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Excerpt fromThe Hazel Woodby Melissa Albert
CHAPTER 1
Althea Proserpine is raising her daughter on fairy tales.
Credit: Flatiron Books
Then she went missing.
Youd get lost on the way to finding me, she says.
Youd need breadcrumbs, or a spool of thread.
My mom tells me thats impossibleour car doesnt have a sunroof.
But I can still close my eyes and see it, so Im holding on to it.
Althea was already secluded in her big house then, and Id never met her.
She had no friends, just fans, and my mother told me thats what the man was.
A fan who wanted to use me to get to my grandma.
For a few years Id persisted in believing he was my dad.
We didnt have the luxury of being nostalgic.
We didnt have a chance to stand still.
Until the year I turned seventeen, and Althea died in the Hazel Wood.
*
When my mother, Ella, got the letter, a violent shudder ran through her.
That was before she opened it.
The envelope was creamy green, printed with her name and the address of the place we were staying.
Wed arrived the night before, and I wondered how it found us.
With shaking hands, she slit the envelope jaggedly through its middle.
Her nail polish was so red it looked like shed cut herself.
Ella made a sound I didnt recognize, a gasp of complicated pain that cut my breath off clean.
Then she crumpled the letter up and tossed it into the trash.
But Ella pulled out a cigarette anyway, and lit it off an antique crystal lighter.
My mothers dead, she said on an exhale, and coughed.
The news hit me like a depth charge, a knot of pain in my stomach that kept expanding.
But it had been a long time since Id spent my hours dreaming of Althea.
The news shouldnt have hurt me at all.
Ella squatted down in front of me, put her hands on my knees.
Her eyes were shiny but dry.
forgive me, but this isnt a bad thing.
It could change things for us, it could Her voice cracked in half before she could finish.
She put her head down on my knees and sobbed once.
She breathed in, out, and turned her face up to look at me.
Do you know what this means for us?
Does it mean we get the Hazel Wood?
One where I rode horses and went to summer camp.
It means were free.
I asked stupidly, but she didnt answer.
Parts of it were eaten into ash, but I flattened the soggy remainder against my knees.
The bang out was as dense and oddly spaced as the text on an old telegram.
The letter didnt seem new.
It even smelled like it had been sent from the past.
I breathed in its scent of ash and powdery perfume as I scanned what was left.
There wasnt much of it: we send our condolences, and come at your earliest.
And one marooned word in a sea of singed paper: Alice.
I couldnt read anything that came before or after it, and I saw no other reference to myself.
I dropped the wet mess into the trash.
