Daddy's Little Angel Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  chapter 33

  chapter 34

  chapter 35

  chapter 36

  chapter 37

  chapter 38

  chapter 39

  chapter 40

  chapter 41

  chapter 42

  chapter 43

  chapter 44

  chapter 45

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

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  For my father,

  Robert W. Petroff,

  the world’s best dad.

  I know I’ll always have a real angel

  watching out for me.

  I miss and love you.

  A lot went into this book, and there are many people I want to thank.

  First, my incredible editor, Judy Goldschmidt, for your talent, support, and advice—and for taking a chance on me. I couldn’t be in better hands.

  And special thanks to Francesco Sedita, Bonnie Bader, and all the people at Penguin who made this book a reality.

  J. David McKenney for the fabulous cover illustration.

  Jodi Reamer, my dream agent, for helping guide my career.

  Micol Ostow—an amazing teacher, colleague, and friend. This would not be happening right now without you.

  Darci Manley for screaming, “That’s the book,” when I said maybe I should write about a girl who finds out her dad is the devil. Then for your continued help throughout the whole process.

  Joanne Donovan for the title suggestion and so much more. Yvette Ferreol for reading everything I wrote from the start. Anna Hecker and Jocelyn Davies for your constant encouragement, feedback, and friendship. Shana Grossman for your help, support, and photo expertise. Kristen Kemp for making me a better writer. The same goes, although in a different way, to Fox 5. And to Macy, Patricia, and all of my writer friends for all of your thoughts and suggestions.

  To my family and friends: Thank you, thank you, thank you. There’s so much I want to say here and people I want to name, but this would end up being longer than the book. But know, I feel truly blessed to have you all in my life. Andrea, while you’ve only been part of the family for a short time, I could

  not imagine it without you. We’re lucky to have you.

  Jordan, you probably know me better than anyone. I couldn’t ask for a better brother. I’ll always be here for you, and I know the opposite is true as well.

  And, finally, Mom. I don’t even have the words. What are you supposed to say to someone who always puts you first and is the most wonderful woman you know? You’re my biggest fan. Please know, I’m yours, too.

  I love you guys.

  chapter 1

  “You’re evil!”

  Okay, I know that’s not the nicest way to speak to your mother, but believe me—she deserved it.

  For months—five of them to be exact—I had begged to go to the Mara’s Daughters concert. They’re 110 percent the coolest indie band ever, and they were actually going to play in my little podunk of a town. Why they’d come to Goode, Pennsylvania, was beyond me, but, hey, I wasn’t complaining. That concert was the biggest thing to happen here in like—forever. To top it off, they were going to perform on my thirteenth birthday.

  Sounds like a dream come true, right?

  Well, try actually getting tickets.

  I thought it was a sure thing. In a rare moment of normalcy, my mother said she’d get them for me and my BFF Gabrielle Gottlieb. Only, tickets sold out online in fifteen seconds flat, lines at Ticketmaster stretched past eternity, and prices on eBay were so high that even if my mother sold our souls, she wouldn’t have been able to afford them.

  That meant I was stuck with iTunes while the greatest band I’d ever heard was playing just a few blocks down the street. It felt like a cruel joke. Mara’s Daughters was unbelievable. You could totally get one of their songs stuck in your head for three days straight. Everybody said so. And by everybody I mean Cole Daniels.

  He was another reason I really needed tickets. The concert was finally going to give me something to talk to him about. I’d overheard him in French class telling Reid Winters that Mara’s Daughters was the best new band around. And if anyone would know, it’s him. He’s a huge music fan. He’s always drumming on his desk and sometimes he even hums a little. It’s supercute. There’s no way he would ever miss a Mara’s Daughters concert. So it was extra important for me to be there, too.

  But it didn’t look like that was going to happen. That is, until the morning of my birthday.

  It started out like any other day. After pounding my snooze button more times than I could keep track of, I got out of bed, got dressed, and raced downstairs to inhale my breakfast quickly enough to make it to schoo
l by the first bell. But when I poured myself a bowl of Lucky Charms, something unexpected happened. An envelope containing two tickets to Mara’s Daughters came tumbling out of the box. The shrieks of joy I let out were so loud, my mother grabbed her five-foot totem pole for protection before rushing out of her room to investigate.

