It Only Hurts at First

Allison Rogers
Copyright © 2022 by Allison Rogers
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author,
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Editing by Kirstin Andrews
Cover by Nicole Hower
For Paul
 Contents

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
Note from the Author
About the Author
 Chapter One

M y mom thought I was suicidal.

Maybe I was. Maybe there was a difference between wanting to die
and wondering if the ground would hurt from thirty stories up—hoping it
would.
It was the minor inconveniences that set me off. Like having gym first
period, which made me want to swap my orange juice with lighter fluid. I
wouldn’t have minded as much if boys and girls were separate or if I wasn’t
a junior in a class full of seniors. Our required gym attire didn’t help either.
Unlike the baggy sweats the boys wore, our light orange booty shorts and
matching white T-shirts left little to the imagination.
I nudged my way into line on the indoor basketball court as Mr. Downs
huffed his way toward me. He wasn’t the best representation of health and
wellness with his monstrous beer belly and constant wheezing, but I guess it
was only high school.
“Alice Matthews,” he heaved, rolling his bulging eyes when he reached
me. “How many times do I have to tell you? That sweatshirt is not part of
the required uniform.”
The group of girls closest to me snickered, but I bit my lip and tried to
ignore them. “I’m sorry, Mr. Downs, but I’m freezing.” I tried to sound
confident, but my voice was small and weak.
“From now on, every time you wear that sweatshirt, I’m docking a point
from your grade.”
“That’s fine.” I wasn’t taking my sweatshirt off even if he threatened to
fail me.
 He rolled his eyes again and continued down the line. He always
threatened to dock points from me but never did. It would have meant extra
effort on his part, and if there was one thing Mr. Downs hated, it was extra
effort.
He gave a brief explanation of his expectations for a full-court
basketball game before splitting us into two teams and sitting his lazy ass
on the sidelines. As usual, all the athletes somehow landed on the same
team. Gym class wasn’t competitive for them; it was a form of sheer
entertainment. A few of my teammates always tried, and though it was
humiliating to watch, I admired their determination. They ran around in
circles, sweating and shooting the rest of us dirty looks, but we weren’t the
problem. The problem was they had two left feet, and while we all went
home after school, our opponents drew crowds at their sports games.
I hung around the middle of the court and picked at my fingernails,
daydreaming of my neck snapping from the ropes course dangling above
me. I was so lost in the painful peacefulness I didn’t register the ball
spinning toward me, followed by four madmen chasing after it, until it was
far too late. My brain prompted me to step out of the way, but my body was
too sluggish to respond. I froze in place while the chaos swirled around me.
And then everything happened all at once.
Something solid knocked into me, and my knees slammed to the gym
floor. I knew I should have felt pain, but my utter confusion numbed it. The
gym class heroes kept playing, unfazed, but the guy who’d hit me extended
his hand to help me up.
I tried to grasp what had happened while assessing the throbbing pain in
my knees, so I took his hand, distracted. As soon as my fingers made
contact with his, I cringed at the warmth covering my own. A pair of
humorous blue eyes, alight with mischief and cockiness, greeted me when I
looked up. Most girls would have killed for a run-in with Scott Henderson,
but my nausea was instant.
“Sorry about that, Alice.” His voice pricked at my skin. I hadn’t moved
an inch, and Scott Henderson was the school’s star athletic performer. The
best our town had ever seen, apparently. How had he managed to run into
me?
But then his hand slid lower and cupped my ass, confirming the
collision was no accident. I stiffened when his predatory fingers glided
across me. Goosebumps rose as full-fledged panic took over my entire
body, but it wasn’t useful panic. My brain didn’t activate any reflexes to
step away or push him off me. I didn’t move, and his lips curved into an
even wider, approving smirk.
Terror pulsed through me as familiar images poked and prodded my
consciousness, but I was paralyzed. And though his fingers drifted away, I
could still feel them. He pulled me up, but my body was total deadweight. I
wanted to shove him. Hard enough that he sprawled to the floor, maybe
slamming his head so violently that it changed his composition altogether.
“Sorry again, Alice.” He hadn’t moved away from me, and his breath
felt hot on my neck.
I didn’t say anything. My body was in the gym, and I could feel my feet
anchoring me in place, but I was gone. I concentrated on the floor, but it
rolled beneath me.
“Walk it off!” Mr. Downs called from the sidelines.
I took a few steps, my right knee not quite holding my weight properly.
I was slow to register Scott talking to another senior a few paces from me,
and I tried to focus on them, but my brain lagged, all dreary and wimpy, a
hundred miles behind.
I recognized the other senior, but I didn’t know his name.
“How are you so invested in a gym class basketball game that you can’t
help yourself from body-checking a hundred-pound girl?” His voice was
ice-cold, clipped with anger and annoyance, and my eyes flew to his face in
surprise. I knew his slow drawl. He wore black Vans and was the sort of
nonathlete who would be on my team—not one of the ones who tried,
though. He probably failed the mile because he wandered off halfway
through the first lap to hang out under the bleachers.
The scowl on his face was lethal, and I couldn’t tell if it was directed at
me, Scott, or the world in general. I stared at him, lost in his expression, but
faltered when his bright green eyes met mine. He eyed me with an intensity
so painful it felt physically hard to maintain eye contact, so I snapped my
gaze back to the floor.
“It was an accident, bro.” Scott jabbed a finger into the guy’s chest, but
I didn’t hear the rest of the escalation or even offer my appreciation,
because I was already limping away.
Mr. Downs sat on the sidelines in a foldable lawn chair.
“Can I go to the nurse?”
 He waved a hand, not even bothering to glance up from his crossword
puzzle. “Yeah, yeah, fine.”
I slipped out of the gymnasium without another word. The nurse’s office
wasn’t necessary for my particular injury. In fact, the pain subsided with
each step. I crept into the girls’ locker room, then paused to appreciate the
complete stillness before I wrenched open my locker and fished through my
front backpack pocket. I grabbed hold of the small glint of silver at the
bottom.
I darted into the first open stall and collapsed onto the toilet, breathing
as though I’d run a marathon. I took one calming breath and glanced toward
the ceiling. His hands crashed down on me like a self-destructive tsunami,
igniting goosebumps that spread like wildfire. I could feel the calloused
roughness of his fingers as they reached for the inside of my thighs,
creeping to places he had no permission to explore.
I shoved my sleeves up and gasped in admiration, taking in the zigzag
lines covering my forearms. I pressed the cool metal into my skin and
dragged the small razor across. Droplets of blood surged to the surface, and
I felt my rage, disgust, and complete lack of control drip out and fall to the
floor.
As I said, I wasn’t suicidal; I just wanted to know if it hurt.
 Chapter Two

Y ou’d think I’d be hugely unpopular. Maybe eat my lunch in the

bathroom, wear thick black eyeliner, that sort of thing. It would’ve
made a lot more sense, but I’d defaulted into the popular group in the third
grade. My two best friends had climbed the social ranks freshman year as if
it was a race up Mount Everest, and there I was, standing around in the
wind as though they owed me something.
I wasn’t sure who decided who could sit at the popular lunch table, but
somehow everyone always knew. I sat in the same seat every day, squished
between one person I liked, two I tolerated, and a slew of those I essentially
hated. The seats closest to me were important real estate, so I almost cursed
out loud when Suzanne Brodie and two of her friends arrived first.
Suzanne fixed her gaze on me, and I waited. Despite my seniority, some
people were not as accepting of my status, especially people like Suzanne
who had to work hard to maintain theirs.
“Been to the movies lately, Alice?”
I picked at my sandwich, eying her. “Sure.” Suzanne was predictable,
and I could be sure whatever came next wasn’t going to be a conversation
about the box office.
“Well, we went on Saturday, and as we were leaving, we could’ve
sworn we saw you.” Her two friends leaned in, grinning in anticipation as
we all awaited the punchline. “Turns out, it was only Homeless Ted. I
swear, you two look so alike.” She glanced at my sweatshirt with distaste,
then pressed her hand to her mouth, pretending to stifle her giggles.
“Oh, shut up, Suzanne,” Margo said, Casey close behind her. She tossed
her purse on the table with a loud smack. “And move over.”
 Suzanne and her two friends slid over in silence, and Margo and Casey
dropped into the now unoccupied seats across from me. Margo paused to
offer her own silent assessment of my outfit, and when Suzanne and her
friends were no longer listening, she raised her eyebrows in my direction.
“You bring it on yourself, you know.”
Margo, Casey, and I used to be inseparable, but that was before. In
middle school, I told them what a hand job was, and I laughed along when
we called Suzanne Brodie a slut because she’d kissed Adam Willard on the
back of the bus. The football team had tormented her for a month straight.
But the real kicker? There hadn’t even been any tongue. Maybe I was
getting what I deserved. Suzanne didn’t hold a grudge against Margo and
Casey because that would have been social suicide. But I was harmless and
defenseless, which was a horrible combination in high school.
People used to say I was the prettiest one, but not anymore. You might
think the baggy-clothes-and-greasy-hair jabs would have bothered me, but
they didn’t. It wasn’t some kind of statement, and it might come as a
surprise, but I did have a specific strategy. I was just trying to look as plain
and unmemorable as possible while I faded into the background. I’d have
liked to be the quiet girl you sat next to the entire school year who stopped
showing up. And after two days, you couldn’t even recall what color hair
she had. You only remembered that she was there and then she wasn’t. Hell,
maybe she was never there in the first place.
Margo removed the tomato from her chicken salad sandwich and
discarded it onto a napkin as if it had done something to offend her. “Did
you hear what happened this weekend?” Her gaze snapped to mine,
studying my reaction.
“If I haven’t heard it from you and I haven’t heard it from Casey, you
can probably assume I haven’t heard it.”
Margo’s and Casey’s weekends were always booked from the end of
school on Friday to the start of school on Monday, and though they still
invited me to their parties and elite hangouts, I always had somewhere else
I needed to be. By now, they had to assume my mom had me on lockdown,
I exclusively hung out with my older brother, and it was always bingo at my
grandma’s assisted living facility. In reality, my mom begged me to be more
social, Chris whined I was giving him secondhand depression, and bingo
was only on Thursdays.
 “Margo totally made out with Scott Henderson,” Casey burst out. Her
big blue eyes brimmed with excitement. “Serena was there, and she totally
hates Margo’s guts, but we were all in the hot tub, and we were playing this
game . . . well, it’s not important, but you have to pick someone to kiss, and
he totally picked Margo. It was so romantic!”
I couldn’t drag my gaping stare from Margo. “You made out with him
on purpose?”
Her face flushed with irritation. “Yes, on purpose, you bitch.”
Casey’s eyebrows drew together as she wrapped an arm around Margo’s
shoulders. “Don’t listen to her. He’s a god among boys.”
“He’s the antichrist among boys,” I corrected, but either they didn’t hear
me or pretended they didn’t.
Suzanne leaned one elbow across the table and wormed her way into the
conversation like usual. “I would have died if I were you, Margo.”
Margo shot her a smug smile while I continued my eye-roll routine. If
possible, Suzanne’s eyes grew even wider when the devil in question sidled
up to our end of the table and put his hand on the back of Margo’s neck as
though she was a helpless lion cub dangling from his grasp. He flashed us a
flirtatious smile. “Ladies.”
Scott redirected his heated gaze toward me. “How’s the knee,
Matthews?” A small smirk tugged at the corner of his lips, and I could feel
the temperature of my face climb fifty degrees by the second.
“Fine.” I looked away, trying to ignore the dozens of eyes on me.
Margo twisted around to stare at Scott. “Why? What’s wrong with
Alice’s knee?”
He chuckled. “She was just a little clumsy in gym today, that’s all.” The
other girls giggled along as if he’d told some hilarious joke. “Isn’t that
right, Alice?” he asked, his voice like dangerous velvet.
Figuring it would be another good time to take a nice long bathroom
break, I shot to my feet and mumbled an incoherent excuse. I did my best to
ignore his soft laughter as I scurried away.
As I fled the cafeteria, I locked eyes with the guy from gym class with
the black Vans. He sat by himself in the far corner of the lunchroom, staring
at me the same way he’d stared at me in gym. I knew how it felt to attract
desirable stares, but his was different. He didn’t even bother to look away
when I caught him. In fact, his gaze became even more intense. His
behavior was bizarre, sure, but I couldn’t put my finger on what unsettled
me so much about it until I’d fled the cafeteria altogether.
He hadn’t just been watching me; he’d been studying me. And I had the
uneasy feeling that maybe he’d find answers if he looked hard enough.

I was leaning against Margo’s locker at the end of the day when she
initiated the conversation I knew was coming. “So I didn’t realize you and
Scott . . . talk.”
I didn’t miss the way her eyes dug into me. “We don’t.”
“Hmmm.”
I gritted my teeth. “That three-second conversation we had in lunch
today was enough to last me a lifetime.”
She rolled her eyes so far to the back of her head I might have thought
she was having a seizure if I didn’t know her so well. “What? You think
you’re too good for him?”
Scott was the most popular guy in school. He’d slept with half the
female body and was hailed by the entire town for his outstanding
performances in football and lacrosse. He was your typical jock, sent
straight from a blockbuster movie—average height, athletic build, blond
buzz cut, deep blue eyes that were always mocking. It wasn’t just the
handsome face either. It was his confidence, the sense of entitlement. I
mean, the guy felt as though he had some unspoken permission to touch my
ass. I guess girls went for that, but all popularity aside, Scott Henderson
was the exact type that should have raised every girl’s red flags.
“He’s not my type,” I told Margo. But that was a lie. Scott Henderson
was the only type I’d ever had.
She paused from searching through her purse to give me an exasperated
stare. “You have to date people to have a type.”
I shifted against the locker. “I’ve dated people.”
She snickered, and I knew she must be over whatever confusion she’d
felt. “Your middle school relationships don’t count.”
“Whatever,” I mumbled.
She pulled out a tube of lipstick in victory and flipped open her small
locker mirror. I watched her apply it with perfect precision, and when her
eyes met mine, I said what I’d meant to say from the beginning. “I think
you’re too good for him.”
I thought it was a nice sentiment, one I hoped she’d take to heart, but
she rolled her eyes, refocusing on her task at hand.
I scanned the busy hallway in disinterest, and my eyes caught on dark
hair peeking out from behind an opened locker about halfway down the
hall. My heart dipped into my stomach, as if I’d missed a step, as I
connected the hair—to the person—to the scowling guy in my gym class.
Jolting interest pulsed through me, and I pushed onto my tiptoes to get a
better look. Being on the watching end felt dangerous and forbidden,
similar to the questions storming under my surface, and I nudged Margo
like some kind of lunatic before I could stop myself.
“Hey, what’s that guy’s name . . . the one with the black hair?”
With his back to me, it was the first time I’d been able to inspect him
without his intrusive gaze returning the favor. He was tall and lanky, but
despite his lean frame, he looked strong and intimidating. His back was
hunched over as he removed things from his locker, and I could see the
distinct vinelike outline of muscles beneath his T-shirt. His long, slender
fingers moved to the top shelf, riffling through a stack of books before he
settled on nothing and closed his backpack.
His style was standoffish, but not because he bought overpriced band T-
shirts or leather jackets at some angsty store in the mall. He wore black
jeans that looked as though they were his only pair, and his plain white T-
shirt was probably from a Walmart variety pack. His dark hair was
disheveled, and though it wasn’t overgrown, I assumed he didn’t get regular
haircuts or even own a comb.
Margo followed my gaze, and I cringed at my obviousness.
When her eyes flitted back to me, she stared at me for several seconds. I
tried not to cower as she studied the lines of my face as though searching
for a trace of humor. “What planet do you live on?”
I wasn’t able to produce a decent answer, and she continued without
one, giving him one more sweeping glance. “That’s Hunter Thomas. He’s a
total psycho. Beautiful, yes, but still a psycho.”
My eyes widened, and she prowled on, misreading my expression
altogether. “Yeah, he’s the one who went batshit crazy two years ago and
tried to kill himself. He was out of school for six months because he was in
a mental institution. An actual one. Like in the movies, where all the crazies
are drooling on themselves. I mean, look at him; he looks like a total
psycho.”
I shifted. “Oh . . .”
Hunter slammed his locker and spun around. His eyes landed on us
without warning. The same intense deep green eyes that had pinned me
before. It was as if he knew we were talking about him. I heard Margo’s
sharp intake of breath as she stiffened beside me. His eyes floated over
Margo before landing on me, and his expression transitioned from bored to
irritated within one blinking moment. He held my gaze for one more second
before he turned on his heel and stalked down the hall.
“Eugh. He’s so freaky. It’s like he doesn’t blink or something,” she said,
her voice dropping to a whisper as if he could somehow hear us.
I watched him slink away, disappearing into a sea of students, before I
remembered what I’d intended to say before he turned around. “I know
him.”
Margo laughed. “Duh. So does everyone.” She shook her head as she
turned back to her locker. “That’s Scott Henderson’s stepbrother.”
 Chapter Three

C hris was fifteen minutes late picking me up, but I didn’t care. I liked
how the cold cut through me, piercing my lungs and stabbing the skin
on my hands. I let my fingers dangle until the pain went away and there was
nothing left but numbness. When he did pull up, I almost slipped on the
layer of ice beneath the snow but managed to steady myself on the
doorframe with one foot already in the car. I was breathing way too hard
when I finally wrenched the door closed.
Chris grinned. “Very smooth.”
I turned all the vents in my direction, and the blasting heat began to
thaw my fingers to a dull throb. “Yeah, well, lack of coordination is a sign
of hypothermia, so thank you for that.”
He shrugged, then checked the rearview mirror and pulled away from
the curb. “I’m sure you’ll live.”
Chris and I looked nothing alike. Siblings always say that, but when I
say nothing, I mean nothing. His hair was certain blond, so bright it looked
bleached, while mine was questionably blond. It wasn’t blond, but it wasn’t
brown either. It was some weird softness in the middle, and I thought it
made me look indecisive, even though I hadn’t had a choice in the matter.
I’d been told it was called dirty blond, which was only fitting.
I’d always thought Chris could be mistaken for a famous hockey player
with his blond hair that curled up at the ends, fraying at his forehead and
neck; his crooked nose that looked as if it had been broken too many times;
and his clear blue eyes. My mom and I were more similar. She had the same
brown eyes as me, but even though the color was the same, hers were kind,
while mine were guarded. When I was younger, my eyes were wide and
bright, but they’d grown darker. I was convinced that one day I’d look in
the mirror to find them black, just two gaping holes rotting through the back
of my skull.
“Did you have a good day?” Chris asked, glancing sidelong at me.
Scott’s hand drifted to the front of my memory. “Uh, yeah, fine. Same
as usual.”
We took our usual route home, but smack dab in the middle of the same
houses and the same trees, we came upon Hunter Thomas, dressed in all
black and walking as though he had no place in the world to be. Hunter was
like a new word you learn, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it appears in
every single conversation as if it has been there all along.
“I had a fantastic day,” Chris said. “Thanks for asking. Oh, but you
didn’t ask? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. I got a ninety-six on my presentation.
Do you remember that professor I told you about? The one who said I had
too many opinions?”
“Uh-huh. That’s good.”
Chris snorted. “Which part?”
I peered at Hunter as we drifted past, almost doubling over when the car
pulled to an abrupt stop. Chris’s two fingers drummed on the steering wheel
as he waited for his turn at the stop sign two cars ahead. I peeked in the side
mirror, still as a statue. I couldn’t imagine the mortification if Hunter caught
me looking at him again. He didn’t seem to mind being caught, but I did.
Besides, I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. I wasn’t looking at him
because I liked him. I was looking at him because he had tried to kill
himself, which was the single most interesting thing I had heard in over two
years.
I studied him as he brought a cigarette to his lips, then inhaled as if his
life depended on it. I inhaled at the same time. He glanced up at our car, and
I was tempted to shove Chris’s foot on the gas but thought better of it.
Hunter’s eyebrows furrowed, and he adopted the same stay-the-fuck-away-
from-me look as he had in the hallway, so I looked away. I looked away as
we drove past the stupid stop sign, and I kept looking away as I tried to
ignore the small twinge of comfort. I tried to ignore the incessant poking of
intrigue. I wanted to know if he felt like I did. I wanted to know how he had
done it, and holy shit, I needed to know why.
I must have fallen asleep after school, because I woke to my mom’s
faraway voice calling my name. It sounded as if it wasn’t her first attempt,
so I dragged myself to my door. “What?”
She didn’t answer even though I knew she could hear me. It was one of
her favorite tricks, and an irritating one at that.
I stomped down the stairs, trying to send a message with the heavy
weight of my footsteps. I blinked when I rounded the corner, disoriented by
the curtain of darkness outside the living room window and the clatter of
utensils in the kitchen. My mom and Chris were already seated at the round
kitchen table. Chris assessed the spread while my mom doled out steaming
stir-fry. The microwave clock confirmed it was, in fact, dinnertime.
I slid into my seat, stifling a yawn. We always ate at the kitchen table,
despite having a room dedicated to eating. We sat at the dining room table
only for Christmas and Thanksgiving, or when my mom wanted to impress
someone—as if we used fine china and cloth napkins every night. The
kitchen table was small and cramped, and your knees knocked into the
person sitting across from you, but the dining room just felt weird.
“Glad you could make it, sleeping beauty.” Chris grinned, sliding me
the water pitcher.
My mom had the newspaper laid out next to her, and she alternated
between squinting at it and taking small bites. “Chris and I were just talking
about going to the movies this weekend.”
She hadn’t changed from work, her dark gray pencil skirt and matching
blazer too formal for our kitchen. She was the lone employee at a tiny
accountant’s office. Her boss was a thousand years old, and the candy in the
waiting area was even older. Sometimes he’d joke around and tell me he’d
hire me when I graduated high school, and I’d smile and tell him I sucked at
math, even though I was average.
“Cool, have fun.”
She glanced up at me, her eyebrows furrowing. “No, you too.”
I stared at her, unsure if I was more surprised by her using a newspaper
to check movie times or the assumption that I’d be in attendance.
Chris eyed me. “Isn’t she so old?”
I was tempted to laugh, but I could tell I was on the brink of battle, so I
maintained my firmness. “I’m not going.”
Chris gestured at me as though he’d predicted the entire thing. “And
there you have it.”
 “Don’t be such a teenager,” my mom said, returning to the paper.
“You’re going.”
“I’m really not.”
“Oh, yes you are.”
“What if I see someone I know?” I was beginning to feel desperate, and
despite my newfound starvation, I hadn’t even taken a bite of food yet.
“An excellent question,” Chris said, tapping a finger to his chin. “What
on earth will we do if Alice sees someone she knows?”
My mom laughed as she reached for her dark purple reading glasses. “I
am not even going to dignify that with a response.” She had pairs of reading
glasses distributed all over the house, always within arm’s reach when she
needed them, and she slid this particular pair over the bridge of her nose.
Chris’s smile was wide and obnoxious.
I decided to try a different tactic. “Today a girl at school said I look like
that old homeless guy who always hangs out in the alley behind the movie
theater.”
Chris stuffed a hand in his mouth to stop himself from laughing, but my
mom’s eyebrows drew together. “Are you being bullied?”
I sighed, the sob story not quite working out as I’d hoped. “Not really.”
My mom set her fork on the table and folded the paper. “Why would she
say that?”
She asked it as if I had insight into Suzanne’s wretchedness, but last I
checked, she was just kind of a bitch. In Suzanne’s defense, my wardrobe
exclusively consisted of jeans and oversized sweatshirts, but still. “Beats
me.”
“I will quite literally murder for you. You know that, right?” Chris said,
but his eyes danced with amusement as he shoved a spoonful of rice into his
mouth.
“You were just laughing.”
He bit down the hint of a smile trying to surface. “I realize now that was
in very poor taste.”
My mom was ignoring both of us by now, and I sighed with defeat. I
knew this tactic too. In fact, I’d known from the beginning resistance was a
lost cause, but I had to try. “Fine. What movie am I being forced to go see
anyway?”
My mom’s mouth twitched, but Chris stared at me in horror. “The new
Marvel movie, duh. I swear you live under a freaking rock.”
 “I don’t even really like Marvel movies.” At that point, I was just being
difficult, because somewhere along the line, it had become my default
setting.
Chris rolled his eyes, immune to me. “Well, good thing it’s not about
you.”
“We go see all your Star Wars movies, Alice,” my mom pointed out,
and Chris grinned, nodding along. I shot him a sour look, because Chris
was just as into Star Wars as I was. We hovered somewhere between fans
and fanatics, and while we shared that particular obsession, he lost me on
the superhero movies.
It didn’t matter, though. The truth was, I didn’t know what I loved more:
the deep red carpet, the jumbo root beer floats, or my mom’s inability to
select one type of candy. If it wasn’t for the possibility of running into one
of my petulant classmates—which, by the way, wasn’t a matter of if but
who—I would have been thrilled to go.
When we finished eating, my mom cleared off most of the table while I
busied myself washing the dishes. Chris alternated between drying and
snapping his towel in my direction when his workload slowed. I rubbed my
hand against my thigh, nursing a particularly bad sting. “I will kill you.”
I was straightening up, returning my attention to a resilient spot on a
plate, when he snapped it at me again.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he said.
“Don’t threaten your brother!” Mom called from inside the pantry.
I kicked my foot at him instead, but he jumped out of the way with ease,
defending himself with the fling of the towel against my outstretched leg.
“Hobo,” he hissed, and I bit my lip, trying not to laugh.
“Useless worm.” I said it quiet enough so my mom wouldn’t hear, and
like usual, Chris laughed enough for the both of us.
My phone dinged from the table. I turned off the water and tossed the
wet sponge in his direction. It hit him square in the chest and then fell to the
floor with a disgusting splat, and my own laughter echoed off the kitchen
cabinets as he stared at the wet spot on his shirt in disbelief.
I was still grinning as I unlocked my phone, but the smile fell from my
face as everything squeezed into me as though I was growing too large for
the room. I’d expected a text from Margo or Casey, or maybe even the
frozen yogurt place that texted promotions, but despite it being a number I
refused to save in my phone, I knew who it was from two words.
 Hey love.
Blood pumped to my ears with throbbing urgency. I shoved the phone in
my back pocket. “I have a ton of homework.”
Chris peeled his shirt from his chest, eyes narrowed in disgust. “What?
But who’s going to finish these dishes!” he called after me. “Alice!”
I took the stairs two at a time, pretending I didn’t hear him. Instead of
starting on my nonexistent homework, I twisted the knob of the shower to
boiling hot. I removed my clothes, ignored the steaming mirror, and stepped
beneath the stream. The water scalded my skin to match the pink tiles, but I
forced myself to stand beneath it.
I tried to scrub off the invisible filth clinging to my body. The same filth
that attracted predators like Scott Henderson, his nose built to smell the
pungent stench of shame and weakness crouching between my legs. I tried
to scrub as hard as I could, but the water turned red, and I never felt an
ounce cleaner.
 Chapter Four

