Prologue

Daniel "Danny" Desai contemplated his reflection in the grimy mirror of the gas station bathroom where he and his mother had made their latest pit stop. The face staring back at him had not changed in any dramatic way since the last time he'd caught a glimpse of himself and yet, as always, it seemed somehow unrecognizable. Though it had been five unspeakable years, he hadn't stopped hoping to catch a glimpse of the child he had once been, the eleven year old boy who'd once harbored hope for a future poised with brightness and possibility. What he saw instead was a world weary sixteen year old who had faith in very little, particularly those who claimed to love him. The wide eyed wonder of his youth had long since faded.

Gone were his sparkling, innocent eyes filled with merriment and mischief. Now they were hooded, jaded and perpetually wary. A future that had once been filled with promise was now fraught with pitfalls. At eleven, he had been fresh-faced and guileless, the very image of an inexperienced choir boy. Now, at sixteen, he looked every inch the impenitent felon he was believed to be. His hair had grown long and unkempt in the past five years and had given itself over to a riotous tendency to curl. Even confined in a haphazard topknot, messy locks of dark brown hair managed to escape their band and frame his face in wavy tendrils.

In addition to his hair, he had also managed, much to his mother's everlasting dismay, to slip away and get his ear pierced sometime during their tense road trip. Danny admired the piercing in the mirror and ran his index finger along the delicate edge of the glinting, gold hoop. He had decided to be non-traditional and get the outer shell of his ear pierced rather than the lobe, though getting the lobe done was still a possibility...maybe his eyebrow, nose and tongue too if he felt like it. Not that he was truly all that eager to mutilate his tongue but...it might just be worth it to horrify his mother. Danny smirked to himself when he recalled Karen Desai's galled expression when he sat down across from her at breakfast the morning after his piercing.

"Oh my God..." she had uttered in disbelief.

Danny casually buttered his toast and pretended not to know what had caused her sudden flare of ire. "Can't say I've heard that comparison before, Mother. Now the devil, on the other hand? That's more my speed. But I guess 'oh my devil' doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily."

She shook her head in disgust, looking for a moment like she wanted to reach across the table and snatch the small hoop from his ear right then and there. "What were you thinking?" she bit out with a disgusted glower, "It's bad enough that you refuse to cut your hair. Now this."

"What's wrong with my hair? It keeps me warm."

His mother had been less than amused by his flippancy. She pursed her heavily glossed, cosmetically enhanced lips. "You look like a delinquent, Danny."

"Mother, have you forgotten where I was two days ago?" he reminded her dryly, "I am a delinquent. Get used to it."

He knew what she was really worried about. She didn't want him to make a bad impression, to "get off on the wrong foot," so to speak when they returned home, back to Green Grove, New York, back to the place where his life had changed irrevocably. Danny's lips quirked in a humorless smirk. Only his mother would believe that a clean cut, presentable appearance could help the residents of Green Grove forget that he had spent the last five years of his life locked up in the Huntington Juvenile Correction Facility for murdering his aunt. Then again, his mother had always possessed a streak of pure delusion that would almost be impressive if it weren't so embarrassingly pathetic. In Karen Desai's mind, if he smiled enough and was charming enough and wished hard enough then his past could be forgotten in a glittering shower of pixie dust.

So, that was the gist of it, the thing that had him shut away in the bathroom rather than perusing the gas station snack aisle. He was going back...back to the place where his life had begun and, symbolically, to where it had ended as well. And though he was finally free from his five year incarceration, Danny realized that he remained imprisoned by his past and the difficult choices he'd made as an eleven year old boy. That, he suspected, was something from which he'd never be free. The realization saddened him but also filled him with a chilling sort of resolve. After all, by this point, he had nothing left to lose.

His good name had been forever ruined. His future was shot to hell. His father was dead. And his friends were long gone. The one person he had left to support was his lush of a mother and they had never been especially close so even that was tantamount to being on his own. One of his buddies in juvie had always said to him, "It's on you, man. Its' all on you. You put yourself in here. You gotta get yourself out." Danny supposed the same thing could be said for mental and emotional prisons. He didn't have to be there if he didn't want to be.

With that in mind, he took one last look at his reflection and squared his shoulders. From that moment onward, he decided, he was going to live life on his own terms. Screw Green Grove. Screw his mother. And screw the past. He was going to look out for himself for a change and damn the rest.

Damn them all.