumbled backward, tripping over unused momentum and hitting the ground with a quieter, yet substantial, thud. Forgetting herself, she spat out a curse, then slapped a hand over her mouth.
Apparently, luck was not on her side tonight—though, not that it usually was.
She lunged for her sheets, and rolled back into bed. The quilt was barely over her face when the door creaked open. Her heart hammered in her esophagus like a stamped of wild rhinos, sending a flush of heat to her face, and a pit of fear to her stomach.
"Daisy?" A voice ventured into the silence—which, now that the window was open, wasn't much of a silence at all, not with the crickets squawking and the trees rustling against the breeze. Renata, Daisy's aunt on her mother's side, stood at the doorframe, trying to rub the sleep from her eyes. "Are you alright?"
If the house weren't shrouded in darkness, her person would be clearer. Unlike Daisy, she looked almost identical to her sister, with soft hazel eyes and golden hair, containing a single streak of white hair that every member of the Sutherland line shared—a stubborn gene, that refused to die off or go away. Despite Daisy having taken more after her father—in temperament as well as appearance—with her pale eyes and dark hair, she had it as well.
