NATIVE (Sneak Preview)

CHAPTER ONE

Allegheny Mountains

Coleton, Pennsylvania

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ANNIE

SUMMER 2002

We were just girls when Clare and I first met and until I moved to California hardly a day passed that we didn’t see each other. By all rights we shouldn’t have been friends. Town girls never spoke to kids from the Holler. We were teenagers before seeing her outside the classroom and then only at dances. At first she came alone wearing gaudy dresses out of thrift shops or Walmart and her hair hung down her back in snarls. She stayed on her feet all night, asking boys to dance and when she wasn't dancing she stood in a corner and glared at the crowd, drinking a coke we were sure was spiked. Rumor had it that she ended up in the back seat of a car on every date. Even Ronnie Black, the football star, brought her to a dance once. He held her hand in the crook of his arm and walked into the gym smiling defiantly at anyone who looked his way. And we all did, of course. But we never spoke to Clare. Or at least I didn't until the year I turned fourteen.