I slammed Chris’s car door before he finished saying goodbye the next day.
We lived a few minutes from my high school, and I could walk, but Chris
insisted on driving me even though his first class at the community college
didn’t start until ten.
Chris had always dreamed of moving to New York City to become a
lawyer, but once it came time to fill out college applications, he changed his
mind. My mom tried to persuade him to apply to the schools farther away,
but he didn’t budge. He said he wanted to stay in town because he liked it
here, but I was still trying to figure out what he liked. We lived in a small
shithole where it was winter the majority of the year, the buildings were all
crumbling, and the sky existed in bleak shades of gray and white.
He ended up dropping the whole lawyer thing altogether. According to
Chris, he had a moment of awakening when he realized all lawyers were
con artists, but I thought his opinion had less to do with the actual
profession and more to do with a particular lawyer who shared our DNA.
Chris thought I was the dramatic one, but I wasn’t the one who’d
abandoned my dream to stick it to my dad.
My parents’ story wasn’t even a tragic one. Their marriage was simply
part of the vast percentage that ended in divorce, and honestly, it went a lot
better than it could have. I was in fifth grade when they sat Chris and me
down in the living room on a Tuesday night and told us it wasn’t working
out. They took turns speaking and smiled at each other like a pair of polite
acquaintances.
My dad moved to the West Coast, so we didn’t see him often, but he
always called, and his child support payments were like clockwork. Every
year, my mom sent him and his girlfriend a Christmas card with something
nice, like a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates. She always asked Chris
and me to sign the card, and while I signed my name without hesitation,
Chris always had somewhere he needed to be. I suppose we all reacted
differently, but I thought Chris’s reaction was easier to understand than
mine. My mom seemed to find my overall stillness unnerving. And even
though I knew she was my mom, I often wondered how she could know so
much without knowing anything at all.
I pulled the hood of my coat tight beneath my chin as I shuffled toward
the school building. Chris always let me out on the street near the side of
the school where all the teachers parked, and I’d walk the length of the
parking lot. It was too crowded and hectic for him to pull all the way in, and
the short walk allowed me a little more time to delay the inevitable. Despite
my overall hatred for everything school related, though, I felt a small
tremor of excitement to go to gym.
I wasn’t quite sure what I’d expected from Hunter. Maybe I thought I’d
catch a glimpse of his arms and see white and red scars lining his too. Or
maybe I thought he’d whisper that the rope snapped or the gun didn’t fire,
as if he somehow knew I needed to know. What I didn’t expect was for him
to not even glance in my direction.
As gym dragged on, I would have been convinced I’d distorted those
moments of eye contact if I didn’t get the distinct impression he was trying
not to look at me. On more than one occasion, I was right in his line of
vision, but he took great effort to avert his eyes upward or to the side, his
teeth gritting in impatient concentration.
I tried to ignore him too, but after a while, I couldn’t pull my gaze away.
He didn’t interact with a single person the entire class, but he did participate
in the drills. I’d never been interested in sports, but watching him was
captivating, so I alternated between that and my fingernails. My eyes trailed
him during the layup drills as he made each basket with ease. He was pretty
tall, even a few inches taller than Scott, and despite the crummy Vans he
wore, it was obvious he could have been an athlete if he wanted to be.
As we moved to full-court play, it was as if he became someone else
altogether. His eyes followed the ball with an authoritative, brooding
expression, but he never put himself in play. By some miracle, he was
always in the wrong spot. After a while, he left the game altogether. Instead
of participating, he leaned against the folded-up bleachers and pressed
against them with the bottom of his foot. It was so ballsy and obnoxious
that it made my cheeks hurt, but Mr. Downs didn’t say a word. No one did.
Hunter Thomas wasn’t the type of person you said something to.
Everything about him was a contradiction. His dark hair and pale skin.
His rigid jawline and heated gaze. His casual walk and intimidating stance.
He was relaxed but tense. Calm with a hint of violence. The only thing
uniform about him was the intensity. He frightened me, but it wasn’t the
same way he frightened Margo. The storm swirling around him repelled
Margo and everyone else, but I felt possessed, desperate to get closer to the
downpour.
Scott brushed against me at the end of class as if there weren’t a few
hundred feet in the gymnasium. I stiffened as my lungs squeezed together,
forcing a feeble cough in an attempt to repel the Abercrombie & Fitch
cologne making me dizzy.
“Hey, Alice, are you going to grace us with your presence Friday night
at Jake’s party?”
Hunter had long since abandoned his post against the bleachers, and he
stood a few feet away with his back to us, but I swear I saw his shoulders
tense.
“Uh, no,” I said, trying to figure out why he was talking to me again.
Scott’s gaze raked down the length of me. “Oh, c’mon, we both know
you could be seriously hot if you ditched this whole I-don’t-care-what-I-
look-like phase.”
My face flamed in response, and I shrunk inside my giant sweatshirt.
“That was me giving you a compliment, Alice.”
“Was it?”
He stepped even closer. “Yeah.”
“Well, in that case, you could be seriously tolerable if you weren’t such
a prick,” I snapped and stepped away, my body cooperating for once in my
life.
I knew I was making things more difficult for myself and I’d pay for it
later, but all I could think about was the threatening cologne seeping into
my pores and his hand on my ass again.
Mr. Downs blew his whistle, and I stomped away, passing close to
Hunter.
For the very first time in human history, or at least since I’d seen, the
side of his mouth turned up into a small smirk.
I floated on pride for standing up for myself, but it was short-lived. By the
time lunch rolled around, it had become clear I was going to pay for my
insensitivity, and my pride festered into utter regret. I was the first to arrive
at our lunch table, and I busied myself with a bag of chips but stopped cold
when Scott entered the cafeteria uncharacteristically early and alone.
I tracked his blue Nikes as they passed his side of the table and stopped
in front of me. I risked a glance through my eyelashes when his feet didn’t
move. His hand rested on the back of the chair across from mine, and he
stood still, glaring down at me.
“This seat taken, love?” Despite the hardness in his gaze, his voice was
playful.
I knew I should leave. My brain begged me. Escape to the bathroom.
Call Chris to pick me up. Enroll in an all-girl private school. But my body
didn’t move.
He collapsed into the chair, his legs spread wide and comfortable as he
leaned back, smirking. His sharp blue eyes remained fixed on me as he
swallowed my fear as though it was the only thing in the world that could
get him off. A slow pink sprawled up the sides of his neck. He drew his lips
between his teeth, watching me as his pupils dilated, glazed over and needy.
My eyes darted to where Hunter usually sat, but he wasn’t there, and even if
he was, Hunter couldn’t help. No one could. After all, he was just looking.
I startled when Brian Cullen slid his brown paper bag across the lunch
table and dropped into the seat beside me. “Hey, you okay, Alice?”
I shot him a grateful smile. “Yeah, fine.” Brian Cullen was my first and
only boyfriend. It was eighth grade and it was brief, but he was still kind,
and I tried not to judge him for sitting shotgun every time Scott’s orange
Range Rover swerved into the school parking lot. Margo and Casey could
be nasty, but that didn’t stop me from sitting in their carpeted bedrooms,
flipping through magazines while they chattered away.
Brian had been handsome in eighth grade, but it wasn’t anything
compared to the attention he received now. He had the sort of features that
were all plain in theory, but they combined in a way that was almost too
perfect.
He removed a ham and turkey sandwich from his brown paper bag, the
same kind his mom used to pack for him in middle school. His eyebrows
furrowed. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded, even more relieved when Margo and Casey strolled up to the
table. “Hey, I waited for you at your locker,” Margo said to Scott, sounding
like she had when I’d forgotten to spearhead an extravagant locker
decoration for her fourteenth birthday. She glanced between us, and I tried
to shoot her a look of relief, but her eyes narrowed at me before flicking
back to Scott. “Why are you sitting here?”
He shrugged. “Alice and I were just chatting.” He yanked her into his
lap, and she must have forgotten she was supposed to be mad, because she
giggled, wrapping both arms around his neck.
“Should we go to your house or mine after school?”
He kissed the side of her neck, all while keeping his eyes fixed on me.
“Definitely mine. My parents are out of town.”
Casey watched them, both hands perched beneath her chin. “Aren’t they
so adorable?”
I scooped my abandoned bag of chips into my brown paper bag. “I think
I’ve lost my appetite.”
Scott chuckled into the side of Margo’s neck as he slid her shirt farther
off her shoulder. “I think our PDA is bothering prudish Alice.”
Brian had been talking to the person on the other side of him, but he
stopped short. “Hey!”
Scott parted from Margo, eyebrows raised. “Yes?”
Brian frowned at him. “She’s not a prude.” His clear voice fumbled with
uncertainty, and though I appreciated the sentiment, it would have been
better for both our sakes if he hadn’t said anything at all.
There was a flash of irritation, but then Scott’s smile was pleasant, his
words as slippery as his hand on Margo’s thigh. “I forgot. You’d know all
about that, wouldn’t you, Cullen?”

T he real surprise happened at the end of the day, and by some miracle, it
wasn’t Scott shoving me into a janitor’s closet and taking what he thought
was his.
I was standing at Margo’s locker with Casey, tuning in and out of the
conversation, when a shadow fell over me. I glanced up, prepared with my
best scowl and eye roll, but almost dropped my books instead.
Hunter Thomas stood in front of me, his bright green eyes locked on
mine as though he hadn’t looked away since Monday.
Margo and Casey stopped chattering, and we all waited in silence.
“I hate everyone, but I find you annoyingly tolerable,” he said, as if it
was our fiftieth conversation instead of our first. I gaped at him, and his
mouth shifted into a subtle smirk. “That was me giving you a compliment.”
His smirk grew as though he’d told the world’s most hilarious inside
joke, and my mouth snapped shut. I opened and closed it a few times as if I
was a fish out of water.
“So it must be a household thing.” I tried to match his overall
indifference, but he just laughed. It was sharp and sudden, filled with
surprised appreciation. I hated to admit it sounded sort of nice, but it was
over as quick as it began, so I wasn’t sure if I liked it because it was rare or
because it was genuine.
His face turned stonelike and bored again, his laughter as distant as the
blood flow to my brain. “You’re intriguing.”
Then he did the strangest thing: he shrugged as if it was nothing, as if
calling someone intriguing somehow didn’t matter.
“It’s distracting.” He was scowling again, and my brain jerked to life.
“Wow, I’m sorry. I never dreamt of distracting you.”
“You should be sorry,” he said, but his voice was all breathless and soft
instead of threatening. Before I could sputter a response, he turned around
and walked off, but not before I saw him smile—an actual smile instead of
a smirk. I watched him slink away, already halfway down the hall. Silently,
I begged him to turn around, but I knew he’d be grimacing again, the
unusual smile long gone.
Margo and Casey shifted beside me, and my face flamed with self-
consciousness as I remembered them standing there. I turned toward them
in slow motion and cringed at their matching horrified expressions.
“What the actual fuck was that?” Margo asked, enunciating every word
while Casey glanced around, begging our classmates for some kind of
social forgiveness.
“Seriously, Alice. He is such a freak.”
“Do you know why he tried to kill himself?” I blurted, and Margo and
Casey turned to each other in utter astonishment.
 “Because, Alice.” Margo’s voice was high-pitched and slow, the same
tone people used on my grandma at her assisted living. “He is a lunatic.
That is why he tried to kill himself. Do you know how fucked up a person
has to be to do something like that?”
I decided to take a page out of Hunter’s book, but I wasn’t quite ballsy
enough to walk off without saying anything at all. “Chris is waiting for
me.” And then I hustled away before they could say another word.
 Chapter Five

H unter didn’t look in my direction for the rest of the week—not that I
was keeping track. Or maybe I was. I couldn’t help noticing his sullen
presence whenever he ambled into the cafeteria or gym. I received no
further leads on what drove him to suicide, besides him being certifiable
(Casey’s words, not mine) and his spawn-of-Satan stepbrother (my words).
But I began to crave answers beyond his suicide attempt. I wanted to know
where he went when he wasn’t in the cafeteria or what he read when he
glanced at the phone he kept wedged in his front pocket.
I searched for even the smallest of clues, and on Friday, I was unlucky
enough to find one. Hunter Thomas wasn’t the most popular; that much was
obvious. You don’t wear all black, sit alone, and smoke cigarettes when
you’re trying to infiltrate the popular crowd. I learned, however, that his
status far surpassed unpopularity.
He walked into the cafeteria about twenty minutes late, and I assumed
he had been outside chain-smoking cigarettes, but it was only an educated
guess. The lunchroom doors opened with a loud bang, and Hunter didn’t
even flinch when half the cafeteria turned to stare at him. He strolled to the
food line, but his shoulders tightened when he passed our table.
“Hey, faggot!” someone called, and I froze.
Hunter kept walking, but he lifted his head and brought two lazy fingers
to his forehead, saluting our table. The thing was, Hunter didn’t look at the
guy sitting four chairs down who’d called him a faggot; he looked directly
at me.
I watched him drag himself to the lunch line and squeeze out a few
crumpled dollars from his pocket to order lunch. Turned out, I wasn’t the
only one watching him.
I wanted to yank Erica something-or-other’s pin-straight hair right out
of her head as she eyed him making his way to his table. “It really is a
tragedy that he’s such a creep, you know. He could be seriously mind-
blowingly hot.”
I wanted to tell her what I thought was a tragedy, and it involved her
being born into the world, but I clamped my mouth shut instead.
Margo’s eyes narrowed. “Better not let Scott hear you say that.”
“Why? Think he’d be jealous?”
They glared at each other, ignoring Hunter as he bit into an unappetizing
cheeseburger. When I returned my attention to their conversation, it had
transitioned into their weekend plans.
“Jake’s parents came home this morning, but it’s not that big of a deal,”
Margo said. “Scott said we’d just do the party at his house, because his
parents are always gone anyway.”
Hunter abandoned his cheeseburger with a disgruntled frown and began
inhaling his tater tots. I imagined him settling in for an angsty evening at
home, his frown nothing compared to the horrific scowl he’d wear as his
house overflowed with all the people he hated, and my curiosity
outweighed my sanity. “You know what? I think I will come this weekend. I
haven’t been to a party in a while.”
Margo and Casey whooped and shrieked so loud you would have
thought I’d offered to supply all the alcohol. Their racket earned us a
grimace from Hunter, but he stiffened under my gaze. I’m not sure which of
us looked away first, but he frowned his way through the rest of the lunch
period, not looking anywhere besides the tray in front of him. As soon as he
finished eating, he pulled up his hood, dumped his tray in the trash can, and
strolled out of the cafeteria altogether. And I was left sitting there,
wondering if it was easier to breathe when he was there or when he wasn’t,
and praying the party didn’t wind up being a mistake.

G etting ready was about as torturous as I imagined, especially the part

where we reviewed every article of Margo’s closet to select the perfect
outfit. I aspired for presentable, but they chased perfection. Every blemish
had to be covered, every strand of hair had to be in place, and every thread
of clothing needed to be flattering. In theory, I should have enjoyed it,
because I was behind the scenes with the two most popular girls in school.
Instead, I wanted to share the truth with their loyal followers. I wanted them
to know the American Eagle shirt Margo said was hideous was hanging in
the back of her closet, and the face all the guys said was gorgeous took an
hour and a half to perfect.
Despite the cold, they wore short dresses and open-toe heels. I looked
like an idiot in jeans, but I felt somewhat validated as they shivered and
teetered in Margo’s driveway. Her mom had offered to drive us, but Margo
convulsed at the offer. She typed a few strokes into her phone, and within
ten minutes, a sleek black car was waiting. I nodded to Will and Jesse as
Margo flung open the door, whining about the cold.
We pulled up to a massive white house alit on a quiet street. Candles
glowed in every window, illuminating the dark shutters framing them. The
house’s proportions were perfect, its solid red door smack dab in the middle
with an even number of windows on each side, all covered in a light dusting
of snow. One swift photograph could have been the cover of a Christmas
card.
I couldn’t help the wave of regret that surged to the back of my throat
like the copper taste of blood. I was curious about Hunter, but he grew
insignificant compared to Scott. I could hear the dull thumping of music
inside, matching the erratic beating in my chest, and I stuffed my sweaty
hands in my jeans. Margo pushed open the front door while I calculated
how long I could stand outside before I died of hypothermia, but as
tempting as it was, I didn’t hang around to find out.

I was following Margo and Casey into the crowded kitchen, offering
polite smiles, when I realized I was also the recipient of quite a few waves
and head nods. Casey chatted with two girls from our lunch table while I
scanned the crowd for a dark head of hair, but there was no sign of Hunter. I
knew he lived in the house. Or at least, I knew he used to, but that was two
years ago. And even if he still did, I suppose I knew better. It wasn’t as
though I expected to find him cheering around the keg or squished into the
group photo just because his mail was delivered there.
I settled on searching for other clues—an elementary school picture
hanging on the fridge or a scribbled note asking him to grab milk on his
way home from school—but once again, I found nothing. Hunter didn’t
even exist on the family calendar hanging outside the pantry. Each day was
filled with Scott’s practices and games in neat, angular writing. Beside the
calendar, there was a gold-foiled invitation honoring a John Thomas.
Philanthropist and CEO of—
“Alice!” Casey said, grabbing my hand.
I spun around. My face heated as if I’d been caught rifling through
drawers. There were several other sheets of paper tacked to the neat
corkboard I’d been examining, but I figured I’d have plenty of time to
continue my investigation once everyone was so drunk they forgot I was
even there.
Casey glanced between me and the calendar. “Er, what are you doing?”
“Nothing.” I made a point of squinting across the kitchen at nothing in
particular.
She shoved a cup of beer into my hand. “Want this? I’m getting vodka.”
I half shrugged, accepting it because I didn’t feel like drawing attention
to the matter. I wasn’t against drinking or anything, but I wasn’t exactly for
it either. I hovered somewhere in the middle. I only drank under the right
circumstances, and the right circumstances certainly didn’t include Scott
grinning in my face.
“Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in.” He looked me over,
and I folded my arms across my chest. He wore a button-down shirt and
faded designer jeans. His fingers cradled an expensive glass of something
golden brown. Everyone else drank cheap beer or shitty vodka, but Scott
always had whiskey like the rich, arrogant prick he was. Although, based on
the invitation, Scott could probably thank Hunter’s dad for the expensive
liquor and obnoxious Range Rover, which somehow made it more
satisfying.
He took a step closer to me. “I’m glad you could make it. Can I get you
anything? Shot of whiskey? Smirnoff?”
If I didn’t know any better, his smile would have seemed courteous, but
I did know better, so his mocking politeness made me want to bash his head
into the too-white cabinets.
 “Do you have tonic?” Casey asked.
He waved a hand at the counter behind him. “I don’t know, probably.
Go check.” He redirected his attention to me as Casey huffed past. “Alice?”
“What?”
His smile grew at the harshness in my voice. “I asked if I could get you
anything.”
I meant to tell him he could fuck off forever, but I couldn’t quite get the
words out as I pushed past him to follow Casey.
 Chapter Six

T he basement was even more crowded than the kitchen, but Casey and I
managed to find a sliver of space on a black leather couch. There had
been several bottles of tonic water on the counter, but instead of a mixed
drink, she cradled an entire bottle of whipped-cream vodka between her
polished fingertips.
“Don’t you just love high school?” She took a swig from the bottle
before grabbing the cup of beer in my hand and drinking from it as if it
were the lone water supply within a fifty-mile radius.
I looked away from the couple in front of us going at it on the
designated dance floor. “Yeah, I love spending my Friday nights watching
people fornicate.”
“Oh my god, Trey’s here.” She flattened her already-smooth hair and sat
up straighter. The name was familiar, and if I recalled correctly, Casey had
made out with him sometime in the last month. I followed her heated gaze
to a big blond guy leaning against the opposite wall, and when our eyes
met, his eyebrows shot up as if I’d done something to impress him.
“He is so freaking hot.”
But he wasn’t looking at Casey. His eyes swept over me, and then, out
of nowhere, he nodded as though I’d asked him a goddamn question.
Scott and Margo descended the basement stairs, momentarily distracting
me. Scott’s arms were outstretched on either side of him, as if he were a
king gracing us with his presence, while Margo forced clingy laughter from
behind him.
Not one to hesitate, I launched forward. “I’ll be back.”
 “What? Alice? Where are you going?” Casey tried to grasp my arm, but
her fingernails were futile.
“Bathroom.” I disappeared into the crowd before she could offer her
company. I scrambled upstairs and shoved my way through the mob of
people. I tried the first-floor bathroom, but the door was locked, and the
only place to wait was in the flow of traffic. Abandoning my post, I headed
to the foyer, then hesitated for a moment before climbing the twisting
marble staircase to the second floor instead.
There was a bathroom at the top of the stairs, but instead of going in, I
pushed open the door beside it and peered into a large guest bedroom. I’m
not sure how long I stood there, but eventually I heard my name, and it
made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
I whirled around and spotted the shoes first. I wasn’t sure if I was
relieved, panicked, or both.
Hunter Thomas stood three feet away from me with an unlit cigarette
hanging from his lips, staring at me as if it were his first time ever seeing
me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he burst out, but it wasn’t in his
usual irritated tone. Hunter was truly shocked to see me.
“Um, well, I don’t know if you know this or not, but there is actually a
raging party going on one floor below you.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I see you brought your sarcasm.”
“Never leave home without it.”
He twirled the cigarette with his tongue as he inspected my face, then
plucked it from his mouth and tucked it in his back pocket without saying a
word.
I rocked forward on the balls of my feet. “So, uh, you live here, huh?”
“That is an astute observation.”
“Ahhh, sarcasm . . .”
He smirked. “I guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
I didn’t say anything, because his voice had adopted a flirtatiousness I
didn’t know what to do with.
“It’s not as great as you think, I assure you,” he said.
I shrugged. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I know you have to
maintain the whole damaged badass façade at school.”
His laughter was sharp. He leaned toward me with a secretive smile.
“Rich kids are always damaged.”
 “That should be the tagline for the next beachy soap opera on the CW.”
He grinned. “I’d watch it.”
“Now, that I can’t picture.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t picture you attending a rager with all those half-
wits, and yet here you are, standing just outside my bedroom door.”
I shifted at the mention of his bedroom in such close proximity. I itched
to peek inside it. Did he make his bed? Did he have posters taped to his
wall? I ticked through my mental list as if it was a meditation technique:
Hunter had a rich dad and a dick stepbrother, he liked smoking cigarettes
and black clothing, and for some reason, he’d tried to kill himself. I could
barely fill a Post-it Note with the things I knew about him, and I hated that
all of it was public knowledge.
“Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but what are you doing here?” His
eyebrows furrowed as he peeked into the room I stood outside of.
I tried to keep the defensiveness out of my voice. “I’m at the party—”
“No, I mean, up here?”
I glanced around the deserted hallway, at a complete loss. “I . . . um . . .
I was looking for a bathroom.”
He pressed his lips together, suppressing an obvious smile. “There’s
about four downstairs.”
“Yeah, well, they were all occupied, okay?”
“Okay. You’re off by one door, though.” He stepped back and pointed to
the bathroom two feet away. “Usually the toilet gives it away, but other
people’s houses sure can be confusing sometimes.”
“The door was closed when I came up here,” I snapped, and he smirked.
The conversation seemed over, but he didn’t move until we were
interrupted by a high-pitched voice calling his name. A head of bright pink
hair poked out of a room a few doors down. I’d never seen her before, but I
felt as if I knew her. I stared, unable to look away.
“Hunter, can you get a blanket too?” she asked, pulling a dark blue
comforter tighter around her shoulders. “Your room is cold as shit, and your
comforter doesn’t have nearly enough weight.”
For one moment, my breathing stopped altogether. She returned my
inspection, and her eyes narrowed into slits.
I guess I’d never know if Hunter made his bed, because Hunter’s bed
was wrapped around her.
 “Yeah, I’ll be right there.” His voice was filled with indifference. I
could feel his gaze on me, uninterrupted by the request, but I was too
embarrassed to meet it.
“I should go,” I said and took off, almost running toward the stairs.
“Alice!” he called after me.
I stopped and turned to him. I thought he might tell me it wasn’t what it
looked like or admit something raw and honest, but he smirked again as he
refitted his cigarette between his lips.
“I thought you were looking for the bathroom.”
 Chapter Seven

