Book 1
Diamonds are Forever Trilogy
Prologue
The screaming in the kitchen turns louder. Mommy and Daddy’s voices travel through the thin wall and sting my ears. It doesn’t hurt like when I had an ear infection, but it hurts in my chest, and I’m really scared.
I crouch in the corner on the bed I share with my brother, Damian, and hold Vanessa, my doll, close. I wish Damian was here, but it’s Sunday, and he’s delivering newspapers.
A thump shakes the bunker beds of my older brothers, Leon and Ian, against the opposite wall. Cups and plates rattle on the other side.
“Always the fucking same.” Daddy’s voice is too loud.
The neighbors will hear. I cringe, because they’ll look at me weird tomorrow when I play on the stairs.
“You’re all the fucking same.”
My heart flaps like the wings of that poor bird I saw in the awful cage in Auntie May’s kitchen with the poo scattered around it on the floor. I concentrate on the moldy patches on the wall and the crack that runs down the middle, holding my breath as I wait for the next thud to shake the floor. The dark stain in the corner looks like the head of a wolf with a long snout and a floppy ear. The one in the middle looks like a flower growing from the crack.
I knew it was coming, but when something crashes against the other side of the wall, I gasp quietly, careful not to make noise.
“It’s all right,” I whisper to Vanessa, clutching her tighter. I wish my name was something pretty like Vanessa. I hate my name. Zoe is a stupid name.
“How many times must I tell you, woman?” Daddy bellows. “You don’t—”
Mommy’s voice is shrill. “You don’t tell me what to do!”
I lay Vanessa on the bed, trembling as I try to block out the angry voices. “Shh.” She stares at me with big, happy eyes, but I know she’s just as scared as I am. I know how to smile to look brave.
Maybe they’ll stop.
Sometimes, they do.
I push Vanessa’s arm through the hole I’ve cut from one of granny’s napkins with Mommy’s nail scissors and tie the ends in a knot. It doesn’t matter that she only has one arm. It’s a pretty dress all the same.
Something crashes. The noise is sharp and dull, like when grandpa chops wood.
“I’ll fucking kill us all!” Daddy shouts.
Mommy’s footsteps fall hard on the floor. “Don’t touch me! I’ll stab you! I’m not kidding, you fucking prick!”
It hurts to breathe. My eyes burn and tears start to drip. They plop on my hands, warm and wet. I’m dizzy and hot, like when I had the flu. Scrambling off the bed, I grab Vanessa and my book and dash down the short hallway to the broom closet at the end.
Please don’t let them see me.
I close my eyes as I pass the kitchen door, but nobody calls my name or grabs the collar of my dress. The closet door squeaks as I open it and slip inside the darkness that smells of shoe polish and dust. I close it tightly, so tightly you can’t even see the light through the crack, and feel under the cushions on the scratchy blanket of my nest for the flashlight. Huddling in the corner of my hiding place, I flick on the light and rock with Vanessa and my book in my arms.
The book is big and heavy. It’s my only other possession, and I take it everywhere I go. The pages are dirty from all the times I’ve licked my fingers to separate them. Damian says they have dog ears, although I’m not sure where he sees the dogs. When I ask him, he just laughs at me. The spine is cracked and slack with stitches sticking out like my dresses when Mommy takes out the seams so I can wear them another year. When I open the book, it falls open at the same place it always does, on the first page of my favorite story about the princess and the frog.
The tinkling of breaking glass pierces my safe place. Pinching my eyes shut, I block out the terrible sound that’s scarier than monsters.
More stuff falls over somewhere.
I force myself to open my eyes and look at the picture. I know each outline and every color of the princess in her puffy, pink dress, the golden ball lying next to the pond, the green leaves of the water lilies, and the frog sitting on them.
Pushing my finger on the page, I drag it along the letters as I whisper, “Once upon a time…”
I can’t read yet, but I know the story by heart.
“…there was a beautiful princess who lived in a castle.”
The book is like magic. The world in the story becomes real, and the sounds coming from down the hallway fade as I turn into the princess in the pink dress, standing next to the pond on the softest, greenest grass in my silk slippers with my golden ball. I’m a beautiful girl with yellow hair just like in the picture, not the boring color of dark-brown coffee like my own hair, and—
I jerk when the door opens.
“Hey, Zee,” Damian says, calling me by his special name for me when his face appears in the crack. “Can I come in?”
He doesn’t wait for me to say yes. He crawls in, bending double to fit under the shelf because he’s ten and not only twice my age, but also twice my size.
When he’s closed the door and settled opposite me, he asks, “What are you reading?”
The space is so small even with our knees pulled up our legs press together.
Sniffing, I shrug. He knows the stories by heart, too, because he’s the one reading them to me. It’s not like I have another book.
He nudges me. “Want me to read it to you?”
I shrug again but turn the book around for him to see the letters.
He ruffles my hair. “Next year, when you go to school, you’ll learn to read, then you don’t have to wait for me, and you can read other books, better books.”
I hold Vanessa tighter. “I like it when you read to me. I like these stories.”
Ian and Leon are older. When they’re not in school, they’re in the street with their friends, getting up to no good as Mommy always says. I don’t see them much, and when I do, they mostly tease me. Damian is only in grade five and not allowed to go out in the street alone after school. He has to stay and look after me, so Mommy won’t be cross when she comes home from work.
“You won’t want to read these silly stories anymore when you’re in school,” he says.
Fresh tears prick behind my eyes. “They’re not silly.”
“This isn’t like life at all,” he says, sounding all grownup.
I jut out my chin. “It is, too.”
“Is not.”
“Is, too! One day, I’ll find a prince, and marry him, and be a princess, and live in a castle, and we’ll live happily ever after. You’ll see.”
His sigh is deep and heavy, sounding just like Daddy when he comes back from a day of what he calls deep diggin’. I always imagine deep mine diggin’ to be making a big hole in the middle of a lawn for a sparkling blue swimming pool.
“Life isn’t a fairytale, Zee. There’s no knight on a white horse who’s going to rescue you. You have to do it yourself.”
Pressing my hands over my ears, I block him out. I block out the nasty words, because they’re not true. I know they’re not.
He pulls away my hands. “I’m not telling you this to be mean. I’m telling you this, so you won’t be disappointed one day.”