**The note on the kitchen counter began ''Dear Mom,'' and it ended with ''I hope you rot in hell. Love, Marly.''**

*Marly considered crossing out the part about rotting in hell, but it was nothing her mother hadn't said to her. She picked up her suitcase, took the twenty-doll bill her mother kept in the freezer, and walked to the bus station.
Marly was leaving her mother's house, running away to live with her dad and his wife. Marly, the mousy one, the passive one, the one whose sister was a beauty queen. **Marly had made a decision, radical and impulsive, and she was on the road to discovering herself. A someone she didn't know existed -- Marly, the fighter and winner.***