I weaved through the living room, searching the crowd for Margo and
Casey. I tried to slide unnoticed between huddled groups of people, but
the room was so crowded I was forced to push through the middle of
conversations to get to the other end. The dirty looks and stale smell of
sweat and beer-soaked carpet were bothersome but far less threatening than
the number of places my body pressed into someone else.
The same few beats drummed through the house, growing louder and
more urgent as I made it to the kitchen. I stood frozen in the doorway.
Margo and Casey grinded against each other on top of the kitchen
island. At their feet were crowds of guys and a few disgruntled girls, all
getting front-row seats to a perfect view up their skirts. Every few seconds,
one of them would start to lose their balance, almost crashing off the
counter. The nearest group of guys raised their hands in response as if
readying to catch a fly ball at a baseball game.
Someone knocked into the back of me, and I jolted forward. “Aw, dude,
I love drunk sluts.”
The guy who said it was Josh. I knew him because he hung out with
Scott, and his level of stupidity was something you remembered. He stood
in front of me, and for a few glorious moments, I fantasized about wrapping
my fingers around his thick neck like a feminist vigilante, but instead of
playing out the fantasy, I retreated to the corner of the kitchen.
Brian and Jesse leaned against a section of the granite countertop. I
wasn’t friends with them exactly, but we were friendly, and that was the
closest thing I had besides Margo and Casey.
Brian tilted his beer in my direction. “What’s up, Alice?”
 Brian’s and my history wasn’t an unkind one. In eighth grade, everyone
decided we should date, so we did. He wore a T-shirt to school with a
handwritten message on it in black permanent marker. Alice Matthews, it
read, will you be my girlfriend? And I said yes because everyone was
watching, and I didn’t really have a reason to say no. We broke up the
summer before freshman year, and it was as anticlimactic as my parents’
divorce. He went to lacrosse camp, I spent my time at the pool and the mall,
and that was about all that happened.
I hoisted myself onto the space of counter beside them. “Hey.”
Jesse gestured at Margo and Casey on top of the island. “Looks like you
have a long night ahead of you.”
But I was distracted from responding when Hunter entered the kitchen
with the pink-haired girl in tow. I held my breath as I watched him take in
the scene. His eyes narrowed, and the pink-haired girl grabbed on to his
shoulder. He leaned back as she whispered something in his ear with a
wicked smile. He smirked in response to whatever she’d said, and I felt the
same resentful nausea I’d had upstairs in the pit of my stomach. He wore a
black sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, and I noticed the pink-haired girl
wearing a similar one—too big and obviously his.
Hunter must have felt my stare, because his cool eyes flicked to my
own, and he straightened up. His smirk fell away as he held my gaze. A
moment later, Brian leaned toward me, ridiculing Margo’s latest move, and
Hunter’s eyes flashed to inspect him. They stayed on Brian for several
seconds, his mouth a thin, hard line, before he turned away. He glided
across the kitchen and opened the back door, allowing the pink-haired girl
to duck under his arm and walk out first. All I saw on the back porch was
the growing and fading lights of two cigarettes before I reminded myself
they could probably see me staring.
“Ho-LY shit.”
Margo and Casey were pressed even closer together, their mouths
working on each other as they full-on made out, earning them whooping
and cheering from the crowd below. Margo ran her fingers through Casey’s
hair, and Casey pressed her palms into Margo’s chest. Their kissing was so
intense Casey started to fall backward, and they both slipped and flopped
into a tangled mess on the counter. Unfazed by the fall, Margo flung herself
on top of Casey, grinding her hips as she nipped and mauled at Casey’s
sprawled body.
 Scott left his front-row seat and swung onto the counter. He grabbed
Margo by the back of her head. She parted with Casey, and Scott swooped
down on her, mashing his lips to hers. The whole crowd cheered while
Scott dominated Margo, his every move powerful and primal. It was as if he
was punishing her, showing the crowd who she belonged to. I could see his
fingers yanking through her hair as he pulled her head back, and it looked
painful. In fact, I knew it was, but she didn’t stop him or cry out. No one
stopped a force like that.
Casey inched herself to the edge of the counter, her face pink from the
effort and drunkenness, and the blond guy from the basement muscled his
way to receive her. As soon as he did, his large hand disappeared beneath
her skirt, but she didn’t swat at him. My cheeks flamed red, but I did what I
did best and looked away.
Despite all the excitement, Jesse placed his empty beer can on the
counter beside me. “We’re probably up soon.”
Brian nodded. “Right, yeah.”
Jesse started to walk away, but Brian hesitated, glancing back at me.
“We’re signed up to play beer pong. Wanna come with? You can hang out.”
I shrugged. “I think I might get going soon, but thanks.”
His eyebrows furrowed, and it wasn’t the first time Brian Cullen
couldn’t make any sense of me. “All right. Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”
I nodded, smiling back. As he walked away, I pulled out my phone and
typed out a desperate message to Chris, but I was interrupted before I could
press send.
“So you’re still here.” I wasn’t sure when Hunter had come back in, but
there he was, standing in front of me as though he was just another person
attending the party.
I returned my gaze to my phone. “Evidently.”
His lips twitched, but he didn’t smile. “Having fun yet?”
“Does it look like it?”
“Not exactly, but you rarely look like you’re having any fun.”
He was smiling now, and I was tempted to roll my eyes. I’d attended the
party in the hopes of catching a glimpse of him or having a conversation,
but since stalking him upstairs, all my curiosity had settled into discomfort.
Why did I even care in the first place? There had to be other people at our
school who felt gripping sadness. And if I was just curious about Hunter’s
suicide attempt, why did his closeness with the pink-haired girl make me
feel as if I had a tumorous growth deep in my stomach, rock hard and
spreading?
She stood across the kitchen, her head tilted to one side as she watched
us. She wore dark black makeup, thick and smoky around her eyes. Her
pink hair was styled in a sloppy ponytail, all the short ends pinned up at
random with mismatching clips. She had small pouty lips with a ring
pierced through one end and the sort of smile that was both taunting and
alluring. She was the exact kind of girl someone like Hunter would be with,
and my hatred was both instant and alarming.
“I think your girlfriend is waiting for you.”
He tried to stonewall his smile again, but it was still there. “She’s not
my girlfriend.”
I unlocked my phone. “Okay.”
Instead of leaving, he settled into the space beside me. “Your friends are
here a lot, but you never come.”
My pulse quickened. “You usually attend these things?”
“I try not to, but as we established earlier, I do live here.”
I let out a hollow laugh but shoved the edge of my sweater between my
teeth to quell it. Hunter grinned. When I looked away, my gaze collided
with Scott’s. He glared at us, standing a few feet from the pink-haired girl
with Margo discarded beside him.
Hunter followed my gaze. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
My eyes stayed trained on Scott, afraid he might move without warning.
“What’s it like to live with him?”
Hunter snorted. “Um, terrible.”
Hunter leaned against the counter, his elbow resting mere inches from
my thigh. I wasn’t the only person who noticed the space between us, and
Scott’s nostrils flared.
I’d never pictured Hunter and Scott sitting around playing family board
games on a Sunday night, but it was obvious from both their stances and
expressions that their relationship surpassed dislike and went well beyond
hatred.
“Have you always hated each other?”
Hunter shifted into a position of comfort, his elbow moving half an inch
closer, but unlike Scott and me, he didn’t appear to notice our closeness.
“Hate is an egregious understatement.”
“Why?”
 He stiffened. “What do you mean why?”
I shrugged. “Why do you hate him so much?”
Hunter’s head jerked upright, as if we might not be on the same page
after all. “Because he’s a massive dick, obviously.”
Before I could offer my agreement, the massive dick in question
barreled toward us. “What the fuck are you doing down here? It’s invite
only.”
But Hunter continued lounging against the counter. It almost looked as
if he was enjoying himself. He let out a dramatic sigh as he examined
something insignificant on his sweatshirt. “Would you fuck off already?”
Undeterred, Scott redirected his attention to me. “Why don’t you come
downstairs, Alice? Margo has proven to be lame as fuck, and I’m on the
market for a new beer pong partner. Who knows, maybe people will even
stop thinking you’re so boring if you try and have a little fun.”
I redrafted my text to Chris and pressed send. “Tempting.”
When I lifted my head, Hunter was no longer leaning beside me. “Leave
her alone.”
Scott beamed. “Oooh, touchy.”
“I think I’d better go,” I said, hopping off the counter.
Hunter’s shoulders were stiff. “Yeah, that’d probably be best.”
Scott grinned. “Really? I think there’s potential here for a truly fun
evening.”
I was a few steps from the counter when Scott gripped my wrist tightly
and yanked me backward. “Come on, Ali—”
But Hunter shoved Scott away with such sudden force that I yelped.
There was a brief commotion before Hunter had Scott by the collar and
slammed him against the wall. With one hand holding Scott’s shirt, Hunter
pressed his forearm into his neck without any hesitation. Scott sputtered for
breath, his bloodshot eyes popping out of his head. His face turned a fierce
shade of red, and I became more and more horrified when Hunter made no
move to stop. But then, just like that, Hunter released Scott, who folded to
the floor, gasping for air.
Scott lay slumped at my feet, and I stared at him in awe as he tried to
catch his breath. “Was that . . . was that necessary?” I said.
Hunter straightened the neckline of his sweatshirt, examining it with a
small frown. He glanced between Scott and me as if it was a trick question.
“Well, I certainly thought so.”
 Scott clawed at his throat. He tried to say something, but it came out
gurgled and wheezing.
Hunter ignored him, gesturing to the foyer with one hand. “Shall we?”
The kitchen had grown quiet, and I was rooted in place when his fingers
grazed my back, urging me forward with the smallest amount of pressure. I
stepped away from his fingertips on instinct and headed through the arched
kitchen doorway without looking back.
Hunter turned to me as soon as we reached the foyer. “Do you already
have a ride home?”
“Yeah, my brother is coming.”
We were both quiet as we waited for Chris. I looked anywhere but at
him, my gaze settling on the intricate tiles lining the floor. I had been
tracing the sophisticated floral curve, but I paused, peering up at him. “Isn’t
Scott going to be pissed?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “I assume he’s more than pissed right
now.”
“Won’t he, like, come after you?”
Hunter shrugged, smirking as if I was the very definition of
entertainment. “Most likely.”
I didn’t mean for my voice to sound so desperate, but it did. “You’re not
afraid of him?”
“He’s mostly harmless.”
I stared at him as he leaned against the wall, his back to the rest of the
house and arms crossed against his chest. His hood had fallen off during the
commotion, and black strands of hair fell across his forehead. Hunter’s high
cheekbones always made his expression look tense, but there was no
throbbing pulse against his temple or jutting jawline now. He looked so
relaxed he almost looked bored.
My phone vibrated in my jeans pocket, and I pulled it out as Chris’s car
pulled up. “My brother’s here.”
He nodded once. “Well, I’ll see you.”
“Are you . . .” I studied the collection of people spewing into the dining
room from the kitchen. “Are you going to be okay?”
His mouth was quirked in amusement, as though he knew something
crucial that he wasn’t sharing. “We’ve lived together since I was ten, and
that wasn’t the first time we’ve roughhoused.” He paused on a breath of
laughter. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be just fine.”
 I wasn’t quite sure if it was the assurance in his voice or his stance, but I
nodded once before pushing open the front door. I almost broke my neck on
the thin sheet of ice covering the two front steps, but when I turned around
to check if Hunter had witnessed the embarrassment, he was already gone.
 Chapter Eight

I waited at Margo’s locker on Monday morning, biting my nails as I

scanned the overpopulated hallway. I tried to pretend I was there to
socialize, but I was far more dedicated to looking out for a particular dark
head of hair than the conversation. When I caught sight of the back of his
head through the crowd, I craned my neck to get a better view, nodding
along to Margo’s story about what an embarrassment Alex Hill had been at
the party.
I watched as Hunter filled his backpack with the books he’d need for the
day, but something was off. His motions were slow and lethargic. He moved
in uncoordinated spurts, his whole body seeming unwilling to cooperate.
When he finished, he slammed his locker and turned in my direction. There
was a blur of people in front of me, and they blinked like strobe lights at a
school dance. I wasn’t sure if the world had switched to slow motion or if
my brain slowed everything down on purpose, delaying the unfolding
images.
One eye was encircled in violent purple, the eyelid black, and the other
had a lighter shade of purple beneath it. His lip was split, and he had a cut
along the side of his jaw and a smaller one across the bridge of his nose. He
wore a dark gray long-sleeved shirt instead of his usual T-shirt, and several
of his fingers were taped together with white strips of bandaging.
His effortless stroll was gone, and he winced with each stride. He
walked past without noticing me, not even bothering to look up. His
avoidance wasn’t a sign of weakness or defeat, though. I had the crawling
feeling that Hunter focused on the floor because he’d murder the first
person who met his gaze for one second too long.
 Before I could contemplate my decision, I followed him. Margo’s
annoyance trailed behind me, but I ignored her. I weaved through the throng
of students between Hunter and me as I tried to catch up. He turned right
toward his homeroom, and I touched his arm as I rounded the corner. He
spun around so fast I jumped back, but when he saw it was me, he relaxed,
wincing slightly as he rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Alice,
hey. How was the rest of your weekend?”
A soft smile touched his lips, but instead of returning it, I gaped back at
him. “My weekend? What happened to you?”
He glanced down at himself, and for some reason, he grinned. “I very
clearly got my ass kicked.”
We stood in the middle of traffic. People brushed past us, mumbling
their irritation. “At the party? But you said . . . you said you’d be fine.”
He scratched the side of his head. “I did say that, didn’t I?” He
shrugged. We shifted to one side of the hallway. He leaned his shoulder
against the wall with a comfort I knew he couldn’t be feeling. His eyebrow
arched the smallest bit, and I wondered if it was painful. “You know, my
ego was a little bruised, but standing here admitting to you that I got my ass
handed to me . . . well, let me tell you, I’ve never felt manlier.”
I’d watched Hunter pin Scott against the wall, the effort nothing but a
flick of his wrists. And based on that performance, I was confident Hunter
could defend himself against two people, maybe even three. “By how many
people?”
He pinned me with an exasperated stare. “You cannot be serious. You
know I like you, right? Like, in a romantic way? I mean, I assume that’s
been obvious. And so you understand how that would make this
conversation humiliating?”
I stared at him. My heart jackhammered in my chest as I tried to get a
grip on my body’s homeostasis. Usually, everything functioned without my
direction, but while he remained as cool and stoic as ever, I had to beg my
internal organs not to go apeshit on me. And I didn’t know how he did it.
How he’d mastered the art of dishing out compliments or declaring his
feelings as though they were bland statements about the weather.
“You knew it was going to happen,” I said. “Why didn’t you say
anything? Why did you let me leave?”
He pitched his eyebrows even higher as his lips shifted into a smirk, not
at all offended that I hadn’t acknowledged his romantic confession. “I’m
sorry, do you have a black belt I’m not aware of?”
As I took a half step closer to him, my breath hitched. It was because of
me. All it took was a slight grab of my wrist, and Hunter was left with
bruises.
His smile vanished, replaced with a pulse along his jaw. “It would have
happened if you were there or not,” he said, seeming to read my mind.
“Why haven’t you told anyone?”
He studied me, his eyes narrowing. “I’m telling you, aren’t I?”
I sighed. “You know what I mean.” The hallway began to thin out as
everyone headed for homeroom, but neither of us moved.
His face grew serious as he looked over my shoulder. When his gaze
met mine again, he opened his mouth but then hesitated, closing it. He
exhaled a breath and tried again. “Because I live for the violence. Same as
you.”
The words rattled inside of me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He considered me for so long it grew uncomfortable. His expression
urged me to say something, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. I
wasn’t sure what words he was waiting for. “Come on, Alice.”
I blinked. “Come on, what?”
He kneaded the back of his neck, flattening his hair as he shifted from
foot to foot. “You really want me to say it?”
“Say what?”
He was tenser than I’d ever seen him. He ran a hand through the front of
his hair and revealed a small bruise that had been covered by dark strands.
“When was the last time you wore short sleeves?”
My eyes shot up to meet his as panic scorched through me. The noises
of the hallway around us became a steady thrum above the blood pounding
in my ears. My sole mission in high school had been to slide past unnoticed
as best I could, and as I blinked up at him, I couldn’t quite figure out why
I’d followed him in the first place. Suddenly I was terrified he might
uncover all the rotten things growing inside me and tear me open in front of
the entire school, shaking me as my secrets oozed out.
All my excuses were filed in neat rows inside my brain. Usually, they
flowed from my lips as easy as breathing, but this time, they came
stumbling out. “I’m . . . I’m always freezing.”
He stared at me, and for one quick moment, his face transformed into an
expression of disappointment, maybe even offense, before he shrugged,
fishing into his front pocket for his packet of cigarettes. “Right. And I fell
down the stairs.”

I skipped gym . It was so pathetic it made me wince, but I skipped it

anyway.
I had met the school nurse freshman year after I blacked out in English
class. The teacher told her I’d overheated and fainted, just like that, but that
wasn’t what happened. The truth was, Tyler Conrad had told me I was hot
but would look hotter pinned beneath him. At first, it wasn’t a big deal, but
then it did feel like something was pinning me down, and it wasn’t idiotic
Tyler Conrad. My teacher sent me to the nurse’s office, and after that, I kept
going because Mrs. Baker smiled and nodded instead of asking me why.
I still got like that from time to time. Spinning with no sign of stopping.
Remembering with no sign of forgetting. Sometimes it got so awful I faked
illnesses so I could stay home from school, and while my mom knew my
symptoms were bullshit, she could detect they were symptoms of
something.
My mom asked my doctor what was wrong with me, and he told her
depression, plain and simple. That glib, airtight label somehow seemed to
make her feel better. I didn’t feel any different, but hey, at least there was an
explanation. But I wasn’t sad for no reason. I was sad for one reason and
one reason only. That’s not depression; it’s cause and effect.
I sat on one of the bright orange chairs, the purgatory of the high school
nurse’s office. It was in those retro chairs that Mrs. Baker felt foreheads and
examined motives, determining the authenticity of symptoms. Most
students were left slumped outside the angelic white gates and shooed back
to class, but she always admitted me.
I knew where Mrs. Baker kept her cotton balls and reserve Kleenex
boxes. I knew the precise time she ate her lunch and which cot was the most
comfortable. I was a nurse’s office regular, and I was still trying to figure
out if that was just plain depressing or somewhat cool.
When the principal, Mrs. Rosin, walked in, I sat up a little straighter,
guilty and nervous because I wasn’t sick, just spent. She clicked into the
small room to the left of the main office without breaking her purposed
stride to notice me. I was so invisible she didn’t even bother to close the
door all the way. I shifted in my seat and stared at the ceiling, tuning in to
the heated conversation in the other room.
“It’s just protocol,” came Mrs. Baker’s kind voice.
“I already told you, I got in a fight. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
I jolted at the sound of Hunter’s voice.
“Listen, Hunter, we’re not going to go through all of this again,” Mrs.
Rosin said. Her voice had her usual air of authority, clipped with mild
annoyance.
“I got in a fight outside of school. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“You can start by telling us who you got in a fight with.”
Hunter was silent. I heard the shuffling of papers and a few clicks.
Mrs. Rosin must have moved closer to him, because her voice grew
softer. “Hunter, we’re trying to help you. We’re not going to turn a blind
eye when you show up to school every few weeks with bruises.”
“Thanks, but I don’t need any help.”
Someone exhaled, long and steady. “Was it Scott?”
I stilled, and there was a moment of shifting silence. “No.”
“Hunter, your psych report—”
He snorted. “My psychiatrist is under the impression that my chakras
aren’t aligned. Brutal stuff . . . chakra misalignment. Can I go now? I can’t
stand the thought of missing gym.”
Someone huffed, and it must have been Mrs. Rosin, because it sounded
far too irritated to be Mrs. Baker. “I’ll be calling your dad today.”
No one said anything, and I inched forward in silence. When Hunter did
speak, his voice was edged with something I couldn’t quite figure out. His
words were cool and flat, but there was something else. It was as if Mrs.
Rosin had offered to dig up a corpse from the town cemetery and call that
person. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear from you.”
I heard the scraping of furniture and crept to my feet, terrified Hunter
might come bursting out of the office at any moment to find me sitting
there. I winced when the brown paper bag in my backpack crunched
beneath my arm as I tiptoed across the office. I’d earn myself detention for
skipping gym without a nurse’s pass, but acknowledging my eavesdropping
was like admitting to Hunter’s face that it had become a habit to click
through the three pictures on his abandoned social media platforms. Sure,
maybe it happened, but no one in their right mind wanted to have a
conversation about it.
But I wasn’t fast enough. The door opened a moment later, and Mrs.
Baker said my name before I had the chance to dart away.
I turned around in slow motion, face burning. My eyes found Hunter’s
first. He was always intimidating looking with his tall stature, penetrating
green eyes, and all-black attire, but the bruising made him look downright
ominous. His eyes narrowed.
Unlike him, Mrs. Baker smiled. “Alice, dear. I didn’t know you were
here.”
“Er, yeah. Just walked in.” Hunter’s gaze was scrutinizing, and I shifted
beneath it. My face grew even hotter. “I don’t feel well.”
Mrs. Rosin marched past me. She had more important things to deal
with than my make-believe ailments. “Stop by my office before you leave
today, Hunter.”
His jaw hardened. “Sure thing,” he mumbled, avoiding my gaze as he
followed her out.

I didn ’ t see Hunter at lunch or in the hallways between classes, and he

wasn’t near his locker at the end of the day. I cut through the cafeteria,
knowing he was long gone, but still glanced at his table out of habit. He
wasn’t sitting there, of course, but she was—bright pink hair and all—
glaring back at me.
I kept walking, focusing straight ahead, but out of the corner of my eye,
I saw her shove to her feet and stalk toward me. I walked faster, but by the
time I reached the double doors, she stood in front of them.
“Alice Matthews. What a goddamn honor.” Her voice wasn’t like I
remembered. Instead of high-pitched, it was low and dangerous. Her hair
was styled oddly again, everything mismatched and different textures.
She inspected my face like a makeup artist who found my plain features
offensive. Her eye shadow was bright green, and she chewed a wad of gum
as if she wanted me to notice it. “You might fool Hunter, but I know girls
like you.”
I half nodded, anything to get away from her.
 “The little damsel in distress thing is adorable, really it is. And clearly,
it works for you. I mean, who doesn’t want to save the pretty little
unobtainable princess? But have some fucking agency.”
I stared at her, hypnotized by the razor sharpness in her voice. What the
hell had I ever done to her?
Her glare traveled down the length of me, then snapped back to my
face. “I don’t understand his obsession. I mean, what kind of awful person
socializes with his tormenters right in front of him and then expects him to
get his ass kicked on her behalf?”
I flinched. “I hate Scott just as much as he does.”
I thought that much was obvious, but she rolled her eyes. “What about
the rest of them?”
My brain faltered to a sudden stop, and I opened my mouth to retort, but
Margo’s voice cut through the air between us, the pitch of it laced with
phoniness. “What’s this?”
I wasn’t sure how long she’d been there, but she stood next to me, all
polite smiles and rapid blinking as she glanced between the two of us, then
paused to assess the look on my face. Her polite expression turned sour
quicker than a glass of milk left outside in the middle of summer. “Nice
hair, Melody. Was that on purpose, or did you drop the hairdryer in the sink
as you were getting ready this morning?”
Instead of responding, Melody stared at me in expectation, waiting for
something. I stared straight back at her until she turned on her heel and
walked away, leaving me with a small shake of her head as if I’d
disappointed her.
I was stuck in place as Margo examined her fingernails. “I can only
guess what that was about.”
“Yeah?”
“Losers are extremely territorial,” she said, well briefed on the situation.
“There will be plenty more of that if you keep insisting on talking to that
psycho.”
I turned to face her with a sigh. “What did you do that for anyway?”
“Do what?”
“Defend me?”
Her eyebrows dipped in confusion. “You’re my best friend. Why
wouldn’t I defend you?”
 Chapter Nine

M ypastel
bed was piled high with various blankets and pillows, concealing the
pink comforter I’d had since I was about ten. I crawled under
them after school and pulled as many on top of me as I could, the weight
comforting.
The wall next to my bed was plastered with old photos, my face
squished between Margo’s and Casey’s. I’d added to the collage over the
past year, and our faces peeked out from beneath the black-and-white
postcards I’d collected from the local bookstore. There was no order, and I
was still trying to figure out if it was artistic or certifiable. The jumbled
mess set the tone for the rest of my room. Forgotten clothes concealed the
carpet, while others spilled over the opened dresser drawers.
I tried to ignore the sharp one-inch square of metal tempting me from
the top drawer of my dresser, but the more I thought of Hunter in
possession of such an intimate secret, the more I needed it. I tormented
myself by clicking between the three pictures on his social media pages,
inspecting them for potential clues as if I might uncover details I’d
overlooked the first hundred times I’d stared at them. But he didn’t wink
back or whisper that he’d noticed my preference for long sleeves exactly
three weeks ago. The most recent picture was over two years old, and his
scowl and middle finger were just plain mocking.
Struck by another idea, I padded over to my bookcase. I dumped my
yearbook collection onto my bed before settling down, cross-legged, to start
my search. I flipped through last year’s, scanning the pages. Every face
beamed up at me, causing Hunter to stick out like a sore thumb. There he
was, smack dab in the middle of the page. He wore a black T-shirt and
glared at the camera as though he was contemplating murder. His face was
his normal pale white, not a trace of purple, green, or yellow. I stared at him
for a long time, as if he might shoot me one of his small, secretive smirks if
I concentrated hard enough. I combed through the rest of the yearbook, but
he wasn’t pictured anywhere else.
He wasn’t in the next yearbook I leafed through. At first, I thought I’d
missed him, but even after the third time I ran my finger over all the last
names, he wasn’t there. I flipped to the end of his class and finally found
proof of his attendance. At the bottom of the page, his name was featured
under a short list labeled “Not Pictured.”
I thumbed through the rest of it, searching for glimpses of him. I
squinted at a group picture toward the end featuring a clan of girls all
clumped together, grinning. I recognized Hunter standing slightly behind
them. His body faced someone he was talking to, but his face was turned
toward the camera. It looked like the other person was a much younger and
nonpink version of Melody. Hunter was scowling at the person taking the
picture, his eyes narrowed, black eye clear as day.
My eyes caught on a picture across the page from him, and I stared at it
for a long time. Longer, maybe, than I’d stared at Hunter’s picture. In it, I
stood between Margo and Casey, laughing. I slid my thumb over myself.
My hair was long and straight, and I was wearing makeup that made my
eyes bold and bright. We were at our first pep rally of high school, and
instead of long sleeves, I was wearing a tank top with lace edges, my
unlined arms on display for the entire world to see. I closed the yearbook
with a snap, tossed it on the floor, and buried myself beneath my blankets
again.
A second later, there was a loud knock on my door. “Alice!” Chris
called. “Are you alive in there?”
I pulled the blankets even tighter. “Go away!”
“I’m coming in!” He twisted the handle and poked his head in. Once
satisfied I wasn’t in the middle of getting dressed or anything, he strolled
inside. “Eugh. What kind of depressing shit is going on in here?” He
glanced at the clothes on my floor in revulsion.
I shot him a dirty look over my shoulder. “What do I have to do to make
you go away?”
He tapped his chin. “Brush snow off my car every morning for the next
two months?”
 I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
He paused beside my desk and inspected three small figurines standing
atop a layer of newspaper. “Is that another Han Solo?”
He was only halfway done, but it still should have been obvious. “Yes.”
I’d started painting the figurines after Chris dragged me to The Hobby
Shop two years ago. He had decided to enter the world of drone racing, and
while he discussed models and parts with the sales associate, I inspected the
little gray action figures and fancy paints. Since then, Chris’s drone had
been sitting in the garage, while I’d gone through so many punch cards
from The Hobby Shop I was likely their most discounted customer. I wasn’t
particularly good at painting or anything. I just liked that it required me to
concentrate on something specific, and if you had the time and precision,
you really didn’t need to be good at it at all.
He shifted over to my bookcase and squinted at the hundreds of other
tiny statues. “Don’t you get bored painting the same thing over and over?”
“None of them are the same.”
He shrugged, pulling his gaze from my display as if he’d suddenly
remembered why he busted into my room in the first place. “I need help
with my lines.”
“Can’t you just practice your own parts?”
“You know it’s not the same.”
I exhaled a steady breath. Chris had been doing theater since forever.
Between his college club and the local theater troop, he was always
practicing for something. I’d followed in his footsteps for a while. In high
school, he’d starred in all the musicals, and I’d turned out to be the biggest
disappointment of all time when I quit at the end of ninth grade. The theater
instructor was still trying to figure it out, and though I could have offered a
decent explanation, I never bothered. I used to like the attention a stage
demanded, but now the mere thought of bright spotlights made me want to
scratch my skin off.
“Can’t Mom do it?”
He pushed a hand through his hair. “She’s not even close to as good as
you. Come on. You like Waiting for Godot. It’s not like I’m asking you to
act out freaking Jersey Boys.”
I sighed again. “Fine. But you have to help me carry my blankets.”
Chris did his acting as he paced the living room, but I preferred to read my
lines from the comfort of the couch.
 He bowed, one hand sweeping the air in front of him as he grinned. “It
would be my pleasure, Vladimir.”