  Don’t ask.

  “Angel,” she said, practically trembling, “what’s wrong?”

  With her frizzy, black hair fanned out on top of her head, her brown eyes lasering in on my face, her fuzzy, blue bathrobe hanging open over her floral granny nightgown, and that humongous stick in hand, she looked like she escaped from the insane asylum. But who cared? She had come through for me. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said. All I could do was hug her—pole and all. “How did you get these?”

  “Huh?”

  For a second she looked at me as if I had whacked her on the head with that giant piece of wood she was carrying.

  “The tickets!”

  She was completely confused.

  “These,” I said, holding them up.

  She approached me slowly and carefully. It was as if I were holding a small yet dangerous beast that could spook at the tiniest false move.

  “Where did you get those?”

  “The Lucky Charms.”

  She snatched the tickets from my hand, as well as the envelope, which she turned upside down. A tiny piece of paper fell out. I hadn’t noticed she left the receipt in there. At least her behavior sort of made sense now. I figured she didn’t want me to know how much she’d spent.

  She quickly scooped the receipt off the floor. Reading it made her eyes bug out. “You can’t go to the concert,” she snapped.

  “What do you mean I can’t go? You’re the one who got me the tickets in the first place. You can’t take them back now.”

  “I said you’re not going.”

  “Please don’t do this to me,” I pleaded as I took a step toward her. “Not today. Not on my birthday.”

  “I’m not doing anything to you. I’m doing it for you,” she said.

  Tears welled up in my eyes. Why was she acting like this? I was already a nobody at school—one of those people no one even bothered making fun of. Why couldn’t my mother let me have one thing that would help me fit in, at least a little?

  Mom tightened her grip on the receipt. I couldn’t figure out what her problem was. She was the one who bought the tickets.

  “I’ll pay for the concert myself. I still have some babysitting money.”

  “It’s not the money,” she said.

  “Then what is it?”

  Her eyes quickly glanced down at the receipt and back up again. “Nothing.”

  Whatever was going on, the slip was obviously a clue. “Can I see that?”

  “No,” she replied.

  “Just let me . . . ”

  My mother crumpled the paper into a tiny ball and started to put it in her mouth, but I grabbed her hand before she was able to get it in. I was ready for that one. It wasn’t the first time she tried to eat something she didn’t want me to see. Last summer she had my birth certificate for lunch.

  I tugged at her fingers, trying to get the paper out. She held on tight, but I had an advantage. She still had the totem pole with her, so it made it harder for her to get away. With one final yank I managed to get the receipt out of her hand. Only it wasn’t a receipt. It was a note.

  A note that said, “Love, Dad.”

  chapter 2

  I wrapped my arms around my stomach. What brand of mind game was my mother playing this time? “Why’d you sign the note ‘Dad’?”

  She looked away from me.

  I held myself tighter. “What’s going on?”

  She still wouldn’t speak.

  “Just tell me. Why would you do that?”

  “I didn’t,” she said.

  This was getting to be too much, even from my mother. I was used to her acting, well, different. She was a new age groupie—times ten. It was pretty bad. She even sold “magic” stones, potions, and other “healing” products online. www.aurasrus.com. Yep. Auras-R-Us. And just last week, I came home from school to find her putting a pair of my shorts on the George Foreman. When I asked her about it, she said she was preparing them for a physical safety spell, and went right back to her grilling as if it were just one of her ordinary chores.

  I waited for Mom to say something else, but it didn’t look like I’d get more out of her. Then, before I had given them permission, my lips were moving and my vocal chords were producing sound.

  “Is Dad really dead?”

  The question just came out. I had thought about asking it so many times, but I always held back. This time it kind of just asked itself. I’m not even really sure where my suspicions came from. Mom just always seemed worried when she talked about him—as if there were a threat of him hearing her.

