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Synopsis:
Stephanie fights reality every day. The voices inside, the ones declaring her worth, deem her broken, used and dirty. She is an object. A toy. Something to be tossed aside when bored. Who will believe her if she whispers the truth about her wrecking ball of a family? Eventually, her secret explodes and the person who means the most to her knows just how shattered she is and why she's so afraid. But rescue is closer than she realizes. Hidden in plain sight, her horror hasn’t been ignored by everyone. Racing against the truth of what she faces, forces are joining together and developing a plan to free her from the hell in her own backyard. And while she’s at her lowest point, she’s hit with the beauty of love at any cost - redemption in the face of ruin. Will it be enough?
*Warning: Contains mature content that may not be suitable for younger audiences*
*Warning: Contains mature content that may not be suitable for younger audiences*
Excerpt:
We stare at each other in silence, frozen in our spots on the sidewalk. I can see the Cloud Nine sign blinking neon in the distance, and just past that on the horizon, a blinding shade of orange bursting into red catches my attention.
“The sky is screaming.” My voice cracks against the quiet and startles Kevin out of his thoughts. He looks at the sky and then back at me.
“What?” he asks.
I point at the sunrise. “Look at the sky. It’s screaming. The colors are begging us to notice. The reds dancing and making a soft shade of pink on the clouds’ underbellies and the blue fighting for its own place in the sky.” I look at him and shrug my shoulders, “The sky screams for people to notice —even when we know no one will. I’ve said it before. The sunrise? It’s my constant. Even on the nights where I have to close my eyes to shut out things to simply survive, I always know the morning sky will scream my discontent to a world not listening. It’s violently beautiful and echoes my heart.” I stop, realizing Kevin is staring at me. Again.
A girl could get use to this, I think a bit pleased. I raise an eyebrow and look at him, waiting.
“You’re doing it again,” I say.
“Doing what?” he replies.
“Staring. Burning a hole into my face with your eyes. What gives?”
Kevin looks at me and pulls a stray hair from my ponytail between his fingers, watching the new sunlight make iridescent gold patterns on my uncut layers.
“You sound like a poet,” he says, smiling gently.
My insides become a puddle at the bottom of my rib cage. If only he knew just what he was capable of with those blasted eyes, I think to myself, trying to focus on what he’s saying. It seems important, judging by the intensity of his eyes and the set of his lips. I’m able to regain composure when he starts speaking again.
“When you speak, you sound like a poet. A broken, hurting, incomplete, yet hopeful poet.” He leans forward and whispers so softly I can barely hear him. “I sometimes hold it half a sin to put in words the grief I feel; For words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.”
“Tennyson.” I reply, my breath short with surprise that Kevin’s quoting one of my favorite poets.
He nodded, “Yeah. We read him the other day in English and it reminded me of you. You always ‘faintly trust the larger hope’ in anything you do. It amazes me.”
“It’s the only thing I can do. My life, as you have witnessed first hand, isn’t ideal. But I can hope, and I can dream, and I can look for moments when I feel alive—because I am. Still alive, despite everything.”
Elora Ramirez Bio:
Elora Ramirez lives in Austin, Texas with her chef-husband. At the age of four, she taught herself how to read and write, cutting her teeth on books like Dr. Seuss and writing anywhere she could find the space--including her Fisher Price kitchen set, the pages of picture books and Highlights Magazine. Since then, she's grown to love the way words feel as they swell within her bones. Writing holy and broken is her calling, and pushing back the darkness and pursuing beauty through story is her purpose. She embraces the power of story and teaches women from all parts of the world how to embrace theirs. She has a knack of calling things out , the truth and the detail, the subversive threads that make a life a story. She loves hip-hop, wishes she lived by the beach and cannot write without copious amounts of coffee, chocolate, music, and her husband's lavender liqueur.
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