I tried to skip school the following day for the sole purpose of avoiding
Hunter, but it was pointless. My mom had grown immune to my
stomachaches, headaches, and pretend fevers over the years. At this point, I
would have had to be on my death bed for her to consider a sick day, and
even then, she might still have rolled me into homeroom.
Turned out, Hunter seemed to be trying to avoid me as much as I was
trying to avoid him. He went in the opposite direction whenever I stood at
Margo’s locker, and I could have been part of the wall mural in gym class
for all the attention he paid me. It wasn’t as if I wanted to continue our
conversation about my self-mutilation habits anyway, but my chest still
constricted whenever I saw him around school with Melody. Every time I
caught sight of them whispering together or standing shoulder to shoulder
chain-smoking cigarettes, I looked the other way, doing my best to ignore
the sting. Even if she wasn’t his girlfriend, I still wanted to be the recipient
of his whispers and smirks. I wanted him to look in my direction just once.
Since he’d gotten beaten up, he constantly looked as though he was on
the verge of an exploding bout of violence. Hunter had always been
standoffish, but his everyday expression transformed from brooding to
dangerous. Even his lazy movements were laced with quick spurts of white-
hot anger. Hunter’s danger flickered through the school hallways, sparking
the air with a certain static electricity. Once, when a passing student glanced
at him for a second too long, I waited, expecting an outbreak of emotions or
an unprovoked attack, but it never came. No matter how enraged Hunter
appeared, he never erupted. At least, not really.
By the middle of the week, our mutual avoidance had become so routine
that I didn’t bother going to Margo’s locker anymore. I rounded the corner
to my own locker and muttered a curse to myself when I spotted Scott at the
end of the hallway. He lounged against a row of lockers, his hand tracing a
line on the arm of a girl who wasn’t Margo. A group of people crowded
around him, posted up simply to be a nuisance to anyone who passed by.
Brian stood on Scott’s right-hand side, laughing at a comment the girl
made. He had one dimple, and when he thought something was especially
funny, he had two.
I glanced back at them as I fiddled with my lock, and when I did, Scott
was watching me. His fingers still trailed absent circles on the girl’s arm,
and I jerked my gaze away.
When I closed my locker and headed in the direction of homeroom, I
stiffened, but not because Scott was fixated on me. That, I could feel.
Hunter sauntered down the hallway toward them, and Scott smirked,
watching me watch Hunter.
“Hey, faggot!” Josh called. “What happened? You get hit by a bus or
something?”
They all laughed, and though he was far away, I could see the awful
glint in Scott’s eyes, malicious and vile, as he commanded the group of
them without saying a word.
I stopped breathing, expecting Hunter to lunge forward, but he
shrugged, calm as ever. “I got my ass kicked by five pussies, all of them too
afraid to fight me on their own.”
Hunter kept walking, but Josh stepped forward. “What the fuck did you
just say?”
Hunter was already past them, but he turned around to face Josh with a
huff of exasperation. They stood toe to toe, and I moved forward, unsure
how I could help but heading toward them anyway. I didn’t know how I’d
react if a fight broke out in the middle of the hallway. I liked to think I’d
assist Hunter by kicking Scott right where it hurts. Hell, maybe I’d aim a
kick at Josh for good measure and blame it on the frenzy, but in reality, I
was sure I’d stand there useless and horrified.
Hunter’s face was blank, inches from Josh’s. He was taller than Josh,
but Josh was bigger, his entire body thick with muscle. I pushed past
people, and when I was less than ten feet from them, I stopped, unsure what
to do as Josh leered at Hunter. “Not feeling so confident now, are you?”
When Hunter didn’t answer, Josh tipped his head back and laughed, and
the rest of them followed suit, slapping one another in amusement. Scott
had a bright, carnivorous grin on his face as he eyed Hunter, but my gaze
caught on Brian’s smirk.
“What were you saying about us being pussies?” Josh asked.
Hunter stepped closer to Josh, their noses almost touching. “I said the
bruises are from your mom. She’s into some kinky shit . . . hits harder than
you do, you fucking oaf.”
Josh surged at Hunter with a ferocious growl, but Hunter was prepared
and shoved him backward, slamming the back of Josh’s head into the metal
lockers behind him. The girl next to Scott yelped, nearly jumping into his
arms as Josh crashed into the space beside her. Scott pushed her aside as he
started forward, furious.
Hunter’s voice was low and dangerous, the words intended for Scott and
Scott alone. “I’ve told you not to fuck with me.”
“Gentlemen!” A teacher poked his head out of a classroom. He looked
between Scott, Hunter, and the audience.
Scott raised his hands as he swiveled around to shoot the teacher a
placating smile, but Hunter was already slipping away, pulling his hood
over his head as he went.
Brian stood there, one dimple intact. I marched up to him, not
considering much else besides the fact that my mom still asked about him,
and though we’d dated for five seconds, she always felt the need to remind
me what a nice kid he was.
“Can I talk to you?”
Brian blinked at me, then glanced sidelong at a new girl who had
arrived beside him.
Before he could answer, Scott rolled his eyes. “What, Alice? Are you
the martyr for faggots now?”
I gritted my teeth, ignoring him as best I could, but when I redirected all
my efforts to Brian, his two dimples were deep craters on either side of his
face as he laughed.
Scott was one thing, but I’d thought Brian Cullen had morals. Our
school wasn’t dealt a shitty hand of psychopathic jocks. For the most part,
they were normal. And I didn’t know how it had happened. How the hands
that carried my books in eighth grade could be scattered with purple
bruising that matched Hunter’s face.
As I stormed away, I tried to remember what Hunter had been like in
middle school. I could picture him, smaller and less intimidating, scurrying
through the halls with his head lowered and eyes averted. But somewhere
along the line, Hunter had turned vicious and wild, snapping at anything
that came too close. He didn’t cower anymore, and he didn’t wait to be
kicked. Adults warned us against things like him. Don’t get too close. Stay
away from the fence.
 And while we all crossed the street to avoid him, no one stopped to
wonder what had made him so ferocious in the first place. No one stopped
to ask him if he was okay. And I wondered if anyone had even bothered to
ask him why he’d tried to kill himself in the first place.
 Chapter Ten

I was a few minutes late to gym the next day because the girls in my class
took their sweet time occupying every stall in the bathroom. By the time I
shuffled in, everyone was lined up for attendance. I tried to slide in
unnoticed, but Mr. Downs had other ideas. “Nice of you to join us, Alice.”
I saw Hunter perk up from the corner of my eye, but when I peeked in
his direction, his gaze snapped away.
We played another full-court basketball game because Mr. Downs
wasn’t the creative type. I stood around “guarding” the basket and
pretending I wasn’t staring at Hunter for a full forty-two minutes.
The athletic team crushed us like usual, and when the ball found its way
into Hunter’s hands, he tossed it aside before retreating to the folded
bleachers so he could do nothing in peace. He took out his phone, and as the
game wore on, he alternated between typing and reading. It was none of my
business who Hunter chose to talk to, but my stomach still dipped at his
emerging smirk. I clenched my teeth together, wishing they were my words
filling his head and not a certain someone’s with bright pink hair.
I dragged my gaze from him and watched Scott dribble the ball with
lazy arrogance. He twisted around two of my useless teammates, causing
them to almost crash into each other, before passing the ball to Josh. Josh
slammed the ball into the net, and they whooped and hollered as they
jogged their way to the opposite end of the court. Despite their cheering,
Hunter didn’t even bother to glance up.
By the end of the period, it was fifty-something to nothing. Scott
stopped under the basket, and instead of taking his clear shot, he clutched
the ball with both hands. For one idiotic moment, I thought he was showing
us mercy. But instead of passing the ball to a teammate, he pivoted in
Hunter’s direction. Hunter was six feet away, hyperfocused on his phone,
unaware Scott had turned toward him. But his instincts were good, and as
he started to look up, Scott brought both hands over his head and threw the
ball as hard as he could at Hunter’s face.
It hit Hunter square in the nose, and his head slammed into the
bleachers behind him. He lurched forward, hissing in pain as he held his
nose with both hands, phone discarded at his feet.
Everything stopped. The entire gymnasium grew silent as we watched
Hunter, unsure how he might react. He was bent forward, swearing
breathlessly, and I stood frozen in place. Blood pooled in his hands, and
there was a very real possibility his nose had broken completely.
The basketball was the only sound in the gymnasium as it bounced to
Scott’s feet. He stooped to pick it up. “My bad, bro, you were open.”
Hunter straightened up, and I hissed on an inhale. Blood poured from
his nose like a faucet. There were a few snickers, but no one said anything.
Hunter pulled his shirt to his face and wiped his nose. Though there should
have been tears, all I saw was blood and fury.
I was tempted to help him, but the murderous look on his face paralyzed
me. Mr. Downs barreled over, but he halted, taking notice of Hunter’s lethal
expression. He took a hesitant step back. “What are you doing standing
around, not even paying attention?”
Hunter stared at Mr. Downs, not breaking eye contact as he wiped his
nose with his shirt again in a slow, deliberate motion. He was beginning to
look like a character from a horror movie with blood dripping down his
chin and a glare so black we all should have been running.
Scott spun the basketball on one finger. He glanced between Hunter and
Mr. Downs. “Can he, like, go to the nurse already? He’s going to give us all
AIDS.”
Josh laughed, the sound of it filling the entire gymnasium. “You have to
find someone to have sex with to get AIDS.”
There were a few more breaths of laughter, and Scott’s eyes glittered,
his brightness darting to me. “Right, that’s a good point. Maybe he’s still a
virgin. I figured he finally cracked and paid to get it over with.”
Hunter stared at him, eerily calm.
“That’s enough,” Mr. Downs said with a huff. He redirected his gaze to
Hunter. “Go to the nurse, will you?”
 Hunter started forward, and Mr. Downs and Scott both shifted, taking
small uncertain steps back. Instead of charging forward, Hunter stooped to
pick up his phone and walked out of the gymnasium, his arms at his sides
even though his nose was still gushing blood. No one said a thing, and
when the doors slammed shut behind him, the game resumed as though
nothing at all had happened.
We had to read this awful book in ninth grade. I tried to stop reading
halfway through because it made my stomach hurt, but I started failing the
pop quizzes, so I kept reading, wincing the whole way through just to get a
decent grade. You’d know it. I still see freshmen clutching it in the
hallways. It’s the one where a bunch of boys get stuck on an island, and
they are so normal at first, but things get dark and weird, and the boys grow
bloodthirsty and horrible. It’s the type of book you slam shut, assuring
yourself you would never stoop to such disturbing behavior, but maybe you
would. People do.
I had been trying to figure out what happened at the party, how it could
have happened. But now, it was as clear as the silent gymnasium.
I’d have liked to think it was basic human decency to stand up for
someone being hurt. That, sure, maybe we’d stand around as someone was
being taunted, but after the first punch, we’d start to glance around. And
after the fifth or sixth, maybe we’d say, Hey, wait a second, this isn’t right.
But that isn’t what happens.
The cruelty of the crowd is contagious, and the adrenaline is
heightening, and then, suddenly, your fist is cracking into his skull too. And
as he’s lying there bruised and broken with black Vans and matching hair,
all of it matted with blood and dirt, you realize that maybe there are some
things far stronger than human decency.
And I knew I was no different. Because at the end of the day, even
though I might not have been the one committing the violence, I’d still
stood there, silent, with a sharpened stick.

“H ow was school ?” Chris asked, pulling away from the curb as I buckled
my seatbelt.
 “It sucked.” I pressed my forehead to the cool window and thought of
the sound of the basketball hitting Hunter’s face, the never-ending dark
blood, and my own uselessness as I stood there and watched.
I hadn’t seen him for the rest of the day, and I knew he’d left. If I had to
guess, I’d bet he didn’t even go to the nurse’s office. There was no way
he’d sit through another round of questioning. He probably gathered his
things and pushed open the side door, only pausing to fit a cigarette
between his blood-coated lips as he walked away.
Chris’s gaze shot to me, his eyebrows furrowed in concern. We always
followed our car ride routine religiously. Every day, Chris asked me how
school was, and every day, I told him it was fine.
He alternated quick glances between me and the windshield. “Did
something happen?”
I peeled my forehead from the window. “Can I ask you something?”
He peered sideways at me.
“Did you like high school?”
“Not particularly. I mean, it was fine. Uneventful.” When I didn’t
answer, his look lingered. “Why do you ask?”
I shrugged, the back of my head pressing into the headrest behind me.
“Just wondering.”
“It gets better,” he said, and I nodded. “Or at least, it probably won’t get
worse. Probably. I don’t know . . . I guess it might get worse . . . I really
have no way of knowing.”
“Gee, thanks,” I muttered, and his laughter was soft before he grew
serious.
“It gets better,” he promised, and when I looked at him in hopefulness, I
knew he meant it.
“Where are we going anyway?”
Chris had taken two wrong turns, and instead of heading toward home,
we drove along the main street in town. There were droves of kids from
school walking along the sidewalk, big groups of them pushing and
laughing. A group of freshmen-looking boys threw snowballs at one
another, except the snow was too wet, so it turned into raining slush as soon
as it hit the air. They screeched with laughter as they dodged and ran.
Chris’s smile was bright. “You’ll see.”
We passed the diner that everyone crowded after school. Scott’s orange
Range Rover was parked in a parallel spot right out front. The diner had a
jukebox and red booths, and all the athletes received discounts because the
washed-up owner had played wide receiver at our high school thirty years
ago.
The perks weren’t just for the brainless athletes either. I went to the
diner in ninth grade before a football game, and as Margo, Casey, and I paid
for our milkshakes at the front counter, I was awarded fifteen percent off.
The owner leered at my chest and told me I was pretty, and though he was
disgusting and middle-aged, I couldn’t help my arrogant smirk when he
charged Margo and Casey full price.
Chris kept driving, past the town center and past the houses squished
together just beyond it, their paint chipping and their front porches
crumbling. We reached the exit for the thruway, and the only two things that
greeted you as you came and went was a Wendy’s on the right and a dingy
gas station with half the pumps functional on the left.
Chris pulled into the Wendy’s drive-through, and I smiled at him as he
ordered two large Frostys. He passed them to me, and I fit them into the cup
holders. They were huge and overflowing, and as I stabbed the straws
through the lids, chocolate ice cream erupted out like a freezing-cold
volcano.
He pulled into a parking spot facing the road, and we sat there, both of
us silent as we sucked down the Frostys with effort. The milkshakes were
better at the diner, and the view was better anywhere else, but this was
where we went.
My mom had pulled into this Wendy’s the day after our dad left. It was
the first time I had ever tasted a Frosty, and I was in heaven, slurping it
down in the back seat as I watched all the cars drive by. But I remembered
Chris up front, silent sobs racking his entire body and my mom reaching
over to touch his shoulder. And I remembered wondering if his Frosty even
still tasted good, the chocolate deliciousness mixing with snot and tears. I
had unbuckled my seat belt to wrap my arms around his neck. His shoulders
shook so violently it was hard to hold on to him, but I did the best I could,
and when I looked at my mom, she was crying too.
We had sat in the same spot when I broke my wrist in sixth grade and
when Chris accidentally killed his hermit crab. We had even come to this
Wendy’s when a lady down the street died while watching TV. We hadn’t
known her well, but I was inconsolable when Chris let slip that no one
noticed for five whole days. Up until that point in my life, it was the saddest
and most awful thing I’d ever heard.
I wiggled my straw to loosen the thickness of the Frosty. “Did you ever
get bullied in school?”
I could feel him looking at me, but I stared straight ahead.
“I got called a homo a handful of times.” He tapped his finger against
his chin, his eyes squinting into the distance. “Other than that, not really, I
guess. Why? Are you being bullied?”
My nose wrinkled. “People are such assholes.”
For some reason, he laughed. “They are.”
I’m not sure if it was the Wendy’s parking lot or the Frosty or the
combining comforting nostalgia, but I felt tempted to tell Chris everything.
I wanted him to wrap his arms around me, soft and understanding, but I was
too afraid. I was terrified that once I started talking, I might not stop.
“There’s a boy at school who’s always bullied. I think he got his nose
broken today. This other kid threw a basketball so hard at his face you could
practically hear the bones snap.”
Chris stiffened, staring at me again. “Is he a friend of yours?”
I shrugged. “No one is his friend.”
Chris’s gaze was thoughtful as he put his Frosty in the cup holder and
turned his whole body to me. “Sounds like he’s the sort of person who
could use one.”
I shook my head and replayed Hunter shoving Josh with so much force
he would have sprawled to the floor if the wall hadn’t caught him. “Not
him. He doesn’t need anyone.”
When he spoke, Chris’s words were hesitant. “Everyone needs
someone, Alice.”
We were both quiet for a while. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, we’d
drown in my tears and all the words I should have been saying.
“Do you remember that girl from the playground—Heather?” he asked.
Of course I did. Heather had lived a few blocks from us for a while
when we were younger. Her hair was so blond it was white, and she had the
sort of wheelchair she could zoom around in. She had cerebral palsy, and I
remembered the way her hands curled at the wrists. I used to hold her hand,
and her fingers were tight and sweaty, trapping my hand so firmly that
sometimes I had to peel her fingers from me when it was time to go home.
“You were the only kid who ever hung out with her.”
 I snorted. “Not being an asshole to people with disabilities doesn’t make
me a good person.”
He laughed as if I had a point. “Well, it doesn’t make you a bad one.
What I’m trying to say is . . . you’ve always had a penchant for people who
need a friend.”
I clenched my teeth together. Chris’s opinion of me was as high as mine
was of him, but while he’d earned his, I was undeserving. Chris and Hunter
were made of the same things. They were the small percentage who weren’t
afraid to speak up, and without people like them, the rest of us would be
hopeless.
“You’re not getting it. Today in gym class, I watched a guy get his nose
broken—on purpose, by the way—and I just stood there. I stood there with
everyone else, and no one said anything. It’s not about being his friend; it’s
about being somewhat decent.”
Chris’s eyebrows drew together. “No, you’re not getting it. So you
didn’t say anything . . . fine, that was shitty, but you can still help. Heather
didn’t like you because you stood in front of her and shielded her from
every single thing that was evil in the world. She liked you because you
stood next to her, and you held her hand when no one else did.”
I bit my lip, trying to suppress the tears, but once the first one fell, they
spilled out of me.
Chris shifted in his seat, and I thought he might reach a hand over, but
he didn’t. “The Frostys wouldn’t be the same if no one cried.”
My laugh was strangled with a sob, and he did reach over then to offer
me a stack of napkins.
“So you must really like this guy, huh?” He smirked, eyebrows raised
with amusement despite my tears.
My gaze jerked to meet his as I paused from dragging the rough napkin
across my cheeks. “I don’t like anyone.”
Chris laughed. He laughed so hard he started to choke on his Frosty, and
when he surfaced, he was grinning as though we shared the biggest secret in
the world. “Uh-huh, keep telling yourself that. Let me know how it works
out for you.”
 Chapter Eleven

I was late to lunch on Friday, and I was never late to lunch. It had always
been important to arrive early to ensure I didn’t get stuck smushed
between any of my mortal enemies at my table. But instead of staking out
my usual spot, I spent the first quarter of the period holed up in Mrs.
Baker’s office, spinning around in her office chair as she chattered away
about her grandkids.
When I did brave my way to the cafeteria, I realized my grave mistake.
As soon as I pushed open the double doors, hundreds of eyes crashed into
me. The lunch line was deserted, everyone else already seated at their
designated tables and looking for something of interest to latch on to.
Hunter had mastered the art of sauntering through the attention, but I
scurried past the first table without so much as lifting my head.
My trajectory was all wrong. Instead of walking through the middle of
the cafeteria to get to my table, I weaved through the tables on the outskirts
of the room. The farther I got, the quieter it became, until I was standing at
Hunter’s table. He had a cheeseburger and french fries in front of him and a
page of homework next to his tray that he was completing in tiny, squinty
writing. When my shadow crossed his paper, his head jerked up, and he
froze, staring at me. The skin beneath both his eyes was dark purple, and he
had a strip of white bandaging over the bridge of his nose.
It felt as if someone had lit my face on fire. “Can I sit here?”
His eyes darted around the room, then back at me, as if it was all some
kind of joke, and my heart seized when he didn’t answer. I slumped into the
chair anyway, ducking my head as I contemplated my next move. When I
peered up at him, his eyebrows were arched in surprise, and he hadn’t
moved an inch, his pencil dangling from his fingers. “I guess . . .”
I blew out a breath and shifted in my seat, because sitting with someone
who didn’t welcome your company was beyond mortifying. “How’s your
nose?”
His eyebrows went even higher. “Um, it hurts.”
I wasn’t sure what else to say, and he sighed, pushing a hand through his
hair.
“I had to get it reset yesterday. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to get
your nose reset, but it hurts like a bitch. Makes the bruising worse too.” He
gestured to his face with his pencil.
I tried to swallow. “How do they reset it exactly?”
He smirked, the motion haunting with his dark purple eyes. “They yank
it back into place.”
I looked away from him, nauseated by the mere image. I made myself
busy as I unpacked the contents of my lunch.
“It looks like you plan to stay awhile.”
I made a noncommittal noise as I took a bite of my sandwich. He
studied me, and my heart sped off, thumping in an unhealthy rhythm. I
pushed back a strand of hair from my face, and his gaze trailed my
movements, lingering on my jaw before his eyebrows furrowed, and he
looked away.
“People are staring, you know,” he said.
I did know. I could feel the eyes on me like insects scuttling across my
skin. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore the twist in my stomach.
“I wear long sleeves so people don’t see all the cuts on my arms, but it
seems you already know that. Also, in my defense, it is winter, and I am
always cold.” The words out loud were foreign on my tongue, and my
stomach lurched in protest, begging me to take them back, but he didn’t
even flinch.
His gaze flicked to the other side of the room and then to my face,
memorizing every inch of it. “Your lunch table beat the shit out of me last
Saturday.”
I nodded once.
“Also, in my defense, I may have fallen down the stairs at some point
afterward. I ended up getting pretty drunk, so it’s hard to know for sure.”
He grinned at the look on my face. “Okay, okay. I can confidently report I
didn’t fall down any stairs. I think I’d remember that.”
We stared at each other, and I might have started to smile just because
his was contagious, but I bit the corner of my lip instead. “What happened
when I left?”
He tossed another look at my lunch table. “There’s not much to tell. I
went outside for a cigarette.” He gestured at his face. “And the rest is
history.”
Maybe it was because I finally had him sitting in front of me, but I
asked the next question before I could help myself. “Why’d you try to kill
yourself?”
He tilted his head to one side and twirled his pencil between his thumb
and forefinger. “Jesus, is that what they’re saying about me?”
My eyes widened. “Yes, I thought . . .” I stopped, unsure how to
continue without sharing the words I heard whispered about him.
He folded his arms, then leaned back in his chair as he considered me
with amused interest. I shifted in my seat, and he laughed. “I’m just
messing with you, Alice. It’s not really a secret. Although, I must say, I am
interested in hearing the public’s version.”
I stared at him. His easy smile. The effortless shrug of his shoulders.
Unlike his usual demeanor, he seemed as open as a book, but he wasn’t.
The only difference in his defense mechanism was a lazy smile instead of a
scowl.
“They said you were out of school for six months. Because you were in
a hospital . . .”
He mulled my words over, tapping the bottom of his chin. “That would
be correct.”
My body buzzed with the need for more information. “So why’d you do
it?”
He took a sip of his chocolate milk, studying me before he set it on the
table. “Why do you cut your wrists?”
My legs bounced beneath the table. His gaze seared into me, and his
words were probing, but despite all that, I felt the words surface. Because
Hunter wasn’t looking at me as though I was insane or sick; he was looking
at me as though he wanted to understand, which might have been more
unnerving than disgust.
 I dragged my gaze from him, refocusing myself before I said something
stupid, because once the words were blurted into the air between us, I’d
never be able to grasp them back.
When I didn’t answer, he smiled knowingly, accepting my silence that
matched his. “That’s what I thought.”
“How did you know?” I blurted.
He looked away from me then, and the lightest shade of pink crawled
up the sides of his neck. “You never wear short sleeves. Not even in gym.”
I squinted at him. “My wardrobe? Really?”
He eyed me, hesitant and weary, as his blush deepened. He was silent
for several moments, probably trying to figure out if I was backing him into
a trap and, if so, when the net was going to engulf him completely. “Your
fingers always curl around the edges of your sleeves like you’re afraid they
might ride up half a centimeter. And when anything brushes against your
arms, you always wince.”
I battled the urge to run. My fight-or-flight response kicked in, my
breathing rattling and my heart rate too fast, but the only threat was a boy
sitting across from me, peering into my brown eyes with his intense green
ones. And despite his status as a social clod, Hunter changed the subject as
if he could feel the writhing inside me. “So to what do I owe the pleasure of
your company anyway?”
I half shrugged. “There weren’t any more seats at my usual table.”
He laughed again, the sound as easy as breathing. “Well, don’t expect
there to be any tomorrow either. You just bought yourself a one-way ticket
to social exile.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not that influential.”
His grin was wild, the bright whiteness of his teeth a stark contrast to
his purpled face. “You seriously underestimate my level of unpopularity.”
I risked a glance over my shoulder for the first time since I sat down.
Scott was next to Margo, arm limp across the back of her chair and legs
stretched out in front of him. He surveyed Hunter and me, and though his
face was calm, it was calculating. It was the same expression my mom had
used when I was a child and embarrassed her in front of an audience
because I knew she might not react the same if other people were around.
Just you wait. And the waiting was always worse than the scolding. I didn’t
allow my gaze to drift to Margo and Casey.
 When I looked back at Hunter, he was watching me so intently I fished
for something to grasp on to. “What homework is that?”
“Calculus.”
The paper looked complicated, his small handwriting wedged into all
the white spaces on the page. “That’s advanced.”
“It is,” he said, almost laughing.
“Are you one of those people who take all AP classes?”
His lips twitched, and I could tell he was trying to keep a straight face.
“I don’t know what ‘one of those people’ means, but for the most part, yes.”
I rolled my eyes. I knew he knew what I was referring to. In seventh
grade, they decided who the smart kids were, and once you were selected,
that was the end of it. From there on out, it was all AP classes and nods of
approval. Like most caste systems, upward mobility was possible if you
tried hard enough, but I think I was the only person in all of eternity to have
been downgraded from smart to average. “One of those people as in one of
the smart kids.”
“Ah, one of the smart kids . . .”
“Well, are you?” I pressed, and he grinned.
“Yes, except for gym. I take that with all the regular dumbasses.” I
tossed a chip at him, and he laughed. “Except for you, of course.”
I shot him a sour look. “Of course.”
The clock ticked a few minutes before twelve thirty, and the cafeteria
began to rustle as everyone started packing up. I leaned over to retrieve my
own things, but Hunter sat there as I placed my stack of books on the table
between us.
“That’s my favorite book,” he said, nodding at the pile.
I sifted through the short stack. I’d only been carrying my US history
textbook, English notebook, and . . . My gaze shot up to meet his, my eyes
widening with disbelief. “This?”
I lifted my torn copy of The Catcher in the Rye and glanced between
him and the book in horror.
He grinned. “Uh-huh. But I’m sensing that’s super offensive to you for
some reason.”
“I’m . . . you enjoyed this rambling torture?”
He burst out laughing. “Torture? I can’t believe you hate it . . . tell me
why you hate it.”
“I just don’t find the diary of a self-absorbed teenager that riveting.”
 He laughed again, and the sound echoed off the wall behind us as
though we were the only two people in the cafeteria. “I’ve read it seven
times.”
My eyebrows shot up. “It was so tedious I could barely get through it
once.”
He hooked one arm over the back of his chair, his smile as permanent as
his green eyes. “What’s your favorite book?”
I looked away, biting my lip in thought. When I returned my gaze to
Hunter, my face felt hot, and I wasn’t even sure why. “I like to read plays.”
His eyes were so focused on me that he didn’t blink. “Your favorite play
then.”
I didn’t hesitate. “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
His eyes raked over my face, concentrating on my features as if they
were part of a jigsaw puzzle he was shifting into place.
I wiggled in my seat. “Have you read it?”
When his gaze met mine again, his eyes were smoldering. “No, but I
thought for sure you were going to pick a tragedy.”
 Chapter Twelve