  “Yes, he’s dead,” she said after pausing for about seven decades. The lights flickered, which struck me as oddly coincidental, and she grasped the kitchen counter and shut her eyes. “Well . . . he’s kind of dead.”

  What?!

  “You cannot be kind of dead. You either are or you’re not.”

  “That’s not always true,” she said, now rummaging through the utensil drawer.

  “You’re not making any sense,” I shot back. “Just tell me. Is my father alive?”

  Instead of answering me, she pulled out no less than a dozen of the crystals she had stashed in random places in our kitchen and quickly placed them in a circle on the floor around me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, stepping outside of her stone prison.

  “Protecting you,” she said, following me.

  “Just tell me what’s going on with my dad.”

  She stuffed a crystal in each of my pockets. “You’re better off without him. Your father’s the—”

  “I know, I know,” I cut her off. “My father’s the devil.” I’d heard it before, more times than I could count. “Right. And he magically ascended up from the netherworld after thirteen years just to give me Mara’s Daughters tickets.”

  “It appears that way,” she said staring at me, her face looking superserious. “Although knowing him, he’s just trying to worm his way into your life.”

  “So he’s alive?”

  “No.” She tugged at the belt on her robe.

  “Mom,” I said, mustering up every ounce of self-restraint. “Can you try to converse like we both speak English? What is going on?”

  “Nothing. Your father is dead. I wrote the note. I thought it would be nice for you to have something from him, then I changed my mind.”

  I clutched the crystal in my left pocket so hard, my hand went numb. “Then what does ‘kind of dead’ mean?”

  “That’s a good question,” she said. “What is death really? Just because one’s body leaves this planet doesn’t mean their soul is go—”

  I cut her off. “Mom. Please, enough with the woo-woo talk. Just tell me what you meant.”

  She let out a deep breath. “Just that he’s not dead in your memory.”

  Now it was my turn to stare. I’d never met the guy. How could I possibly have any memories of him?

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a mistake.”

  Uhh. Understatement of the year.

  “So the tickets are from you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that means I can go to the concert,” I sort of declared more than asked.

  My mother paused. “Yes. We can go to the concert.”

  Hallelujah! Finally. Wait a minute. Did she say we? “You mean me and Gabi, right?”

  “No. I mean you and me. You’re too young to go without an adult.”

  I couldn’t go to the concert with my mother. No one was going with a parent, not even Max Richardson, and he was a bigger outcast than me, if that was even possible. He was always kind of a nerd, but after getting paired up with Courtney Lourde last year in science class,
it got much, much worse. They were dissecting a cow’s eye. Max made the first slice and ended up shooting eye-juice all over Courtney’s brand-new sweater. One mistake with the scalpel was all it took. His fate as loser extraordinaire was sealed forever. “I don’t need a chaperone. They’re having it at the high school. It’s right down the street.” Events run by the town were usually held there. It was the biggest space in Goode.

  “I don’t care if it’s next door. You’re not going to something like that by yourself.”

  “I won’t be by myself. I’ll be with Gabi. If you care about me at all, you’ll let me go without you,” I pleaded, giving her my saddest eyes. “Come on. Just this once for my birthday. I’d kill for this.”

  “Angel Kindness Garrett, do not ever let me hear you say that again.”

  I told you she was a little nutty. Who names their kid Kindness?

  “Say what again?”

  “That you’re prepared to kill.”

  I couldn’t take this anymore and banged my head on the counter. Not the smartest move—it hurt. “It’s an expression. I’m not going to kill anyone. I just want to go to the concert.”

  “And you can. With me.”

  “But Mom—”

  “Angel, I don’t want to hear it. It’s your choice. You either go to the concert with me, or you don’t go. End of discussion.”

  I ran to the back door. With one foot outside, I turned back toward her. “You’re evil. I wish my dad was alive. Even the devil would be better than you.”

  chapter 3

  My bicycle reached new speeds as I raced toward school. I felt like riding off to Meaning or Jerkstone or Killingsworth—or some other town my mother boycotts. She thinks an area’s name affects its aura. That’s why we live in Goode. She says it has a peaceful vibe. She obviously never went to school here.