H unter and I went in opposite directions after lunch. I had English and he
headed to calculus, stuffing his homework into his backpack when the
bell rang. The last third was left blank, and I asked him if he would get in
trouble, but he just shrugged and informed me he had a perfect score for his
homework so far.
I hadn’t expected his prediction to come to fruition so soon, but when I
followed the crowd through the double doors leading to the east wing,
Margo and Casey stood slightly beyond them, waiting for me. Casey
inspected her face in a small compact mirror while Margo glanced around
the hallway. It was too loud, but I could practically hear her high heels
clicking back and forth against the linoleum floor. When she spotted me,
she stilled. I had known Margo would be unhappy with me, but her
expression far surpassed unhappiness.
“What the fuck was that?” she asked.
Casey shut her compact mirror with a sharp snap, her eyes widening—it
was clear she hadn’t been briefed on the conversation. Like me, she
probably thought they were waiting for me to walk to class.
I scanned the people who passed us, hoping one could provide me with
a reasonable answer. “What, Margo?” I asked, sounding as tired as my mom
when she worked too late.
“Hunter?” She flinched at the sound of her own voice, his name an
embarrassing secret she hadn’t meant to utter in a crowd. She stepped
closer, towering over me, as she lowered her voice. “Hunter freaking
Thomas?”
 I folded my arms across my chest and did my best not to shrink from
her. “I can be friends with him.”
“Friends? Is that what you guys are?”
“Yeah, so?”
“He has mental health issues,” she said.
My arms were lined with cuts, but yes, Hunter was the sole person with
mental health issues at our school. “What do you care?”
Casey stood between us, eyes wide as she glanced back and forth
between the two of us. “Alice,” she started to say, trying to reason with me,
but Margo and I ignored her.
“I care because you’re my friend,” Margo said. But despite the words,
she used a tone I was familiar with, reserved for those so far beneath her
they were practically underground.
“That’s not why you care,” I scoffed. “You just don’t like when people
do things without your permission. You hate not being able to control
everyone, even your so-called friends.”
Her eyes widened. “You know what? Fine. I don’t know why I care
anyway. You’ve spoken more words to your new friend in a single day than
you’ve spoken to us in years. You used to be my best friend, but you’re not
even here anymore.” She gestured at the hallway around us. “You might sit
with us at lunch or stand at my locker, but you don’t actually bother to
maintain any sort of friendship. And to be perfectly honest, I was getting
sick and tired of dealing with your moodiness all the time, so forget it. Have
a good time with your new psycho, but don’t come crying to us when he
gets himself admitted again.”
She started to turn away, pulling Casey with her, but I stopped them,
voicing a sentiment I hadn’t even realized I harbored. “You haven’t been a
friend to me either. You weren’t there, Margo. You weren’t there when I
needed you.”
She paused, staring at me, and I could tell by her expression that her
thoughts drifted to the same place as mine. “Oh, please.” She rolled her
eyes. “Save your sob story for someone else.” And then she did walk away,
Casey’s arm tucked beneath hers. But she wasn’t as put together as usual.
She walked too fast, and her purse dragged behind her, the weight of it
hitting the backs of her knees as she stalked off.
I stood rooted to the spot as people pushed past me. Margo, Casey, and I
had become different people, people who had clearly outgrown one another.
But it still stung—a surprising amount. If I was being honest, my
banishment was long overdue, but I hadn’t expected our friendship to end
so abruptly. Some part of me had expected the slow drift when they realized
I’d never be the same person I was in seventh grade, alive and vivid as I
locked lips with Jeremy Van den Berg in the back of the dingy roller rink
with neon lights and too much saliva. I had been the first one to kiss a boy,
and their questions were endless. We’d squished into Margo’s bed that
night, and I hadn’t felt nauseous as I recalled his lips on mine. I
remembered beaming at the ceiling, assuring them it was as addictive and
wonderful as everyone said.
I followed after them, but I kept my distance, and for the first time, I
noticed the shift as Margo and Casey strutted through the hallways. They
didn’t have the right of way, but they always seemed to occupy the precise
middle of the hallway, and while I had to fight my way through the crowd,
it parted for them. I contemplated skipping English and faking a
stomachache so I could lie down in Mrs. Baker’s office for the rest of the
day, but I resolved to stop being a baby as I climbed my way to the second
floor. That, and I had chemistry next to Hunter’s physics class after English.
When I walked into English, Margo and Casey had settled into their
usual spots. A few people in the first row glanced at me in passive interest,
their curiosity carrying from the cafeteria, but I kept my head lowered as I
made my way through the middle aisle. I set my bag on the back of my
chair, and Margo startled from her conversation with Casey.
“You cannot be serious.” She glared at me, and the entire room grew
silent as a ripple of heads turned in our direction.
My eyes shifted to the front of the room, but Mr. Kinney wasn’t at his
desk yet. “This is my seat, Margo.”
She shrugged. “Not anymore.”
My face grew hot as I stood there. I tried to sit anyway because
everyone was watching, but she stuck her foot through the square space on
the back of my chair, her high heel blocking me. When I looked back at her,
incredulous, her grin was cruel.
“Suzanne!” she called as Suzanne walked into the classroom. Suzanne
stilled, looking around the room as if there might be another Suzanne she
somehow wasn’t aware of, who not only went to our school but was also in
our English class.
“I saved you a seat,” Margo said, without taking her eyes off me.
 Suzanne stared between us in utter confusion.
“Really?” I muttered, but instead of answering, Margo lifted one
shoulder a mere centimeter, her lips curled into a smile.
Suzanne approached us, her face so hopeful that I rolled my eyes. When
she stopped in front of me, she looked prouder than she did reading the
announcements every morning. “Excuse me, Alice.” Her head tilted to one
side, her smile more obnoxious than Margo’s.
When I didn’t move, she pushed past me, and Margo slid her foot off
the chair, allowing Suzanne to sit. Once seated, she pushed my bag off the
chair, and it slumped to the floor. I stared at her and then Casey, who held
my gaze for a moment before biting her bottom lip and looking away.
I bent forward to pick up my bag, and my face throbbed as I scrambled
to the front.
Mr. Kinney strode into the classroom as the second bell rang. “Alice,
find a seat.” He flipped through a stack of papers on his desk, and when I
didn’t move, he pinned me with a stern stare. “Alice?” His mouth was firm
as he gestured to an open seat in the back corner of the classroom.
I nodded, my throat dry, before clambering to the back as everyone
watched.
I tried to focus on Mr. Kinney throughout class, but I couldn’t help
periodically glancing at Margo. She leaned forward and whispered to
Suzanne as though they were best friends. At best, Margo tolerated
Suzanne, but my fingers still tightened around my pencil.
Margo’s auburn hair shone bright and confident down her back. Her
fingernails were painted royal blue, and I remembered the same hand in
mine, both of us nervous as we walked into our first middle school dance
together. And I remembered her grinning pink face as we jumped and
danced, giggling into each other whenever a boy came too close.
I felt the sudden overwhelming urge to cry, but it wasn’t just because of
Margo. Her laughter carried across the classroom, and I realized how much
of a stranger she’d become.
Though she was there, right in front of me, Margo wasn’t the same. And
neither was I.
 Chapter Thirteen

I was standing outside waiting for Chris when I heard Hunter’s voice
behind me. “So I hear you’re without friends.”
Despite the public banishment in English, I couldn’t help the small
smile gnawing at my cheeks as I turned around. “I didn’t realize you were
so informed.”
Hunter pulled a cigarette from his jeans pocket and lit it. “I have my
ways, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He took a long drag, watching me
with keen interest as he turned his head to exhale, never breaking eye
contact. “I’m the grim reaper of friendships. If you keep talking to me,
you’ll have none.”
Instead of a coat, he wore a black sweatshirt, the hood covering his dark
hair. His fingers were a light shade of purple, but not because of bruising
this time. He fit his cigarette between his lips again, and I jerked my gaze
away, my cheeks hot when I realized I’d been staring.
“I don’t think they’ve been my friends for a while,” I said.
He considered that, searching my face. “Well, I’m still sorry. Losing
friends sucks.”
I tried to nod in return, but I couldn’t believe he stood across from me,
sympathetic because a handful of his tormenters didn’t want to be friends
with me anymore. It was so backward it made my chest hurt.
“Do you want to hang out sometime?” I blurted, and he coughed on an
exhale.
“Sure . . . yeah. Um, how about tonight then?”
“Sure,” I said, almost breathless.
 “My house?” he asked, but I hesitated. “Unless you want to hang out at
yours?”
“Er, no, your house is fine.”
He eyed me for several moments, his gaze suspicious. “He won’t be
home. There’s some party tonight.”
I felt my face redden. “Yeah . . . I know, no, yeah, that sounds good.”
Hunter bent his knees so his eyes were level with mine and peered into
them, fishing for a glimmer of honesty. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” I said before I could change my mind.
“Okay, good. I can’t . . . er . . . pick you up, though.” He shifted from
one foot to the other and glanced over my head at something in the distance.
“I mean, I can pick you up, but it would either be on my bike or I could
walk and come get you. I usually walk or bike everywhere, but I’m not sure
where you live . . .” He frowned, staring off.
I bit my lip. “That’s okay. I can borrow my mom’s car or get a ride.”
He relaxed but still had a hard time meeting my gaze.
I caught sight of Chris’s car pulling down the street. I nodded toward it
with a small smile as I headed to the curb. “I’ll see you later then.”
“Alice,” Hunter called from behind me. I didn’t need to turn around to
see the smile on his face, but I did anyway, and sure enough, his cocky
smirk had returned, replacing all the prior embarrassment as if it had never
even been there.
“Yeah?”
“This is usually the part where you give me your phone number.”
I cringed as my hand touched the door handle. “Right.”
I held up one finger to Chris and closed the space between Hunter and
me. He maintained his smile as I rattled off my number.
“Okay, cool,” he said. “I’ll text you the time and stuff.”
“Yeah, okay. Um, I’ll see you tonight.” I was nearly to the car when I
heard his soft laughter from behind me.
“See you tonight.”
I climbed in, looking anywhere but at Chris. We sat there for several
moments until I was forced to look at him to determine why we hadn’t
pulled away from the curb yet. Both of his hands were on the steering
wheel, but he was staring at me with eyebrows raised, grinning as if he’d
caught me doing something that would provide him with enough ammo to
embarrass me for the rest of my lifetime.
 “Is that who I think it is? I mean, I could be wrong, but that sure as hell
looks like a broken nose. A brutal one too. You said that happened with a
basketball? Dear lord.” He looked past me at Hunter, and when he raised his
hand to wave, I intercepted it and heaved it toward the console.
“I’m begging you to drive,” I said, staring straight ahead, and though he
laughed, Chris did drive off.
 Chapter Fourteen

I panicked as soon as I reached my bedroom, but it was juvenile and

thrilling instead of suffocating. Every article of clothing I owned
contained a major flaw I’d never noticed before. Each top was drabber than
the last, and each pair of pants was more humiliating. I thought I was
looking for a nice sweater or a flattering pair of jeans, but deep down, I
knew I’d only be satisfied if I found brand-new skin to step into.
Chris was sitting on the couch when I wandered downstairs. The TV
screen lit the dark room with blinking blues and whites. My mom was in the
kitchen rinsing dishes, her favorite apple-cinnamon candle burning low
beside the sink.
I leaned against the kitchen table as I watched her, trying to figure out
how to formulate the question. “Hey, Mom, can I borrow the car tonight?” I
tried to sound normal, but my voice had the same high-pitched tightness it
did when I had to stand at the front of a class and give a presentation.
She switched between the kitchen and the pantry. “I have to run over to
the assisted living to help Grandma with her TV. She’s still having trouble
with that new remote, but Chris can drive you.”
“Negative!” he shouted back, but my mom ignored him.
“Are you doing something with Margo and Casey?” She bustled over to
the laundry machine, and I trailed behind her. I watched as she shifted
handfuls of clothes from the washer to the dryer.
“Um.” My face grew hot, and I picked at my fingernails as a distraction.
She had been shoveling a new round of clothes from the dirty hamper to
the washer, but she straightened up. “Alice Marie! Are you hanging out
with a boy?”
 “Christ.”
She clapped both hands together and left the rest of the clothes
abandoned in the hamper as Chris meandered into the kitchen. He carried
an empty glass, pretending it was a coincidence he was out of water. He
placed it on the counter, then retrieved the pitcher from the fridge. He didn’t
bother to hide his wide grin.
“What’s his name?” she asked. Her eyes shone with excitement. I hadn’t
mentioned a boy’s name in two years, and though it wasn’t a conversation I
wanted to have, I couldn’t quite bring myself to squash her elation.
“It’s not a big deal, Mom. We’re just friends.”
She put both hands on her hips. “That’s nice. So does that mean he
doesn’t have a name?”
Seeing no possible way out, I let out a dramatic sigh. “It’s Hunter.”
“He sounds handsome.” She winked, and though I tried, I couldn’t help
my smile. She sat at the kitchen table, then gestured at the seat across from
her. “Tell me about him.”
Instead of moving, I stared at her. I did think about it for a moment, but
I wasn’t sure what I’d even begin to say. I was still working out the
thoughts in my own head, and trying to describe Hunter was like trying to
describe a color. I knew what it looked like, but putting it into words made
my brain hurt. “I’d really rather not.”
Chris shifted from beside the fridge, smirking. “Smokes cigarettes,
looks like he got in a fight, wears all black. You know the type.”
I scowled at him. “Can you mind your own business?”
His smile was blinding. “I quite literally cannot.”
Mom’s smile faltered as she folded her arms. “Cigarettes are extremely
addictive.”
“Are they really? Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
Chris leaned one shoulder against the fridge. “Secondhand smoke is a
real thing.”
I squinted at him. “Secondhand what now?”
My mom rolled her eyes. “Does he find your sarcasm as charming as
we do?”
I slouched into the seat across from her. I didn’t want to consider what
Hunter found charming, because if I did, I was afraid I’d be left wondering
why he wanted to hang out with me in the first place. “I don’t know. We
don’t talk all that much. He just chain-smokes, and I sit there trying to
inhale it all.”
My mom studied me. Her lips twitched and her eyes were soft, but it
was a while before she said anything. “You’re lucky I love you.”
“Why’s that?” I grumbled, but it was Chris who answered.
“Because you’d be intolerable otherwise.”
My mouth dropped open in mock offense as I waited for my mom to
scold him, but she grinned. “That’s exactly why.”
And all my outrage was drowned out by Chris’s laughter.

T here was a new-text indication flashing on my phone when I returned to

my room, and I dived across my bed as if it might disappear at any second.
H: Hey. Want to come over around 8? My beloved stepbrother should be
gone by then
A: Hey, so I actually don’t have a ride.
H: That’s fine. I’ll send my town car to pick you up
A: Seriously?
H: Shit did I say town car? I meant bike… I’ll be on my bike
A: Lol you are one damaged rich kid.
H: Wait until you see my bike
A: This should be interesting lol. I’ve never rode on pegs before.
H: Oh jesus. Wear a coat
A: Lol okay.
H: You don’t lol this much in person… I’m beginning to get suspicious
A: LOL! I’m dying over here!!!! Can’t stop laughing!!!!!
H: Haha what’s your address you maniac
A: 46 Maple Ave
H: Cool. See you in a bit
My fingers itched to say more in return to drag the conversation
forward, but I tossed my phone on my bed so I wouldn’t be too tempted.
Besides, what would I possibly say? Cool? Can’t wait? Contrary to how
I’ve acted, I’ve been looking forward to this since the first time I watched
you contemplate murder in gym class? I settled on silence and glancing at
myself in the mirror.
 Chris was sitting in the living room watching TV when I raced
downstairs. Hunter was twenty minutes late, and I had spent those twenty
minutes with my face pressed against my window as though his arrival was
dependent on my level of desperation.
Chris turned off the TV. “Are you ready?”
I grimaced. Not in apology but because I’d forgotten to mention it. “I
actually don’t need a ride.”
“What? Why not?” He stood to peer between the curtains.
“I didn’t feel like getting tormented all the way there and all the way
back,” I said, shooting him a fake smile.
“You are so dramatic. Do you know that?”
I stuck my tongue out at him before grabbing my coat from the front
closet. I gathered the courage to open the front door as my phone vibrated
once in my pocket. When I looked back at Chris, he was watching me.
He gave me an encouraging smile. “You look nice.”
I tried to nod, but I was suddenly so nervous I thought I might vomit.
“Just be yourself,” he said when I didn’t answer.
I twisted around. “Be myself? That’s terrible advice.”
Chris let out a gust of laughter. “Call me if you need a ride home. Can
you at least manage that?”
“I think so,” I breathed, opening the front door.
Hunter stood at the end of my driveway next to the crummiest bike I’d
ever seen. “Your face is suspiciously straight, Alice Matthews,” he called.
I grinned back as I walked toward him, pulling on my hat and mittens.
“I’m all laughed out.”
“Well now, that is a serious bummer.”
“Wait a second, is this bike for real?” It looked as though Hunter had
taken multiple different bike parts, all various colors, and superglued them
together. I was shocked it was standing upright. He burst into laughter at my
horrified expression.
“First of all, please don’t be rude. Second of all, I have been riding this
thing for years, and it hasn’t failed me yet. I garbage picked all the parts.”
He took a step back so I could get a better look at it.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He laughed, considering me. “I guess not.”
“Okay, so how do we do this?” I asked, glancing between him and the
bike.
 “You’re going to stand on these pegs, here, and hold on to my shoulders
as I pedal.”
“All right,” I said, inspecting the pegs. “Should I get on?”
“Yeah, you can get on.”
“Oh god, I’m scared. Should I be wearing a helmet?”
“I won’t crash, I promise.”
“What if we get hit by a car?”
“We won’t, just get on.”
“Do you have reflectors?”
“Yes, I have reflectors.”
“Okay, I’m going to get on now.”
“Please do.”
“These pegs, right?”
“The very ones.”
As soon as I grabbed hold of his shoulders, Hunter pushed off with one
foot, and we lurched forward, the cool air whipping my face. We picked up
momentum as we rolled down the hill at the end of my street, and I gripped
his shoulders even tighter. I begged him to slow down, shrieking as my face
grew numb, but he only laughed and doubled our speed.
 Chapter Fifteen

W elaughter
bumped and sputtered into his driveway, both of us crying with
despite the silent neighborhood.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” He grinned, pulling the bike to a stop
as I swatted at him and hopped off. He parked his bike alongside a four-car
garage and punched in a five-digit code to open the door farthest left. I
expected the garage to be gray and cobwebbed, but bright white lights
illuminated a sleek BMW and red Ferrari occupying two of the spots.
Hunter gestured at them with a shrug. “My dad offered to buy me one, but I
told him I already had a mode of transportation.”
“Wow, so modest.”
He led me through the garage door into the pristine kitchen. I slipped off
my boots, because his house wasn’t the type of place you wore shoes into,
even if the host swears you can leave them on.
“I would give you a tour, but I think you’ve pretty much seen
everything. Wanna go to my room?” He pushed an awkward hand through
his hair. The gesture made me want to smile, but I bit my cheek instead. I
hadn’t seen everything, but I didn’t feel any burning desire to explore the
unwelcoming mansion either.
“Sure.” Even barely above a whisper, my words bounced up the empty
staircase and echoed through the whole place. It felt as if we were standing
in a dark museum that had closed for the night.
He carried my coat and boots with him as he led me up the sleek,
twisting stairs and down the same long hallway. We stopped at the door
Melody had popped her head out of. He hesitated before opening the door,
but it was so slight I almost missed it.
 We stepped inside and I stifled my gasp. Hunter’s room had next to
nothing in it. The entire house was filled with expensive furniture,
professionally decorated from ceiling to floorboards with matching
paintings and fabrics, but Hunter’s room was empty.
There was a small twin bed in the corner of the room with a dark blue
comforter. Other than that, there was an old desk and a small three-shelf
bookcase, both pieces of furniture plain. Books were spread across the floor
in neat stacks, the shelves too small to hold them all. There was one small
window and a closet in the opposite corner, not even a dresser. The rest of
Hunter’s belongings, like electronics and papers, formed a pile near his
desk. His walls were bare, not one thing hanging on them. His room was
bigger than my own but still rather small for the size of the house. I knew
there was at least one unoccupied bedroom much bigger than his, and
probably several more.
He eyed me, and I couldn’t decipher what emotion he was feeling. “It’s
not much, kind of empty, I guess,” he said, as though just realizing it.
“I like it.”
His gaze snapped to mine, and we maintained steady eye contact until it
felt as though there wasn’t enough air in the room for the both of us.
Hunter tore his gaze away first. “Uh, wanna sit?”
I nodded, headed toward the bed, and edged onto it as if it might
swallow me whole. Hunter slumped down in one swift motion, watching
me with a small frown.
“We don’t have to sit here,” he said. He glanced around as if another
option might appear out of thin air.
“Why not?”
“Er, I don’t know . . . you seem uncomfortable.”
I twisted my hands in my lap, because how was I supposed to explain
this? I wasn’t afraid of Hunter, but I’d failed to consider what it would feel
like to sit on his bed with him. Maybe he’d reach across to touch my hand
and then my waist. Maybe his fingers would slip under my shirt, and
instead of my head falling backward in bliss, I’d jump in terror, accusing
him of trying to pin me down and snatch my heart from my chest, when
really, he was just hoping to catch a glimpse of my bra like a regular
seventeen-year-old.
I shifted on the mattress, wringing my hands so tightly I was surprised
sweat wasn’t dripping from them. “I haven’t . . . it’s . . . I’ve never really
hung out with a boy before.” I peeked at him, my cheeks capable of heating
a small village. “Especially not on his bed.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “What about you and that Ken doll?”
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear as I cleared my scratchy throat.
“Brian and I dated for, like, a month . . . if that.”
“You guys never hung out?” Hunter asked, crossing his feet at his
ankles. He had to be the only boy in the entire world who could discuss an
ex-boyfriend as calmly as he was. If we were talking about Melody or any
girl, my heart would be racing, but he was more objective than a scientist.
“We were usually supervised.” But I faltered, and my face burned
brighter as a memory crawled into my head like Brian’s hand up my shirt in
his basement, impromptu and not entirely welcome.
Hunter tapped his chin. “Hmm, interesting.”
“What’s interesting?”
“Oh, nothing really. It’s just . . . even I knew the details of your
relationship, and no one even talked to me.”
Despite the topic of conversation, I laughed. “That must have been
dull.”
He shrugged, as if he hadn’t minded being part of the gossip mill. “Who
doesn’t love a good romance?”
I snorted. “Yeah, Brian Cullen and I are right up there with Romeo and
Juliet.”
His smile turned sly. “C’mon now, you and I are far more star-crossed,
and hey, we even have an affinity for suicide.”
My heartbeat grew loud in my ears as I stared at him, racking my brain
for words that might make sense in a sentence. Hunter didn’t have any idea
how star-crossed we truly were.
“Come on. I want to show you something,” he said.
I remained where I was, sitting on the edge of the bed as though my
spine had a metal rod in it, but Hunter slid off. Instead of heading for the
door or his small bookcase, he retreated to the window and opened it. The
room filled with a rush of cold air as he leaned his head out. When he
reemerged, he nodded toward my shoes and folded coat. “You might want
to put those on.”
I joined him at the window to investigate. “Why?”
He shot me a wild grin and stuck one foot out the window, straddling
the ledge.
 I peeked over his shoulder, but instead of a balcony, there was empty
blackness. “I hope you’re not expecting me to do whatever it is you’re
about to do, because I can tell you right now, I don’t have the coordination.
Unless this is the part where we’re supposed to commit suicide together,
and if that’s the case, I seriously beg you to reconsider.”
He breathed a beat of laughter before twisting his body out the window.
His legs dangled in the space he’d been sitting in before they lifted slowly
out of view.
“For the love of god.” I poked my head out and searched above me. He
stared back, peeking over a ledge above the window. “Yeah, I don’t have
the upper body strength to do what you just did.”
He grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
I glanced between him and the ground multiple times. “What happens if
I fall?”
He evaluated the ground below as though he couldn’t quite remember
the distance. “You’ll definitely break some shit.”
“Great, that’s reassuring.”
He extended a hand. “Put your feet on the ledge and your hands here.”
He touched the top of the window. “And I’ll help pull you up.”
“Hang on, I need my coat and shoes.” I pulled them on, grumbling the
entire time, and when I returned to the window, his smile was polite.
“Ready?”
I licked my lips. I wasn’t afraid of the height, but what if I freaked out
as his arms wrapped around mine? I squinted at the ground and muttered a
string of curses before I climbed onto the ledge, looking up at him with
wide eyes.
His face turned serious as he nodded at me. “I’m not gonna let you fall,
Alice.”
I gripped the roof, prepared to pull myself up, but as soon as I started to,
his hands clutched my upper arms and he lifted me with ease. There was a
little bit of a scuffle at the end, and he stumbled backward as I fell into him,
his hands still touching my elbows.
“See, that wasn’t so bad.” His mouth was near my ear, and I stiffened on
instinct, but he let go, brushing snow off the knee of my jeans.
The roof was a flat five-by-five platform before it sloped upward in
steep shingles. The streetlights were dull below, matching the sprinkle of
stars. Hunter’s house was taller than the other houses in the neighborhood,
and because his street was on a hill, I gazed out at endless snowy roofs and
winding streets. I followed the roads to my own neighborhood and spotted
the park a few blocks from my house with its basketball courts and
playground.
“This is amazing.” When I turned back to him, he was watching me, his
face blank. I gestured at a small ashtray near our feet. “You come up here a
lot?”
He nodded, his eyes guarded before he turned away. He made his way
to the chimney rising from the rooftop and stood on his tiptoes to peer
inside it. He retrieved a blanket and a packet of cigarettes, put the cigarettes
back, and spread out the blanket. He paused at two of the corners,
straightening them, and when he sat down, I joined him.
We sat shoulder to shoulder, our breaths filling the air around us. We
both looked out into the distance, but when I glanced back at him, he was
watching me again.
“What do you usually do up here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Smoke cigarettes, listen to music, ponder my existence
. . . the usual stuff.”
I smiled, reminding myself to tell my mom all about how he wasn’t
smoking now. “What kind of music do you listen to?”
Instead of answering, his laughter became the only sound for miles.
“Nice try. Last time I told you what I liked, you called it torture.”
I offered him a sheepish smile. “Yeah, I don’t know when I became so
opinionated. Usually I don’t care about . . . well, anything, to be honest.”
His eyes roved over my face, and it looked as if he meant to say
something but settled on something different. “You go first this time so I
can properly make fun of you before you return the favor.”
I considered it. “I’ll play you my favorite song if you want.”
He pulled out his phone and opened his Spotify before handing it to me.
I scrolled through the list of playlists on his home page. Instead of being
labeled, they were all numbered. “I’m getting a preview of your favorite
music.”
He tried to grasp at the phone. “Don’t you dare.”
“What’s with the numbers?”
“They’re based on moods. Play your song or give me that.”
He tried to grab it again, but I waved it away. I grinned as I held it high
on the other side of my head. It was meant to be playful, but when his face
was a mere six inches from mine and his chest pressed against my shoulder,
I relented. “Okay, okay, I’ll play it.”
I angled the phone so he couldn’t see it as I typed in my song. He
watched me with narrowed eyes, but he did lean away, which helped me
breathe easier. When I pressed play, I bit the corner of my lip and waited for
the first few notes to start. As soon as it did, his eyebrows furrowed in
thought, and when the singing started, he laughed. “Is this Mulan?”
I nodded, pleased he recognized it. “This is my all-time favorite song.
Hands down. Ever.”
“I haven’t heard this song in years. Mulan is the shit.”
I grinned back. “My brother is really into theater, and when he was a
freshman in high school, they put on this musical.” I stared out in the
distance, smiling as I pictured Chris on stage. “He sang this song and it was
. . . he was amazing.” I turned back to Hunter. “He has an amazing voice,
but it wasn’t just that. It was like he inspired the entire audience. My mom
and I went to all six shows, and I swear no one even moved when he sang
this song.”
My cheeks warmed under Hunter’s intense gaze. “I mean, everyone
went to watch their kids or whatever, but when Chris was on stage, it
became so much more.” I shrugged. “He demands more than indifference,
and I’m still trying to figure out how he does it.”
I fiddled with his phone, turning it over a few times. “I like listening to
musicals and movie soundtracks.” I could feel him looking at me, but I
stared at his phone, thumbing the edge of its black case. “I like that there’s a
context . . . a scene I can imagine. If it’s just a song and no scene, I’m left
with nothing but the thoughts in my head.”
I picked at a hangnail that gave back a sharp response of pain. When I
glanced at Hunter, his green eyes were boring into me, studying every
feature, and despite the freezing air, I suddenly felt hot and clammy.
“Anyway, yeah. That’s it. Your turn.” I thrust his phone at him, and my
fingers brushed against his cold ones.
“Why’d you quit drama club?”
I startled. “How do you know I quit?”
His eyebrows slanted even more. “Uh, because you were in all the plays
and then you weren’t.”
Instead of focusing on his question, I decided on my own. “You went to
see the school plays?”
 He smirked. “We had to.”
I tried to catch my breath, because that meant Hunter remembered me
from two years ago. Possibly even before.
What he said next made it even harder to breathe. “You played JoJo in
Seussical your freshman year. You were really good too.”
I swallowed. I was the only underclassman cast in a lead role, and I
remembered Chris tackling me with a hug in the living room when the
casting list came out. After Seussical, I was even featured in the town
newspaper. A reporter interviewed me, and when she asked me what I loved
about performing, I blanked. I could have said anything. I loved the
attention, the lights, the adrenaline. I loved practicing until all my notes
were perfect. I even loved the camaraderie. But instead of saying any of
that, I told her I loved performing because I always knew my next line. And
at that moment, I could have really used a rehearsed line.
“I quit to focus on my schoolwork.”
He grinned as if we shared an inside joke. “You’re lying.” But it wasn’t
accusatory. It was a statement of fact.
And he was right. I felt sick with envy whenever I saw the theater kids
hurrying to practice after school, but no matter how much I used to love
performing, I couldn’t bear the thought of captivating the attention of an
entire audience anymore.
My gaze trailed over the snowy rooftops. “Don’t ever tell anybody
anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
I only knew it because it was the last line, which meant I’d finally
reached the end of Holden Caulfield’s wretchedness. Hunter’s head
whipped in my direction, his eyes wide as he gaped at me. “Nooo shit.”
I let out a wistful laugh.
“You quoting Catcher in the Rye in my secret hiding spot is not
something I ever would have predicted. In fact, I think you just played out
one of my fantasies.”
I meant to roll my eyes, but I grinned instead. “It doesn’t mean I like the
book.”
“I would never think such a thing.”
“Now you have to play out one of my fantasies.” As soon as I said the
words, I felt my cheeks heat, because if that was my lame attempt at
flirting, I might as well jump off the roof altogether.
 But instead of sharing my horror, Hunter’s eyes grew wide and dark.
“And what would that entail?”
“Sing Mulan,” I said before his brain might consider anything else.
He burst out laughing. It carried in the distance, over the rooftops. It felt
as though it went on forever before he pinned me with a lazy grin. “Let me
get this straight. Your fantasy is me serenading you with a song titled ‘I’ll
Make a Man out of You.’ The same song that also reminds you of your
brother.”
I scrunched my nose. “Well, now you’ve made it weird.”
“Right, yeah. I’m the one who’s made it weird.”
We huffed clouds of laughter before settling into a comfortable stretch
of silence. We sat huddled together, close enough that I could have put my
head on his shoulder if I wanted to, but not quite touching.
“What playlist do you listen to when you’re sitting up here?” I asked
after a while.
He propped his hands on his knees, inspecting his palms before tracing
a line across one, following the cracks. “Number four usually.”
“What mood is that one?”
His face grew haunted. “Melancholy.”
He scrolled through his phone. The air around us filled with slow, heavy
guitars and a voice with a rough edge to it, almost as if the lead singer was
begging. It was eerily pretty.
“So you sit here and listen to this and smoke cigarettes and ponder your
existence . . .”
He nodded.
My voice grew gentler. “What do you ponder?”
The corner of his mouth lifted, his words as somber as the music.
“Should I jump off or keep sitting here.”
I stared at him, but he stared forward, entangled in his thoughts. When
he spoke, his voice was like a chainsaw as his words tore through the air
around us. “I overdosed on my stepmom’s painkillers my sophomore year.
It was a random Wednesday night, and I don’t know . . . I guess I didn’t feel
like sitting here anymore.”
“Why not?” I whispered.
He turned back to me, his eyes filled with a burning intensity, but there
was something darker too—a sort of desperation. “My body knows how to
live. When I take a hit, my blood clots and then scabs, and my cells fix
themselves. My body just does it without any effort on my part. My mind
isn’t like that. It doesn’t heal. And I haven’t figured out how to live with
that.”
I had so many questions about his suicide attempt, questions I’d been
storing since that day in gym class, but with his eyes searing into mine and
his words that were as beautiful and moving as any play I’d ever read,
nothing came.
“My dad shipped me off to a mental health facility after that. My mom
. . .” He paused to glance at me. “My real mom, she had a lot of issues. My
dad is away on business a lot, as you’ve probably noticed, and it was the
same when I was younger. I have vivid memories of my mom being in bed
for days at a time, only because I don’t think I could ever forget the hunger.
I used to make these sandwiches . . . ketchup on white bread. It was all I ate
when she was like that. Sometimes she’d wake up and bang around the
kitchen for days on end, making all these Italian dishes, letting me stay
awake and lick the spoon, but sometimes it was like she wasn’t there at all,
like she’d died.”
He pulled up his hood and drew the drawstrings of his sweatshirt tighter.
I couldn’t tell if he was cold or just needed something to do with his hands.
“My dad would come home and find her in bed, or see I hadn’t changed my
clothes in a week, and he’d freak out. He just . . . he didn’t know how to
deal with her, and she ended up leaving. Two days before my seventh
birthday. I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a mom or a wife. She
barely had enough energy to get out of bed most days, but somehow she
managed to pack all her shit and walk out the front door.”
Hunter shrugged. “So then my dad met Carol. Met her when I was nine
and married her when I was ten.” He let out a joyless laugh. “And to be
perfectly honest, I’d rather be starving with my bipolar mom than living
with any of them.”
My hair blew across my face, and he caught a strand of it. He twirled it
between two fingers as he stared back at me. We were six inches apart, and
I couldn’t have spoken words even if they were there. He released the
strand, his eyes digging even deeper. “And now I’m going to miss you
when you leave.”
 Chapter Sixteen

H unter walked me home around midnight. He brought his bike with him,
but we didn’t race to my house like we’d raced to his. We took our
time, meandering along the same streets that had grown far less pretty. The
park had glowed like a stadium from Hunter’s roof, but up close, the chain-
link fence sprawled with gloom and the swings creaked with vacancy. I’d
played there my whole life, but at that moment, I was almost convinced no
one had ever stepped foot in it.
When we stopped at my driveway, I nodded. “Thanks for walking me
home.”
Hunter shrugged and hiked one foot over his bike.
I glanced at my house. “And . . . um . . .” I hesitated, meeting his patient
gaze. “Thanks for sharing your roof with me.”
All this time, I’d been yearning for information surrounding his suicide
attempt, but with him standing in front of me, I didn’t feel at all satisfied. I
wanted to know if he felt like I did, but I also wanted to know how he felt
about anything. Even the things that didn’t matter.
Hunter grinned, leaning his elbows on his handlebars. “I showed you
mine. Now you have to show me yours. And I must say, I’m looking
forward to it.”
I wrapped my coat tighter around me. “I don’t sit on my roof.”
He straightened up, one foot still on the ground while he perched his
other foot on the pedal, grinning even wider. “I’m sure you go somewhere
. . . whether it’s a place or not.”
Instead of moving, I stared at him. I tried to formulate a response, but
after several moments, he laughed.
 “Are you going to go inside?” he said. “It’s cold as all fuck out here,
and I think my fingers might already be frozen to these handlebars.”
I scrunched my eyebrows. “Oh. Are you waiting for me to go in?”
“No, I plan to stand outside your house all night. Yes, of course I’m
waiting for you to go in.”
I put a hand over my heart. “I don’t know what’s more gentlemanly—
your words or your intentions.”
He snorted. “Definitely my intentions.”
We exchanged smiles that made my cheeks ache. As I headed up my
driveway, I could feel his eyes boring into me, but it wasn’t unpleasant, and
when I turned around, he was leaning forward on his handlebars again,
watching me.
“Maybe you should start wearing a coat,” I called.
He grinned back at me, and the corner of his mouth twisted in a way
that almost made him look villainous. “Yeah, maybe I should.”

I closed the front door with a snap and stomped down the impulse to peek
out the front window to see if Hunter was still there or if he was pedaling
away.
“Why does your face look so weird?”
I jumped, clutching a hand to my chest. “Jesus Christ, Chris! You scared
the shit out of me!”
The living room and front hallway were dark, but there was one dull
light coming from the kitchen. Chris leaned back in his chair, peeking at me
from around the corner. His hair stuck out in odd directions, and his eyes
were glassy. “Were you just smiling?”
I rolled my eyes and peeled off my coat. I stuffed it in the front closet
before making my way to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Chris had
returned to his bowl of Lucky Charms, closing one eye as he concentrated
on scooping a spoonful.
I watched him as I waited for the tap water to run cold. “Are you
drunk?”
Chris startled, then his facial expression caught up and he grinned. “You
know, I just might be.” He went back to his cereal, frowning as he chased a
marshmallow around his bowl for several grueling minutes before giving up
entirely. “I need to go to sleep.”
He stumbled as he stood, catching himself on the table and almost
knocking the bowl of milk over.
My eyes widened. “You’re wasted!”
At first, his eyes narrowed at my accusation, but then he shrugged. “So
it would seem.”
He took a few more steps, but they were so staggering I hurried forward
and wrapped one arm around his waist. We headed toward the stairs like
that, but once we reached the bottom, he shook his head resolutely, eyeing
the steepness. “Ain’t gonna happen. Lead me to the couch.”
I didn’t move.
“Onward, my trusty steed!”
I huffed, finally conceding. If Chris fell on the stairs, he’d likely kill the
both of us. He collapsed on the couch, smiling with his eyes closed as he
wiggled around to get comfortable. I draped a blanket over him but paused,
peering at his face. Feeling my closeness, he cracked one eye open.
“Are you going to, like, die by choking on your own vomit or
something?” I studied him, searching for any indication of the risk.
He chuckled, tucking his hands beneath his cheek and closing his eyes
again. “No, promise.”
I stood there for a minute but made up my mind and grabbed a blanket.
I sighed as I retreated to the other couch.
“You don’t have to sleep down here, Alice. I’ll be fine.”
I fanned the blanket over me, then fixed the end so it covered my feet.
“Shut up.” I rolled over to face him. “And wake me up if you have to
puke.”
He huffed tired breaths of laughter. “Not gonna puke.”
It was silent for a while, and I stared at the ceiling, listening to his slow
breathing as I replayed my night with Hunter.
“Alice?”
I scrambled onto my elbow, ready for him to start projectile vomiting.
“Yeah?”
But he lay there, a calm lump of blankets curled into the fetal position.
“I might forget most of this, but I’m not going to forget how you were
grinning like a lovesick moron when you came inside.”
 I scoffed, collapsing back into the couch. “Go to sleep, you drunken
idiot.”
 Chapter Seventeen

I nwall
gym on Monday morning, I found Hunter leaning against the bleacher
with his arms folded. I headed toward him, and when I was halfway
across the gym, his gaze lifted to meet mine. The side of his mouth curled
into a smirk, and even though I thought I’d gotten used to the bruising, his
face was still shocking.
“Alice.” It was becoming a habit of his to say my name in greeting, and
it made my heart stop for the briefest moment before resuming at full speed
as if trying to make up for the lost blood flow.
Despite our numerous conversations, my sudden shyness was
suffocating. “How are you?”
He crossed his ankles as he shifted beside me. “Peachy keen. You?”
“Yeah, same.” We both surveyed the gymnasium, leaning shoulder to
shoulder against the folded bleachers. “What’d you do the rest of the
weekend?”
He shrugged. “I played some basketball, studied for a test, nothing too
interesting. You?”
I’d spent most of my weekend trying not to text Hunter, but that wasn’t
something a normal person shared in conversation. “My brother was super
hungover all weekend, so we mostly binge-watched Netflix.”
Chris had woken to a screaming headache on Saturday morning that
reportedly lasted all weekend. True to his word, he didn’t forget my dorky
smile, so I also spent half of my weekend dodging his questions and
teasing.
Hunter stiffened, and I followed his dark gaze. Scott bounded toward us
from the locker room. We both fell silent, and Scott beamed in response.
“Don’t stop talking on my account.”
Hunter inspected him the same way Chris had inspected a dead squirrel
we’d found in our shed last summer. “Do you need something?”
“What? I can’t say hey to my own brother?” Scott stretched one arm
toward Hunter in what appeared to be a friendly gesture, but Hunter’s
murderous expression stopped him.
“If you’re going to touch me, you better wait until you have three of
your friends here to help you defend yourself.” Hunter’s voice was calm,
but I didn’t blame Scott for dropping his hand. I almost stepped back
myself.
Scott’s eyes flashed with hatred, his smile gone, but instead of keeping
his gaze on Hunter, his eyes landed on me. “I’m concerned about you,
Alice.”
I froze, staring at him, but Hunter rolled his eyes. “Don’t you have
anything better to do? Like go shine your lacrosse stick or some shit?”
Several people milled around the attendance line while others took turns
shooting a basketball. We attracted lingering glances of interest from all
corners of the gym.
Scott waved his hand toward Hunter in dismissal, his gaze on me. “Do
me a favor and give us a moment.”
Hunter let out a hollow laugh, remaining right where he was. “And why
the fuck would I do that?”
“Fine, your funeral. This might get awkward.” Scott turned toward me,
attempting to block Hunter from the conversation with one shoulder.
“Listen, Alice. I know you’re going through some kind of phase, or
whatever this is.” His eyes traveled down the length of me in distaste. “But
your friends are concerned, and as Margo’s boyfriend, I should tell you—
you shouldn’t have to lower yourself to suicidal schizos just because you’re
trying to make a statement.”
He turned back to Hunter, eyes wide with apology. “Sorry you have to
hear this. I know your deluded brain probably thinks she might actually be
into you.”
Hunter’s gaze had been fixated on us for the duration of the
performance, and at this point in the conversation, he tipped his head back
and burst into loud laughter, the harshness of it almost grating.
“See what I mean,” Scott said, speaking to me. “Fucking demented.”
“Would you go away?” I was not nearly as entertained as Hunter.
 Scott’s face darkened, but he shrugged as though he was the messenger
rather than the one orchestrating the attack. “I’m just looking out for you. I
know him better than anyone, and let me tell you, he’s not going to fucking
spin class two days a week after school or taking a handful of goddamn
multivitamins every morning. You have to watch out for yourself, Alice.”
“Are you done?” Hunter gritted out, no longer amused, and I bit the
inside of my cheek, drawing out the metallic taste of blood to ease the rage
coursing through me.
“For now.” Scott winked at me before he strode off. When he was far
enough away, I looked at Hunter, but his face was blank, all the angles
sharp and contemplative.
“I have to go to therapy two times a week from when I tried to off
myself.” He stared straight ahead, and the cutting edge of his jaw turned the
lightest shade of pink. “One time individually and one time as a group
thing.”
“I wasn’t wondering,” I said, still gazing up at him. When his eyes met
mine, a small smile touched his lips, but it was gone in a flash.
Mr. Downs blew his whistle, and we both jolted forward. My face
heated as I pulled my gaze from Hunter’s. We made our way to the
attendance line, sneaking glances at each other as we waited. Mr. Downs
took attendance as though it was our fault he had to come to work, then
instructed us to warm up. A few people grabbed basketballs from a mesh
bag in the corner of the gym.
“Want to be my partner?” Hunter asked.
I smiled. “I’d be honored.”
While he followed the others to retrieve a ball, I pretended to stretch my
triceps, because it felt too awkward to do nothing at all.
“I don’t know why you always have to be so difficult,” Scott said from
behind me, his breath hot and teasing in my ear. “Why you insist on
provoking me.”
I jerked away from him and scanned the gym for Hunter, but his back
was to us as he sifted through the bag of basketballs.
“You’re the one who’s delusional if you think I do anything with you in
mind at all,” I snapped. I tried to wedge a sliver of space between us. My
head was dizzy, but it wasn’t the same stomach-flipping dizziness I felt
standing close to Hunter. My body buzzed with rage.
 He chuckled, deep and appreciative. “See, that’s exactly what I mean.”
He stepped even closer, his lips almost brushing my skin. “You know I like
games as well as anyone, Alice, but you’re playing a dangerous one.”
Then he stepped away. He dribbled his basketball before tossing it to
Josh. Hunter walked back toward me, but I didn’t miss the way his gaze
flickered between Scott and me even though Scott was already halfway
across the gymnasium.

S cott ’ s warning wasn’t the worst thing to happen that day. I thought I’d
slip into the seat across from Hunter at lunch and the two of us would go
unnoticed. I’d been desperate for my social extinction for years. I figured
the world of popularity would simply drift behind me, and I’d become an
ancient memory to my old lunch table, but I was wrong.
Our school was divided into three classes. The first was my old lunch
table. The second was the middle-of-the-road type. You had to fall into that
category if you truly wanted to be ignored. Those kids kept to themselves
and went to their own parties, maybe Scott’s on occasion, and for the most
part, no one bothered with them. They were the majority of the school.
And then there was Hunter’s class. He was beyond unpopular, so much
so that he received nearly as much attention as the people seated in the
middle of the cafeteria. The popularity chart was like a bell curve; people
paid attention to you when you fell into either extreme. Hunter and I were
on people’s radar as much as Scott Henderson was. But while he basked in
the attention at the center of the cafeteria, our attention was different. I
hadn’t merely declared myself unpopular; I’d become a traitor. And it turns
out, nothing enrages people more than rejection.
After lunch, I was tucked inside a bubblegum-pink stall in the third-
floor bathroom when a group of girls came in, their heels clicking across
the linoleum. There was a shuffle near the sinks, followed by whispering.
“Did you guys hear what Brian was saying at lunch today?” Margo’s
voice echoed off the tiles. I tried not to sigh, afraid I’d give myself away,
causing a stakeout as they waited for me to emerge.
“The only reason he dated Alice was because they looked somewhat
decent together,” Margo went on, “but he said kissing her was like kissing a
corpse. If anyone ever describes me like that, just shoot me. I mean, can it
get any more mortifying?”
I stiffened. I couldn’t believe he’d say something so cruel to a table full
of people who had once pretended to be my friends. Maybe I didn’t know
him at all. Maybe I never did.
There was a tinkling of laughter, and I peeked under the stall, counting
six pairs of shoes. I knew which high heels were Margo’s, and I could
picture her fixing her lip gloss in the mirror while Casey pivoted back and
forth, smoothing out a nonexistent stomach. If I were with them instead of
inside the stall, I’d be hovering somewhere in between. Not saying shit, but
standing there anyway as they winked at each other and pointed to the
occupied stall. I guess I deserved it.
“If Brian ever kissed me, I might just lie there too,” someone said. It
sounded like Erica. “He is so freaking hot. I’d probably go into shock.”
“I don’t get why all the hot guys like her. It so isn’t fair.”
“It makes no sense. She isn’t even that pretty,” came Margo’s voice
again. “I’ve never understood the obsession. Her hair is decent, but besides
that, she isn’t anything special, and her personality is about as appealing as
a dry piece of toast.”
Margo had been my best friend since kindergarten, so I knew her streak
of wickedness better than anyone, but I couldn’t pretend that one didn’t feel
like a sucker punch.
“And the clothes,” Suzanne added. “Just hideous.”
“Her body is nice. She couldn’t put on weight if she tried,” Erica said.
“Eugh. She’s too thin,” Suzanne quipped back. “Like a decaying
skeleton.”
“She isn’t too thin.” I could picture Erica’s eye roll. “If Alice Matthews
doesn’t have good genes, then I must be a freaking troll.”
“Whatever,” Margo snapped, regaining control of the conversation. The
bathroom grew quiet for a moment, and I sat perfectly still.
There were shifting footsteps, moving closer to the mirror. “Maybe
Alice just didn’t like Brian. She wasn’t always a prude. Remember when
she took off her shirt at that party freshman year? Brian sure as hell wasn’t
acting like she was a corpse then.”
Margo’s fake laughter filled the air around us. “Oh my god, I totally
forgot about that. Three shots in and the shirt came right off.”
 I froze. We’d been playing truth or dare; it wasn’t as though I’d dared
myself.
“What was that upperclassman’s name? Was it Derek?”
“Yes! Derek! They literally made out in front of everyone. That was
super disgusting, actually,” Margo said.
His name was Darren, and we were in drama club together. I’m not sure
if he was more obsessed with Chris or me, but it was me he pressed his lips
against. He played the Cat in the Hat in Seussical, but the next year he
played Danny Zuko, and every single girl in the audience wished they had
made out with him at a party once too.
“Wow . . . I’ve gotten so used to her saintly getups I forgot she actually
used to be kind of a slut.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
There was more ringing laughter. “I don’t know. Maybe you have it
wrong, Margo. Maybe Hunter’s the nun compared to Alice.”
Margo snorted. “Maybe.”
One of them giggled. “I bet he’s still a virgin.”
“Of course he’s still a virgin,” Margo said, her mouth forming the word
as if it was herpes instead of abstinence. “Who the hell would have sex with
him? I’d be afraid he’d murder me halfway through.”
“I mean, he’s super hot, so—”
“I doubt he’s ever even kissed a girl before,” Margo interrupted.
“Although . . .” She hesitated, building the anticipation before she delivered
her next line. “If he’s sleeping with anyone, it’s definitely Melody
Cartwright.”
“You think?” came a gasp, and then Erica, dubious again.
“She’s always talking about her boyfriend in ceramics, and it definitely
isn’t Hunter.”
“So he’s a virgin then,” Margo said, her voice low and conspiratorial.
“If he hasn’t banged her, he definitely hasn’t banged anyone. I wonder if he
knows Alice used to be such a slut.” I knew the curling smirk she wore as
she delivered blow after blow. “I bet he has a pathetic fantasy where they
lose their virginity to each other or something. He’s going to be in for a rude
awakening when he realizes his little girlfriend isn’t nearly as pure as he
thought.”
The sink had been running, but it was turned off as the paper towel
dispenser buzzed with a new sheet. Their heels began to tick across the
floor again as they headed for the door, stumbling and joyous as they
continued laughing about Hunter’s apparent lack of a sex life.
“Isn’t she a virgin too, though?” Erica asked as the door was pulled
open.
I heard them spill out into the hallway, and when the bathroom was
empty, Margo’s low voice carried through it, echoing off the walls as if she
was speaking only to me before the door closed with a swoosh behind her.
“Depends who you ask.”
 Chapter Eighteen

I flitted through the TV channels, trying to find something of interest, as

Chris flopped onto the cushion next to me. “Who died?”
I clicked so fast there was barely enough time to see what was on each
channel before I moved past it. “Shut up.”
He glanced between me and the TV. “You look like your new boyfriend
kicked it.”
I gave him a severe look. “Suicide isn’t funny.”
Chris paled, his eyebrows scrunched so tight they practically drew
together. “Who said anything about suicide?”
I ignored him, biting the corner of my lip as I settled on a channel. By
some miracle, he decided to drop it after staring at me for several long
moments. Maybe he could sense I wasn’t in the mood, and for once in his
life, he left it alone.
“Mom’s ordering Chinese food. I told her to get orange beef and shrimp
lo mien.” It was his version of a peace offering, and I was about to give him
a semi-apologetic smile, but he continued. “On account of you acting
depressed as fuck and all.”
I scowled instead. “Would you go away?”
He grinned at my irritation, putting his feet on the coffee table. “There’s
the Alice I know and love.”
My phone buzzed on the table next to his feet, and I stiffened before
reaching for it. I slid my thumb across the screen, and Hunter’s name
popped up, but unlike the normal stomach-flipping excitement, my heart
shuddered.
 Want to come to a concert with me Friday night? It’s a special kind of
venue. Instead of a dress code, you have to be miserable and pathetic to get
in
There was a smiley emoji at the end, and imagining Hunter scrolling
through to find the right face before he pressed send was bewildering in the
best way possible. I tried to control all the thoughts storming through me,
but it felt like trying to wrangle a bronco with a packet of floss.
I stared out the front window, flipping my phone in my hand over and
over and over. It wasn’t quite snowing, but it wasn’t raining either. The tree
outside jerked as it conformed to the thudding wetness, its branches
scratching against the glass.
I minimized the message and leaned forward to toss my phone on the
table, but Chris snatched it from my hand and vaulted from the couch
before I could even blink. He stood in the middle of the living room,
inspecting my phone as he held it inches from his face, his eyes darting to
either side. And then I was after him.
“What the fuck, Chris!” I flung my arms around his neck and grasped
for my phone, but he held it above his head, shoving me away as if I was a
gnat.
He jumped on the opposite couch to get away from me, standing on the
middle cushion. I charged at him again and tried to shove his legs out from
under him.
“Give me that!” I yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you!”
He faltered to one side but managed to stand back up. He kicked one
foot out as he tried to keep me at bay, unfazed by my hysterics. “It’s my job
to make sure you aren’t being bullied, Alice.”
“Um, it’s none of your business, actually!” I shrieked. I smacked his
foot away, then tackled him again. He teetered and fell onto the couch but
still managed to hold my phone away from me as he typed out words over
his head. I punched every soft spot I could access, but he didn’t even grunt.
Instead, his laughter was manic. It was the same laughter he used to goad
me with when we were younger, and I was blinded with childlike fury.
I jammed an elbow into his thigh. He did grunt in pain, but it didn’t
debilitate him the way I’d hoped. He shoved me with one foot, and then,
just like that, he tossed my phone at me and put his hands up, as though he
couldn’t figure out why I was freaking out in the first place.
 I grasped for it like an addict before I opened the conversation and
stared at words that weren’t mine.
Sounds exactly like the sort of dismal shit I’m into.
I bolted upright and aimed a kick at him, which he dodged with ease.
“Chris!” Intent on inflicting some form of bodily harm, I flung myself at
him. He leaped from the couch, avoiding me as he grinned, not even having
the decency to look apologetic. “This is such an invasion of privacy!”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, quit being so dramatic.” He settled into my
previously occupied spot on the couch, one hand tucked behind his head, as
he changed the channel.
I stared between him and the TV, still fuming. “You’re an obnoxious fly
of a person who’s good for nothing but buzzing your ugly self into other
people’s business, and I hate you.”
He stared at me for several wide-eyed moments before collapsing into
laughter. He shook with it as he fell onto his side, his entire body curled
with hilarity.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
He straightened up, heaving breaths. “You’re an obnoxious spider of a
person who’s good for nothing but causing drama when there isn’t any.”
I stalked toward the kitchen, unable to tolerate being in the same room
as him.
“It’s called matriphagy!” he called.
I stopped in the doorway.
He continued clicking the remote, searching for something new to
watch, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “Some female spiders sacrifice
themselves and let their offspring eat them instead of . . . gee, I don’t know,
getting them some regular food.” He lifted the remote again, shaking his
head. “Talk about making a problem bigger than it needs to be.”
“It’s none of your business.”
He twisted around, looking as annoyed as I felt. “Do you wanna go?”
I didn’t answer. I was about to, but he scoffed before I could find the
right words.
“Why can’t you agree to hang out with someone you obviously like? I
just don’t understand you, Alice. You make yourself miserable on purpose,
and it’s infuriating to watch.”
My chest heaved, my rib cage cracking against my erratic heartbeat. I
opened my mouth to say something but changed my mind and stormed out
instead.
 Chapter Nineteen

B yroom
Friday night, I still hadn’t bailed. Instead, I floundered around my
for over an hour, trying to select an outfit that would be suitable
for a concert. I knew what Margo and Casey would wear, and I knew what
sort of outfit they’d try to force me into, but as I browsed my closet, I
couldn’t quite remember what I liked in the first place. I settled on a light
gray sweater that wasn’t completely awful and a floral headband. But as I
studied myself in the mirror, I couldn’t have been plainer.
Chris was sitting on the couch, but I didn’t look in his direction when I
ambled down the stairs. I could feel him watching me as I dug through the
front closet for my coat.
“What concert is it anyway?” he asked. When I didn’t respond, he
huffed. “It’s been four days. How long are you going to keep this up, and
why can’t you just admit you wanted to go all along?”
I twisted around and pinned him with a menacing glare. “It’s not about
that.”
He raised both hands to the ceiling. “Lord have mercy, she speaks!”
I continued ignoring him as I pulled on my boots and zipped my coat.
Bright lights danced across the living room walls, and I took a deep breath,
steadying myself. My fingers twitched against the side of my legs, the
temperature in the house suddenly stifling. I glanced back at Chris before
opening the door, and my eyes narrowed when I found him watching me
again. “If I have a crap time, I’m coming into your room and murdering you
tonight.”
He grinned, my level of irritation fueling him. “If you have a crap time,
it will be your own damn fault. Also, you don’t scare me. You fight like a
freaking pansy.”
I scowled and gave him the finger over my shoulder, but it didn’t faze
him.
“Have a good time!” he called, and even the solid front door couldn’t
drown out his laughter as I snapped it closed behind me.
I shielded my eyes as I walked to the car idling outside, its bright lights
too illuminating. I felt like a lab rat, suddenly self-conscious about
superfluous things, like how my legs carried me and the way my arms hung
on either side. I sighed in relief when I opened the passenger door to find no
one sitting in the back. I climbed in, reveling in the darkness, as Hunter
twisted around in his seat to grin at me. A boy with sandy hair was in the
driver’s seat, and I studied him in interest as Hunter gestured to him.
“This is Hudson. Hudson, Alice.”
I smiled at him, but he didn’t return it. He looked at me, acknowledging
my presence for one blinking second, before he put the car in reverse and
backed out of the driveway.
The concert venue was an old warehouse on the edge of town, but there
was no formality to it. There were no tickets, no sign, no paved parking lot,
and though it didn’t appear to be a legitimate business, there was some
semblance of organization. A bouncer stood outside the front door, but he
didn’t quite fit the stereotype. He was regular sized with lots of metal
piercings and yellow hair, and instead of checking IDs, he nodded at Hunter
and Hudson in recognition before his eyes landed on me, cool and hostile.
“Who’s she?” He inspected me with callousness, his eyes traveling
down the length of me. It irked me that the question wasn’t even directed at
me, but I also felt too intimidated to respond. His black attire matched
Hunter’s and Hudson’s, while my sweater and headband felt mortifying.
Hunter frowned. “Her name is Alice.”
“How old is she?”
“Sixteen . . . ?” Hunter trailed off to glance at me in question. I nodded
once, surprised by his honesty.
The bouncer lit a cigarette. “A little young.”
Hunter’s jaw tightened. “Are you kidding? There are probably forty
people in there younger than her.”
“We don’t need the cops called.”
“Who said anything about calling the cops?” Hudson asked, speaking
for the first time. His voice was quiet and calm, low enough that I might
have had to strain to hear if his words weren’t so articulate.
The bouncer looked me over again and shrugged. “She looks like the
type.”
Hudson studied me, and I thought he might roll his eyes or abandon me
altogether, but his eyes darted away instead. “She’s cool.”
Hudson and the bouncer stared at each other for several seconds before
the bouncer conceded. “Fine.” He huffed. “Wrist.”
He was looking at me, and I faltered. “W-what?”
“I need your wrist,” he said, each word sharper than the last. When I
still didn’t move, he held up a handful of red wristbands.
I stared at him.
He looked at Hunter and Hudson. “Is she, like, deaf or something?”
“She’ll put it on herself,” Hunter said, reaching for one.
The bouncer yanked his hand back. “Um, no she won’t.”
I curled my fingers around my coat sleeves as I stood there in utter
silence. I could feel people peeking around us, standing on their tiptoes,
shifting impatiently. Hudson glanced back and forth between Hunter and
me.
Hunter’s fingers curled too, but his were in tight fists. “Give it to me.
I’ll put it on her.”
The bouncer smirked. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“I’ll do it right fucking in front of you,” Hunter snapped.
The bouncer’s smile widened.
Hudson put a hand on Hunter’s forearm, so subtle the bouncer didn’t
even seem to notice. “Come on, Mason. What are they even for? You know
everyone drinks anyway. Just let her put the thing on herself.”
The bouncer shifted, no longer amused. “Whatever.” He thrust a
wristband at me. “Hurry up and put it on. You’re holding up my line.”
I fumbled with the wristband against my jeans, then removed the sticky
part and wrapped it around my left wrist.
“Right wrist,” the bouncer ordered.
I fumbled, trying to use my left hand.
“Do you need help?” Hunter asked softly. I glanced up at him, but my
throat caught, and he was by my side in an instant. “Let me do it, Alice,” he
said, bending his head close to mine.
His fingers were quick and businesslike as he nudged my sleeve the
tiniest bit so he could wrap the band around my wrist.
 “Tighter,” the bouncer said.
I could practically hear Hunter’s teeth grinding as he ignored him. He
attached the sticky part, and I looked away, face burning. Even though a
mere centimeter of my wrist was exposed, you could still see the edge of a
tangle of red lines, and I knew Hunter saw them.
His fingers were gentle as he pulled my coat sleeve down. He dropped
my hand, glaring as he extended his own wrist to the bouncer, and Hudson
did the same.
We walked inside, and I could feel Hudson studying me, but I didn’t
meet his gaze. I didn’t even meet Hunter’s, and as we pushed into the
crowd, neither of them said a word.
 Chapter Twenty

T he warehouse was huge and crammed with people. There was a long bar
along the left wall, but that’s all it was—there were no shelves of
bottles, or bar stools, or even a sink. A few people stood behind it, filling
plastic cups with beer. The bar area was elevated a few steps, separating it
from the standing area for the stage. The stage was small and lined with
black curtains, red lighting, and a handwritten sign that read Open
Destruction in drooping letters.
I followed Hunter and Hudson to the bar and spotted Melody perched
against it, but her pink hair didn’t stand out as much as usual. There were
other colors, just as vibrant, dotting the crowd. When we made eye contact,
her expression turned acidic, and she leered at me the entire walk over.
A guy stood behind her, his hand tucked around her waist, and she
leaned into him, looking conceited. He had short dark hair and clear blue
eyes. Tattoos poked out from beneath his jacket and sprawled up the sides
of his neck. His ears were weighted down by gauges that made me wince in
pain, but besides those, he was gorgeous. When my eyes met Melody’s
again, her smile was wicked and knowing, as though she’d caught me doing
something scandalous.
When we reached them, Hunter waved one hand at him. “This is Kohen.
Kohen, this is Alice.”
Kohen smiled at me despite Melody clawed into him. Another guy
stood beside them.
“And Max,” Hunter said.
Max nodded at me. He and Kohen were dressed like Hunter and
everyone else, but while Hunter always managed to look effortless, their
attire felt more intentional. Max had styled his hair to stick upright in
spikes, and over his black ensemble, he wore a dark green army jacket with
various patches sewn onto it.
“Alice Matthews.” Melody’s smile was razor-sharp as she lowered her
head, bowing before me multiple times. “We are not worthy of your
presence.”
Max laughed, but it was light instead of malicious, and he struck me as
the type of person who laughed at anything.
“Cut it out,” Hunter ordered, his jaw hard, but she didn’t.
“You’re in the presence of royalty, gentlemen.” She glanced around the
circle before taking a long sip of her drink. “Our favorite fallen princess,
and my, how far you’ve fallen.”
Kohen sighed. “Melody . . .” But she didn’t have time to respond,
because Hunter was barreling toward her and then steering her away by the
elbow.
“Whatever have I done?” she asked, her voice mystified.
“Sorry about that, Alice,” Kohen said, and I smiled in acknowledgment,
tight-lipped and polite.
While everyone else stared at me, their eyebrows raised in interest, I
stared at Hunter and Melody a few feet from us. It was too loud to make out
their entire conversation, but I heard bits and pieces. They were leaned in
close to each other, Hunter’s hand still on her arm. I forced myself to look
away because their closeness made my chest hurt. I studied Kohen instead
to see if he shared my thoughts, but he wasn’t paying any attention to them.
“I swear, if one more person—” Hunter started to say.
Then Melody’s voice, loud enough so I’d hear it. “Can’t she ever speak
up for herself? Why does she need you to defend her all the time?”
“Royalty, huh? Do you have, like, a famous relative or something?”
I redirected my gaze to the guy with the army jacket, Max. The patch
sewn over his heart was a dark red anatomical one. His face was open with
curiosity, and my cheeks grew hot, but it was Hudson who answered.
“She’s just popular, moron.” And though I was the topic of the
conversation, he didn’t spare a glance in my direction.
“Ohhhhh, popular.” Max smiled at me, wide and honest, as he raised
his drink in my direction. “My condolences.”
“I’m not, actually.”
 He grinned as his eyes dropped to my brown boots before shooting back
up to my face. Unlike the way Scott or the bouncer checked me out, his
gaze was laced with good-natured amusement. “Somehow I doubt that.”
Hudson was staring at me then, eyes narrowed in thought. I tore my
gaze from his as Max pushed a red cup of beer in my direction despite my
wristband. I accepted it, glancing back at Hudson, and I didn’t miss the way
his eyes flicked to my wrist.
Hunter and Melody rejoined the circle a moment later, and Hunter slid
into the space next to me while Melody re-tangled herself with Kohen.
Melody cleared her throat. “I’d like to make a public apology.” Her
voice was polite and musical, bordering on childlike, as she extended her
cup. She turned to me, and everyone else did the same. “Alice, I’m sorry I
was rude to you, but it’s really not my fault you’re so unlikeable . . .
cheers!” She lifted her cup even higher, then brought it to her lips.
Hudson watched me as he took a slow, drawn-out drink while everyone
else lowered their cups.
“I swear to fucking god,” Hunter growled.
“Quit being such a dick, Melody,” Max said, shaking his head, but
Kohen was already leading her away from the group.
“You don’t know her. Stop manhandling me!” Melody tried to jam her
elbow into Kohen’s side, but he just chuckled and prodded her along.
“Oh, I’ll show you manhandled.”
They drifted off into the crowd, and everyone else was quiet as I felt the
threat of tears, strong and sudden.
“Um, right. Where were we? A toast!” Max scratched the side of his
head. “Cheers to . . .” He looked around, searching for inspiration. “Cheers
to shitty music, shitty beer, a new friend, and, uh, yeah . . . that should do it.
Let’s get fucked up.”
Everyone drained their cups except Hudson. “How poetic.”
 Chapter Twenty-One

“S o,Hunter
how do you guys know each other?” Max asked, gesturing between
and me.
Hunter took a slow sip of his drink. “We’re in the same gym class.”
“Let me guess, Alice. You didn’t think much of him, but then you saw
him play ball. Trust me, I get it. I’m straight, and I get turned on watching
him on the court. All sweaty and—”
Hunter coughed into his cup, his cheeks flooding with pink. “Jesus!
She’s already here. You don’t have to wingman me.”
Max put his hands up and winked at me. “I know you know.”
I grinned, unable to help myself. “He mostly just stands there.”
No one else was part of the conversation, but every single head
swiveled in my direction, and I faltered under the sudden attention. Hunter
seemed both entertained and relaxed as he rested one elbow on the bar
behind him.
Hudson rolled his eyes, but for the first time, it didn’t appear to be at
me. “Of course he does.” He had the same laziness as Hunter, and in any
given moment, it’d be impossible to determine who was dying of worse
boredom.
He was attractive, but not like Hunter. He reminded me of a wounded
animal. The type of boy who was shoved into lockers or left stranded in the
gym shower without his clothes. He most likely returned to school one fall
with hair that fell gracefully across his forehead and reticent dark brown
eyes. Girls had to have noticed him, but he had the sort of face that always
looked suspicious. He could probably be making out with a girl, and he’d
still manage to look leery the entire time.
 Hunter shrugged, as if the conversation was more monotonous than
watching a ceiling fan. “The team I’m stuck on is straight shit.” He tossed a
smirk in my direction. “No offense, teammate.” He addressed the group
again. “And besides, I have appearances to keep up.”
I nodded, because he had a point. “Who else would lean against the
bleachers and contemplate murder all period?”
Hunter grinned down at me. “Exactly. Thank you, Alice.”
Melody swirled her cup, her chipping black nail polish as dark as the
look she gave Hunter. “And who’s paying any attention to you? Except her
apparently.”
Max snorted. “Says the girl with pink hair and combat boots, always
trying to make a statement about how miserable and bitchy she is.”
Kohen had been quiet beside Melody, more interested in pressing his
lips to the side of her neck than the conversation, but he startled. “Hey!
Don’t call her a bitch.”
Max looked horrified. “I would never!” But then he half shrugged. “I
said she’s bitchy; there’s a difference.”
Kohen laughed, and Melody swatted the side of his head with a swipe
of her fingertips. It only made him laugh harder as he shoved his face into
the side of her neck until she conceded in giggles. I looked away, my
cheeks heating on their behalf.
“Hey, Melody,” Hunter called, his voice sly and teasing. When she
finally looked at him, her gaze was pure ice, but Hunter wasn’t one to be
deterred. “Can’t you speak up for yourself? Why does he have to defend
you all the time?”
“Don’t start with me, Hunter.” She gripped her drink, and I wouldn’t
have been surprised if she’d dumped it over his head, but she refrained from
following the impulse.
Max waved a hand at Kohen and Melody in disinterest. “I’m sorry. I’m
still having trouble getting past this basketball thing.” He scratched the side
of his head, redirecting his attention to me. “What do you mean he just
stands there?”
I bit the corner of my lip and tried not to smile. “The other day it took
him six shots during a game of knock-out just to get knocked out by a girl
who looked like she was throwing a football.”
Hunter burst out laughing while Max and Kohen exchanged mutual
glances of horror. Hunter leaned toward me, his voice soft and breathless in
my ear. “That’s only because you’d already been knocked out, thank you
very much.”
Something coursed through me. It felt like panic gripping my stomach,
but I didn’t feel tempted to freeze or lean away.
Max shook his head, disgusted by his laughter. “You’re a waste of
talent.”
Hunter stuck his foot out so we could all get a good view of his black
Vans that looked as if they’d been thrown in the dryer a couple hundred
times. “These are the basketball shoes I wear.”
“I can’t. I need a drink.” Max stomped over to the bar, muttering, and
then Hunter was really laughing. His breath touched the back of my neck,
and for one insane moment, I imagined his arms wrapped around me. I
peered into my cup. It was more than halfway empty, and I gave my head a
quick shake, rattling my brain.
“It’s probably because Scott’s in their class,” Melody said, inspecting
her fingernails.
Hunter glared at her. “It’s because it’s gym class. Who gives a shit?”
Max leaned into the conversation as he waited for his cup to be refilled.
“All the more reason to try. Make that fucker look like an idiot.”
At this point, Hudson was bored beyond measure. “Didn’t you fail gym
twice?”
Max glanced around with wide eyes. “Well, I passed eventually,” he
said, as if that was all that mattered. “You should come watch him play at
the park sometime, Alice.”
Hunter shifted from foot to foot, his amusement gone as though it had
never been there.
“Yeah, maybe. Do you play too?” I asked.
Max blinked at me. “Huh? Fuck no. I can barely run the length of the
court without wheezing.” Struck by the thought, he pulled a pack of
cigarettes from his coat pocket despite being indoors. “Any takers?”
Everyone reached for one except me, and Max tilted the box in my
direction. “Alice? You smoke?”
I shook my head. He winked at me as he fit the unlit cigarette between
his lips. “That’s good. Apparently they’re seriously bad for you.”
Despite the choking air, I smiled back.
Hudson tossed the lighter to Hunter, and just as Hunter was about to
light his cigarette, Max plucked it from his lips.
 “Actually, you’re undeserving!” Max raised the cigarette in triumph.
Hunter rolled his eyes, appearing used to his antics, as he rifled through
his sweatshirt pocket and pulled out his own pack of cigarettes.
Max caught my eye and explained, “I’m sort of like Hunter’s basketball
manager.”
Kohen’s arms were still wrapped around Melody, his lips inches from
the area of skin where her neck met her shoulder, and I realized Erica had
been right about one thing. Melody had a boyfriend, and it certainly wasn’t
Hunter. Kohen looked up at me with a wide grin. “Except think more of a
pimp than a manager.”
Max howled with laughter while Hudson spoke his first string of words
to me. “He bets money on him.”
“He pimps him out,” Kohen corrected.
I turned to Hunter, my smile reflexive. “Does he pimp you out?”
He shrugged, lips twitching. “I make good money. How else would I be
able to afford this terrible habit?” He lit his cigarette and inhaled slowly.
“Hey, Alice,” Max said, struck by something else. “Are you aware that
Hunter is the second smartest person in your school?”
Hunter groaned.
“Yeah, the salut . . .” Max glanced around. “What the fuck’s it called
again?”
“The salutatorian,” Kohen supplied, but I was too busy gaping at
Hunter.
“That’s super impressive,” I said, trying to sort through it.
He winced. “Our school is not that big.”
I knew Hunter was smart, of course, but I was most impressed because
it meant he was planning for a future. I thought we were the same in that
sense, but we weren’t. I cut my wrists in bathrooms and he’d taken too
many pills once, but while I still wasn’t sure I’d make it, he’d already
decided.
Max slung one arm around Hunter’s shoulder. “The whole package. Am
I right, Alice?”
“If you ain’t first, you’re last!” Kohen called, grinning. “Eh, Hunter?”
Hunter scowled at him, but Max had already taken it upon himself to
give Kohen a shove. “My boy’s wicked smart.” Except he said it with a
thick Boston accent, and I guess I owed Chris, because without him forcing
me to watch both movies they’d quoted, I would have been the only one left
out of the jokes.

E ventually , Max and Hudson moved a few feet down the bar to talk to a
group of girls. Max made them all laugh as he acted out a scenario. Hudson
stood there too, but despite the attractive girl yapping away in front of him,
he seemed far more interested in watching Hunter and me.
I looked away from him and focused instead on Melody and Kohen.
They had become so entangled in each other that they ignored everyone
else. My eyes couldn’t help trailing Kohen’s fingertips as they crawled
along Melody’s waist and then sprawled up her ribs. His other hand
clutched the nape of her neck. The venue was so dark and crowded they
probably thought no one noticed, but I did. They were a romantic movie I
couldn’t stop watching. I studied the way his hand gripped her thigh. She
pressed against him, and that’s when I looked away.
Unlike me, Hunter was oblivious to everyone else. He leaned against
the bar and watched the crowd as he brought his cigarette to his lips every
so often. His hands didn’t flit across my skin or grip my thighs, and despite
the fact that this was causing me an internal crisis, he appeared more
content than ever. I couldn’t help wondering if he ever even thought about
it.
Before that night, I’d thought Hunter was a loner, not belonging
anywhere, but as people moved past us, everyone nodded and slapped his
hand. Hunter knew everyone. Based on greetings and conversations, some
were older, while others attended high schools in nearby towns. A gigantic
band of misfits. I felt as if I’d stepped into an alternative universe where
popularity was thick eyeliner and poetic tattoos instead of football and
unintelligence. It also wasn’t lost on me that I couldn’t even fit into the
place meant for everyone who didn’t belong anywhere else.
“I thought you said you were the grim reaper of friendships?”
Hunter grinned. “I said I’d ruin your friendships. I never said I didn’t
have friends.”
I stared at him. In this alternative universe, Hunter would swerve into
the school parking lot in his orange Range Rover with his friends hanging
out the windows, their music loud and blaring. He’d saunter toward school,
laughing and shoving, and as he lounged against the railings on the front
steps, girls would scurry past him, blushing because he stood there,
occupying space.
“I’ve never seen you play basketball at the park before,” I said.
Franklin Park was two blocks from my house, and though I didn’t
frequent it much anymore, I still drove past it enough. Three basketball
courts lined the street, and by now, I would have noticed Hunter’s surliness
on one of them.
His jaw hardened. “I don’t play there.”
I fiddled with the rim of my cup and tried not to feel offended by the
finality in his voice. “Oh.”
He sighed, pushing a hand through his hair, then turned his entire body
toward me. “I used to hang around this kid, Victor. A few days after Scott
moved into my house, Scott invited me and Victor to play basketball after
school.”
He paused to bring his cigarette to his lips, and when he exhaled, his
gaze didn’t leave me. “I knew Scott was a dick from school when our
parents got together, but we’d never interacted much or anything. When we
got to the park and separated into teams, he told me I was too much of a fag
to play. I was so embarrassed I couldn’t even bring myself to walk off the
court.”
People brushed past us, loud and boisterous, but Hunter was still. So
still he might have been somewhere else altogether. “Victor and I had
always played basketball at the park, but after that, everyone stopped
playing whenever we showed up, whether Scott was there or not.
Eventually, Victor went without me, and when I wasn’t with him, they’d let
him play.”
He flicked his cigarette into the ashtray on the bar, finally dragging his
gaze from me. “I play at Webster Park by the river.” He glanced at my cup.
“You need another?”
“What about your parents?” I asked.
Hunter’s eyebrows furrowed. “What about them?”
“Well, I mean, don’t they notice Scott being a wretched dick twenty-
four seven?”
Hunter tipped his head back and laughed, but when he surfaced, his
expression grew hollow. “My stepmom worships the ground he walks on,
and my dad . . .” He trailed off, his face darkening. “My dad is the only
person on earth who despises me more than Scott does.”
“Wait, but why?” I knew Hunter wasn’t thrilled about living in the
house at all, but I couldn’t wrap my head around a villain worse than Scott.
There are some absolutes in the world: you can’t lick your elbow, you can’t
sneeze with your eyes open, and Scott Henderson is the antichrist.
He shrugged, the same way you shrugged when it was too futile to do
anything else. “I don’t know. I remind him of my mom, I’m a grave
disappointment, I passed the green beans in the wrong direction at the
dinner table . . . who the fuck knows.”
Scott Henderson was the antagonist of my story, but I hadn’t before
considered that maybe he wasn’t Hunter’s.
 Chapter Twenty-Two

A nheaviness
arm settled on my shoulders, and I would have jumped, but the
weighed me down. Max glanced between Hunter and me. He
was already wobbling, and my brain muddled through an escape plan that
didn’t include something as crass as shoving him away from me.
“We’re doing shots, people!” he said.
I tried to wriggle out from under his arm, his stale whiskey scent
spurring my actions. Not as concerned with politeness, Hunter pushed Max,
not hard or threatening but enough so he stumbled backward a step and his
arm untwisted from my neck. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t strangle her to
death.”
Max’s eyes lit up as he directed his grin at me. “I’ve never seen him so
feisty.” He turned back to the group, unconcerned with Hunter’s physicality.
“Gather round, fuckers. Everyone’s doing one!”
The other girls were part of our group now, and they joined the circle
while Max flagged down the bartender. I moved closer to Hunter to make
room for everyone else, and when my shoulder pressed against his chest, it
brought me an unfamiliar feeling of relief compared to all the other bodies
threatening to engulf me. When I looked up at him, he was staring down at
me, his eyes wide and unblinking.
Hunter picked up the nearest shot glass. “Alice? Your thoughts on Jack
Daniel’s?”
I hated whiskey, but I still took it, scooting even closer as Max reached
across me to hand one to someone else. I hated the color. I hated the smell. I
hated the taste. I hated that it reminded me of a certain rich prick, but I
clinked my glass with everyone else’s because Hunter was grinning now,
and everyone’s laughter was loud and contagious.
We all tipped them back, and I immediately pressed my hand to my lips
as I swirled the awful taste around my mouth, my eyes watering.
Hunter’s gaze darted between my cheeks and throat in horror. “What are
you doing! Swallow it!”
I started to laugh and clamped my hand tighter against my mouth so I
wouldn’t start coughing everywhere. It became even harder with his wide
eyes on mine, but when I did manage to force it down, Hunter was already
ordering soda from the bar and shoving it in my direction. “Jesus, that was
painful to watch.”
I chugged the soda in desperation, only surfacing when I finished it.
“That was just as disgusting as I remembered it being.”

T he first few notes played , heavy drums and aggressive guitars, and
people swarmed the stage. The crowd bumped into us from every direction,
but we didn’t follow. Hunter’s friends’ priorities consisted of accessible
alcohol, so I wasn’t surprised when we remained perched against the bar,
watching with mild amusement as the crowd fought and pushed for
standing space.
The makeshift black curtains separated, and it reminded me of a puppet
show Chris and I had put on when we were younger. We’d rigged up a
curtain, but it got hitched on something during the performance, and the
whole thing had come tumbling down. We were both devastated, but my
mom had clapped and cheered as if it was all part of the show.
The right curtain opened, but the left one didn’t move, and the band
members exchanged panicked glances as the bass player yanked on it. I
hoped for a repeat of our puppet performance like the terrible person I was,
and when the curtain fell, swallowing the bass player whole, I was part of
the crowd that burst out laughing. The rest of the band kept playing,
glancing sidelong at the bass player fighting the curtain as if it was a
hunting net, and when he finally emerged, I brought my hands to my mouth
and cheered as loud as I could. I was still caught up in the hilarity, and
when I finally surfaced to see who else was watching, Hunter and Hudson
were both staring at me. Hunter was grinning, but Hudson was looking at
me as though he couldn’t make sense of me.
As soon as the singing started, the crowd roared, and I turned to Hunter
in confusion. The lead singer’s voice was grating, half singing and half
screaming, but it was all wrong. “Hang on, I know this song.”
Hunter’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought you mostly listened to musicals.”
I inspected the band again, pushing onto my tiptoes to get a better look.
“Well, I think you and my brother might have the same taste in music. Who
is this?”
The bass player had made a full recovery and now jumped around the
stage with the four others. They each had the same Mohawk hairstyle in
various pastel colors, the bass player’s a little worse for the wear. Every so
often there was a cringing bad note, but either no one in the audience
noticed or they didn’t care. Max jumped and flailed around in the space in
front of us, headbanging with enough enthusiasm to cause brain damage.
Hunter stepped closer to yell in my ear, “They’re a cover band.” He
looked at the stage and then back at me. “And they’re fucking terrible.” He
flinched at a high note, and I grinned. Despite their apparent awfulness, the
crowd loved them, and it was so intoxicating that I loved them too.
Every time I looked back at Hunter, he was watching me instead of the
stage. I smiled at him over my shoulder, so broadly my cheeks hurt. Instead
of smiling back, he kept his expression blank. I’m not sure if it was the
alcohol or the crowd or the music, but I twisted back around, not remotely
concerned by his vacancy. They started their next song, and I pressed
farther onto the balls of my feet, craning my neck to get an even better
view.
I turned back to him. “Do you like to dance?” I asked.
Hunter’s chest was just behind me, and he inhaled sharply. Instead of
answering, he stared back at me, lost in thought, before his gaze dropped to
my lips. “No.”
His shoulders were so stiff I didn’t even think dancing was possible, and
I laughed at the thought. Max was still headbanging in front of us, his arms
flailing while he jumped to the music.
Hunter’s eyebrows drew together as he watched me watch him. “Do you
. . . like to dance?”
I smiled like a jack-o’-lantern, wide and horrifying. “I used to love to
dance.” Margo and I had always been the first to dance—parties,
sleepovers, school dances—it didn’t matter. The roller rink used to do dance
party Wednesdays, and we’d been there without fail, twisting into each
other in mutual agreement that we’d always be designated partners.
I hadn’t realized how close Hunter and I were standing as we’d been
yelling into each other’s ears, but his arm was touching mine, and once I did
notice, it became all I could focus on. When he met my gaze again, he
looked away, his expression pained and his cheeks flushed.
I shifted an inch. I hoped he wouldn’t notice, but as soon as I moved, he
glanced down at the space between us. My shifting was like the butterfly
effect, one small movement that set off a chain of events. Someone bumped
into me the next moment, knocking me forward, and Hunter’s hand shot out
to grab me.
I felt light-headed, unable to determine if my brain had hit the inside of
my head too hard or if it was his hand on my arm. His fingers were careful
at my elbow, barely applying any pressure at all. His touch was the
complete opposite of his personality. He was always confident and hard, but
his hand was soft and unsure. I felt the subtle twitch of the muscles beneath
my skin, but I didn’t pull away. We stared at each other, his breathing heavy
with effort.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, fine.”
He didn’t take his hand away, and I must have been drunk, because I
didn’t want him to. The revelation was so shocking I didn’t know how to
reroute my thoughts. A boy was touching me, and instead of flinching
away, an insane part of me wanted him to move closer, maybe slip his
fingers into my hand and never let go.
I stared back at him, and if I was any different, I think he might have
kissed me. At least he looked as though he wanted to. He licked his lips and
glanced between my eyes and my mouth, searching for permission while
assessing the distance between us, but Hunter didn’t lean forward. And for
the very first time, I considered that he might be as nervous as I was.
At that moment, all my fears felt as insignificant as a drop in the ocean.
He stared at me and I stared back at him, and his gaze was so patient I
thought it would kill me worse than if he’d demanded something of me.
The thing was, I knew Hunter. He was still a guy, but I knew he didn’t jam
his unwanted tongue down girls’ throats. And I knew he didn’t whisper in
girls’ ears like Brian had whispered in mine, begging me with pretty words
to take my shirt off even though I had my arms wrapped around myself.
And I didn’t just know Hunter; I remembered him.
Out of nowhere, his hand jumped from my arm as though I was an
electric wire, and I wondered if I had the entire thing wrong, because he
was looking at me as if he was as afraid of me as I was of him.
Margo’s words crashed into place in my head, and despite the cup of
beer in my hand, I could still taste the shot of whiskey—taunting and
disgusting. One of us was going to destroy the other. And as I stared up at
him, his eyes wide and unsure, I realized with a sickening jolt that it wasn’t
going to be Hunter doing the annihilating.
 Chapter Twenty-Three

A ccording to Max, the show ended far too early. He tried to confront the
band members, but they just laughed, dismissing him with a wave of
their hands as if his antics were an every-Friday-night occurrence. Since he
was older, Kohen had his own apartment in a run-down complex in the
middle of town, and it was decided we’d continue the party there. Hudson
lived with him, and from what I guessed, they were the closest in age.
There were stacks of dishes in the sink, and the coffee table was littered
with ashtrays and obscure bongs. Band posters plastered the walls, and I
inspected them, wondering if Hunter had the same music on one of his
numbered playlists. The nicest thing in the apartment was a giant flat-screen
TV, and it stuck out like a sore thumb on the peeling walls. I sat on a shabby
couch while Kohen passed out beers. As soon as we sat down, Max was on
his phone, insisting the place needed more people. And by people, he meant
girls.
We sat around the coffee table playing a game called Kings. I didn’t
know how to play, so I followed along with Hunter. Every so often, a bong
circulated through the group, but I passed it along. Hunter did too but with a
sideways glance at me, as though maybe there were times he didn’t. As if I
would jump up and draw the line at marijuana when he stuck multiple
cancer sticks in his mouth every day.
Melody’s new tactic was to pretend I didn’t exist, but her interest
reignited when four girls walked in. She shot me a demonic grin and waved
them over with far too much enthusiasm.
“Melissa!” She stood to hug the tallest girl with one quick arm.
 Hunter was deep in conversation with the guy sitting next to him, but
his head shot up.
Melissa stared back at him, her smile soft and hesitant, as she pulled
away from Melody. “Hey, Hunter. Long time no see.”
She wore a tight black skirt, and I tugged at my own sweater, the
threads itching at my skin in mocking wholesomeness. The powder on her
face covered the freckles dotting her nose and cheeks, although they still
poked through. She was beautiful, but she struck me as someone who might
be prettiest as she rolled over in the morning. And based on both of their
expressions, I suspected Hunter could confirm or deny that assumption.
“Hey.” Hunter’s gaze flicked to me as he gestured in my direction, but
Max beat him to it.
“Melissa, this is Alice . . . Hunter’s . . . um . . .” Max turned to me, one
hand perched beneath his chin in mocking interest. “What are you exactly,
Alice?”
My face burned bright red. “We go to the same school.”
Max burst into whooping laughter, and even Hudson smirked.
“Ouch!” Max whacked Hunter on the back, his voice low and
mischievous in his ear. “Not even friends, dude.” He gestured to me again
in polite clarification, his voice louder. “Allow me to introduce Alice,
Hunter’s schoolmate. And this is Amy, Dominique, and Cayla.”
I offered them a limp wave. “Hi.”
Two of them smiled at me, tight-lipped and brief. One didn’t
acknowledge me at all, but Melissa’s response was much warmer than
expected. “Nice to meet you, Alice.”
I nodded back before she and her friends retreated to the kitchen for a
drink. Another game of Kings started, but my interest wavered. I couldn’t
help glancing at Melissa every few seconds, drinking and laughing with her
friends in the doorway of the kitchen.
I was there, sitting next to Hunter, but my attention was on her as she
clutched her friend’s arm, leaning into her in hilarity. It made me miss
Margo with a sudden undeserving pang. She did the exact same thing,
clutching on to others as if a joke wasn’t as funny if she had no one to share
it with.
I could tell Melissa and her friends hung out with Hunter’s often. They
assimilated into the party with ease. There was no small talk or awkward
lulls. Some of their conversations seemed to be continuations from previous
nights, or they laughed at jokes that required you to have been present to
understand them, and everyone had been there except me.
“Hey.” Hunter touched my knee, and I redirected my attention to him,
praying he couldn’t read my thoughts. “I’m going to run to the bathroom.
You okay here?”
I smiled with as much genuineness as I could muster.
I watched him walk away as he headed toward Melissa and her friends.
They were too far away for me to hear the conversation, but her smile was
kind as he approached, and the kindness was almost worse. A part of me
wished she were as horrible as Melody so I wouldn’t feel bad hating her.
One of the girls said something to Hunter as he squeezed by. He grinned
back at them before responding, and they all laughed.
I looked away, and my gaze caught on Melody smirking at me. She was
seated in an armchair across from me, but she stood up, sauntered over, then
plopped into Hunter’s vacant spot. She sat close enough that we were
almost touching, and I leaned away from her, waiting for whatever nastiness
she intended.
“They used to date.”
Yep, there it is. I sighed.
“No, they didn’t,” a different voice said, and we both glanced around.
Hudson leaned forward in his chair, intent on our conversation. His words
were edged with impatience, and Melody hesitated.
“Fine.” She crossed her arms. “Maybe they weren’t technically dating,
but we both know they were definitely having sex.”
I stilled, the words as crass and jarring as Margo’s in the bathroom.
Hudson put both hands on his knees before standing up. “Join me for a
cigarette.”
I looked around, but his laser gaze rested only on me. “What? Me?” My
eyes darted to Melody, and she looked as confused as I felt. “But . . . I don’t
smoke.”
He waved at the bottles scattered across the coffee table. “And I don’t
drink, yet here I am.”
Hadn’t he been drinking at the concert? He headed toward the balcony,
his movements as rigid as the ROTC cadets who walked around school in
their uniforms. He didn’t look to see if I followed, but he left the sliding
glass door open. When I slipped onto the balcony, he was already smoking.
His other hand gripped the frozen railing as he faced the courtyard below. I
stood next to him, cold and unsure.
“Are you the jealous type?” he asked, not bothering to look at me.
“I don’t know.” The candid half of my brain rolled its eyes, because
who the hell was I kidding? Of course I was the jealous type. I’d been
plagued by the thought of Hunter with another girl. I was jealous of
Melody’s ability to engage in mild public displays of affection with Kohen,
and I was jealous Melissa woke up every morning as herself.
“Okay, yes,” I said, and the corner of his mouth lifted.
We were both quiet, and though he seemed at ease, I grew
uncomfortable. “Why don’t you drink?”
“Because I don’t.”
“Yeah, that’s sort of what I thought,” I muttered to myself. “I wondered,
‘Why doesn’t he drink?’ and I figured, ‘Hmm, it’s probably because he
doesn’t.’”
For the first time, Hudson laughed, but the sound was hushed and weary
and all wrong. It was like an oxymoron, miserable and happy at the very
same time. It only lasted a moment, and when he brought his cigarette to his
lips again, he eyed me for the first time. “You shouldn’t be jealous.”
I didn’t say anything.
“They were barely a thing. Melody doesn’t know what she’s talking
about.”
I wished his words provided the comfort they intended, but my brain
stuck on the “barely” part. I sighed, facing the courtyard again.
“It’s hard not to be jealous. I mean, I don’t exactly . . .” I glanced at my
boots, their brownness so different from everyone else’s black leather and
Converses.
He studied me as though I was something foreign before he shook his
head, a small smirk on his face as if I’d missed the whole point somewhere.
“You’re the very thing they’re all trying to cultivate.”
I stared at him, and he shrugged, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the
darkness in front of us. “There’s nothing more emo than a tragic popular
girl.”
“What makes you think I’m tragic?”
He turned to me, eyebrows raised. “Are you not?”
I looked out at the courtyard below. Someone had left a child’s mitten
on the picnic table, and it made me sad for some reason. “I don’t know.”
 He turned around and leaned against the rail of the balcony, both arms
folded across his chest. “It’s also weird to be jealous when you’re the
prettiest one here.”
My gaze shot up to meet his. I couldn’t have strung words together if I
tried.
“Oh, come on, don’t be so obnoxious. You must know you’re really
pretty. I mean, people tend to know that sort of thing.”
I stared at him, half horrified, but he laughed as if he was expecting it.
“Relax, would you? I’m not interested in your type.”
My face burned at the disgust in his tone, and I tried to focus on the
three or four flakes of snow hanging in the air in front of me.
He sighed. “Girls, Alice. For fuck’s sake, girls. I’m not interested in
girls.”
I looked back up at him, and he rolled his eyes, annoyed he had to
explain himself.
“Well, how the hell would I know that?” I demanded, and his eyes
widened at the harshness in my tone before he laughed again.
“I thought it was obvious.”
“Yeah, you’re the epitome of all the stereotypes,” I said.
He made a strangled sound that might have been a huff of laughter, but
it was hard to say for sure. After that, we stood in silence. I was so cold I
was beginning to feel numb, but the air between us had adopted a strange
sort of pleasantness I didn’t want to leave.
“You guys are best friends, aren’t you?” I asked. Hudson didn’t talk
much, but he talked to Hunter. Unlike his one-line contributions to the
group, he spewed words near Hunter’s shoulder that weren’t worthy of the
rest of us.
He nodded once. “Yes.”
I thought of Hunter sitting in the far corner of the cafeteria, withdrawn
and quiet, as he worked on his calculus homework. All this time, I’d
assumed Melody was Hunter’s only friend, but I’d had it wrong. Hunter had
a place, and it wasn’t sitting by himself.
“And while we’re being honest,” he said, “I don’t much like thinking
about the people he’s slept with either.”
I froze. His smirk was slow and cunning as he watched my thoughts
pump through my brain, his raised eyebrows egging me on as I tried to
piece his words together. I squinted at him. I thought of his greeting in the
car, of him glaring at me at the concert. Of his gaze stuck on Hunter and
me, then just on Hunter before it darted away.
“Oh. So that’s why you hate me,” I said, and he shrugged, smirking as
he put his cigarette out in the bowl behind us.
“Don’t take it personally. I’m also the jealous type, but I think I have it
a bit harder than you do.”
The glass door slid open, and we both twisted around as Hunter filled
the frame. “Hey! There you are. I was worried you might have left. Jesus,
it’s cold as all fuck out here.”
“We figured we’d give the party a break. One too many big
personalities,” Hudson said. He exchanged a dark look with Hunter, their
nonverbal communication seamless, as I glanced between them like an
idiot.
“What did she say?” Hunter asked, but Hudson shook his head with
such subtleness he barely twitched.
Hunter abandoned the question and redirected his attention to me
instead. “You’re being recruited for flip cup, Alice.”
Hudson snorted. “Let me guess.”
Hunter opened his mouth to respond, but he was interrupted by Max
slinging one arm around his shoulder. Max’s footing caught on the lip
separating the balcony from the living room, and he leaned into Hunter to
brace himself, unfazed. Hunter pushed him upright as he grinned at Hudson
and me in disbelief.
“Get your asses in the kitchen,” Max said. “I’m not taking no for an
answer.”
Hunter laughed as he pushed him back toward the living room. “Yeah,
yeah, yeah, we’re coming.”
Instead of leaving, Max poked his head out again, his eyes wide and
childlike. “Alice? You’re coming, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, and he beamed at me before ducking back inside.
Hudson and I started forward at the same time, but he stopped, sighing
as he waved one hand. “After you, Princess.”
I glanced up at him and he smirked, but it was twisting and thorny, and
then he looked past me at Hunter standing in the doorway.
 Chapter Twenty-Four

E veryone collected in the kitchen, and Hunter and I were separated in an

instant. There was a long plastic table covered with red cups, and cans
of beer were distributed while everyone jostled for a place. I took a cup as
Hunter appeared on the other side of the table, sliding into a spot across
from me. Max counted and pointed at different people lining the table, but
he was too hard to follow, and I couldn’t hear him over the roar of other
conversations.
I stood next to Kohen, and he glanced up as he poured beer into his cup.
“You know how to play, Alice?”
I inspected the red cup I had selected for cleanliness. “I think so.” I’d
seen the game at parties before, but I’d never participated.
“Chug it and flip it. Not exactly rocket science.”
When he finished filling his own cup, he moved on to mine, which
earned me a death glare from Melody, but Hunter interrupted, placing a
protective hand over my cup. “Hey! Hey! She’s like a hundred pounds!”
Kohen shrugged and shot me a good-natured smile as Hunter poured
some of the beer from mine into his own.
The guy standing beside Hunter grabbed hold of his shoulders as if they
were the oldest of friends. “Dude! Whose team are you on?”
With Hunter’s adjustment, there had to be half an inch of beer left,
unlike Kohen’s original half cup. Hunter’s smile was wide and cocky as he
winked at me. “Don’t worry, we’ll still win.”
“Hunter, what about me? I’m small too.” Max batted his eyes as Kohen
reached past me to fill his cup. In truth, Max was only a few inches taller
than me, but I wouldn’t have described him as small.
 “I could not give less of a shit about you. Chug a bottle of absinthe for
all I care,” Hunter said.
Max burst into laughter, his whole body leaning onto the table as he
knocked over several empty beer cans. When he managed to straighten up,
he was still snickering. “Don’t let the hard exterior fool you, Alice. I know
it can be hard to get past, but he’s all squishy in the middle.”
Hunter opened his mouth to retort, but Max prowled on. “This one time,
Hunter got so drunk at a party here that we literally had to carry his ass to
bed. Of course, I’m a super nice friend, so I took the liberty of tucking him
in, and right before he passed out, he told me he loved me. I shit you not, he
said it.” Max clutched one hand to his chest. “It was such a beautiful
moment.”
Hunter tipped his head back and laughed. He laughed so loud that the
guy next to him laughed, and he hadn’t even been following the
conversation. When Hunter caught his breath, his grin was wild. “I was
trashed. I’m pretty sure I said the same thing to that lamp.”
Max shrugged. “Still said it.”
“Hey!” someone yelled from the other end of the table. “We’re
starting!”
There was a shuffle of cups, and I was far more nervous than I should
have been. Hunter grinned at me from across the table, one hand holding his
cup as he waited, and then it was his turn. I watched him drain his cup, line
it against the edge of the table, and flip it. When he glanced up at me, I
startled.
“Alice! Go!”
“Oh!” I drank my cup much slower than everyone else even though I
had far less. My focus wavered as the table screamed nonsense, but I was
able to flip it so it landed upright on the first try, right at the same time
Hunter managed to flip his.
He dragged the sleeve of his sweatshirt across his mouth. “Distracted?”
I beamed with victory. “Figured you might need a head start.”
Hunter’s team won that time, and six more times after that too. Kohen
was kind enough to refill my cup before each new game, careful not to pour
too much. Melody was playing too, but she was at the end of the table. She
alternated between socializing with Melissa and her friends and plotting my
demise. After seven games, Hunter left the kitchen to retrieve another case
of beer from the living room, and Melody’s gaze snapped to me as soon as
he was out of sight.
“It really is such a shame you and Hunter didn’t work out,” she said to
Melissa, her voice loud and slurring. She stumbled against the table, and her
hand shot out to steady herself. “You guys were so cute together.”
Melissa’s eyes widened. Her gaze darted to me as the rest of the table
grew silent.
“Melody!” Kohen’s voice was sharp with impatience, and his
expression matched. “Would you just stop it already?”
She stared at him in disbelief, and then her expression changed. It was
as though Kohen had been her last thread to humanity, the sole reason she’d
been mannered and quiet, and when she realized he’d severed their
connection, her expression turned animalistic. Her gaze landed on me, and
there was nothing but pure heart-stopping hatred as all her wretchedness
came pouring out. I braced myself for whatever was coming, but it was like
trying to brace yourself for the neighborhood dog taking a chunk out of
your leg—being ready for it doesn’t ease a thing.
“Don’t you start too! None of you know her, so I wouldn’t be so quick
to defend her. You should see her at school. Walking through the halls with
her evil friends like they own the place. Tormenting anyone defenseless
enough. Smiling in Hunter’s face, and then laughing behind his back with
the same people who put the bruises there.”
I stared at her. Everyone else did too, and I felt the fluttering exchange
of silent glances. Hudson had been seated on the counter for the duration of
the flip cup games, and he was the only one who moved. He started to make
his way over to me, his eyebrows slanted in concern. I’d expected him to
enjoy my public humiliation, but maybe he was more loyal to Hunter than
he was to himself.
“You don’t know anything about me.” My hands shook, but my voice
was surprisingly steady.
“I know everything I need to know. Tell them who you’ve sat with in
lunch for the past two years.” She gestured around the room. “Go ahead,
tell them.”
I was silent.
“Scott Henderson!” she said for me, her voice startling. No one moved,
not even Hudson. He stood frozen in the middle of the kitchen, same as
everyone else.
 “That’s right. Our little princess is friends with him. Rumor has it, they
used to have a thing, for god’s sake. I mean, come on. Do you really want to
be with someone who spread her legs for him?” But she wasn’t talking to
the entire room anymore. Her gaze was fixed on someone behind me, and
when I turned around, Hunter stood in the doorway, holding the case of
beer. He blinked at me.
I stared back at him, but it was like when I visited my grandma at the
assisted living. She knew she knew me, but she couldn’t quite place me. I
took another moment to glance around the kitchen, blood hammering in my
ears. Hudson’s eyebrows were furrowed, and Max and Kohen exchanged a
look. No one said a word, and I could feel the tears building.
“Fuck you, Melody,” Hunter said, walking toward me. He stopped in
front of me, bending his knees so we were eye level as he brushed a strand
of hair behind my ear. “I’m sorry. She’s psychotic when she drinks.”
He gave my hand a soft tug and pulled me from the quiet kitchen. My
coat was draped over the chair in the corner, and he handed it to me, then
waited beside me as I shrugged it on. I still hadn’t said a word, and his gaze
was soft and understanding, none of it matching the violence with which he
slammed the door behind us.

T he walk to my house from Kohen’s apartment took about twenty minutes.

The air outside was numbing, and I knew Hunter was cold even if he
pretended he wasn’t. He only wore a sweatshirt, but any additional bundling
was futile. It was the type of cold that invaded your insides, freezing from
within with one inhale, and contrary to popular belief, a winter coat
couldn’t shield the slow-cutting spread. I shivered into my jacket, its weight
preventing frostbite but not much else. The world didn’t feel habitable.
There was no biting wind whistling past our ears or running cars sliding
through the slush. It was as though we were the only two left, walking
through a timeless frozen snow globe, and I swear if it had begun to snow,
the flakes would have hung suspended in the air, never falling to the
ground.
About halfway to my house, Hunter lit a cigarette with a sharp snap, and
I was tempted to take up smoking just for the dull flame. His fingers shook
every time he brought the cigarette to his lips, and I was convinced the only
reason he’d lit one was to inhale something besides the stinging cold.
“Hudson likes you.” He exhaled a stream of smoke.
I snorted. “I don’t think he likes me at all, actually.”
Hunter laughed, the lightness of it carrying through the air. “He doesn’t
speak. If he said more than five words to you, it means he likes you. I don’t
think he’s talked to Melody in the entire time he’s known her as much as he
talked to you in a single night.”
“How long have you known him?” I asked.
“Since I was six. He lived a few houses down in my old neighborhood.”
I felt a twinge of envy deep in my stomach. It didn’t make any sense,
but it was there anyway.
We kept walking. When he spoke again, he wore a melancholy smile.
“He beat the shit out of Scott when I was twelve.” He laughed. “That’s why
Scott has that bump on the bridge of his nose.”
The bump was subtle. Only visible from his profile or close up. “I don’t
think I’ve ever noticed it.”
Hunter glanced sidelong at me. “Really? His nose got all kinds of
fucked up.”
I was silent, waiting.
“It was the first time anyone had ever defended me.”
I pulled my hood tighter, my cheeks going from stinging to numb. “You
never seem like you need defending.”
His smile was soft. “I’m glad you’ve been fooled by the illusion.”
He brought his cigarette to his lips again, and his eyes squinted at
something in the distance. When we reached the end of my driveway,
neither of us said a word. The question would have been easy, and I waited
for it, but instead of asking it, Hunter kept smoking his cigarette.
It wasn’t until I was halfway up my driveway that he called me back. I
turned around in slow motion and braced myself for it, my throat thick in
anticipation.
He glanced between my face and the ground, and my chest tightened.
“About your wrists.”
All the air left me. I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.
“I know . . . I know it’s not as easy as asking you to stop, but I hope you
might be willing to try.”
My heart pounded. “Will you try too?”
 He smiled, slow at first, but it spread to every feature, lighting his face
as he grinned. “Yeah.”
 Chapter Twenty-Five

W hen Chris pulled up to the curb on Monday morning, Hunter was

leaning against the parking lot sign.
“Now, who could he possibly be waiting for, I wonder?” Chris said,
grinning at him through the windshield. My gaze darted to Hunter, and my
heart thudded in my chest when his eyes locked on mine.
“Are you gonna get out or keep sitting there?”
I startled, glancing back at Chris while I fumbled for my things. “Bye.”
He laughed as I pushed open the door and slid out. “Uh-huh, sayonara.”
Hunter was dressed in all black like usual, and though he was always
pale, he looked gaunt and hollow, his appearance almost satanic against the
white backdrop. He watched me as I approached, and when I stopped in
front of him, his lips curled into a slow smile. “Alice.”
He braced himself against the parking lot sign, and when he opened his
mouth to say something else, he coughed instead. The sputtering turned
violent as he leaned away from me, directing it into the inside of his elbow,
and when he surfaced, his eyes watered with effort. A small bead of sweat
trailed down his temple. He hadn’t worn a coat, but despite the freezing air,
he looked warm and clammy.
“Are you okay?”
He swayed in place. “I’m not feeling so well.”
“Why are you here?”
He coughed into his arm again. “Cause my stepmom is a raging bitch.”
As he brought a cigarette to his mouth, I snatched it from his hand and
tossed it on the ground, then crushed it beneath my boot with a little too
much enthusiasm. “I don’t think that’s helping.”
 He quirked one eyebrow, glancing between me and the squashed
cigarette. A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “That is littering.”
I gave him one of my best eye rolls. “I didn’t realize you were so
concerned about the environment with your constant pollution and all.”
He grinned. “Do you know how long that will take to biodegrade?”
The sun had shifted from behind a cloud, and his smile was as blinding
as its reflection against the white snow. I put a hand over my eyes, shielding
them from the brightness. “I actually despise you.”
He laughed, strong at first, but it turned into choking and coughing.
When it passed, he stepped toward me, winking before he stooped to pick
up the cigarette. “I’ll save you the guilt.”
“What a hero,” I grumbled, adjusting my backpack on my shoulder. I
looked away from him and focused on the looming building instead. If I
maintained eye contact, I’d surely break into a smile, and I couldn’t give
him the smug satisfaction of winning our repartee. As we made our way
across the parking lot, his smile didn’t dwindle, especially as he deposited
the cigarette butt into the garbage can beside the door. My eye roll was a
reflex, and my scowl was a defense mechanism, but he saw through my
display as if I was made of panels of glass, and he smiled even wider.
The hallway was crowded with bulky coats and squeaky boots, and
instead of veering off to the stairwell, I turned left.
Hunter stopped, his smile replaced with furrowed eyebrows and deep-
etched concern. “Where are you going?”
I stared up at him. “What do you mean? To the nurse’s office,
obviously.”
He shook his head, eyes going wide. “I’m not going there.”
“Oh, be quiet.” I reached for his hand and tugged on it. My heart rate
took off at a sprint as soon as my fingers touched his. He hesitated at first,
but then he was staring down at the space between us, too distracted by our
interlocked fingers to do anything but follow.
We strolled into the nurse’s office, still hand in hand, and Mrs. Baker’s
mouth dropped open. At first, I thought it was because of our hand holding,
and I started to let go, but Hunter held on tight, his fingers coiled around
mine as though they’d been fused together. But Mrs. Baker wasn’t looking
at our joined hands; she was staring at Hunter’s face.
I had grown somewhat used to the bruising sprawling beneath his eyes,
the light purple and touches of green a testament to the way Hunter
described his cells fixing themselves without his effort. But unlike me,
Hunter wasn’t a frequent flyer to the nurse’s office, and based on the way
Mrs. Baker was gaping at him, she hadn’t seen him since Scott broke his
nose.
“Good morning, Mrs. Baker.” I tried to make my voice as light as
possible.
She continued to stare wide-eyed at Hunter but paused to glance at me
when I spoke. “Morning, dear . . . Hunter . . .” She nodded at him, but he
stood rigid, giving no indication he received it.
“Mrs. Baker, Hunter is sick, but his stepmom still made him come to
school today. He can’t go home because she’ll be angry about his
attendance, but he shouldn’t be in class if he’s sick.” I let that sink in. “Can
he lie down in here with you today?”
She nodded. “Yes, of course. You’re right. He shouldn’t be around other
students if he’s sick.”
I expected Mrs. Baker to bustle around, grabbing her thermometer and
setting up a cot, but she stared at Hunter as if she was in a trance. “Hunter,
what happened to your face?”
His mouth became a thin, hard line.
I shifted. “He’s really sick, and I think that’s the most—”
“It’s okay, Alice,” he said flatly. “Are we going to go through all this
again, or can you go take a look at my stepbrother and finally accept it’s
mutual? My dad is tired of getting calls about my various injuries, and quite
frankly, he really doesn’t give a shit.”
I froze, unaware of how familiar Mrs. Baker might just be with Hunter.
“If you wouldn’t mind calling Mrs. Rosin,” Hunter went on, “I don’t
feel like having this whole conversation again later.”
“Hunter,” I said, and his head jerked toward me as though he’d
forgotten I was standing there. His hard eyes met mine, and his hostility
thawed into a heavy sigh. Somewhat resigned, Hunter opened his mouth,
but Mrs. Baker spoke first.
“You can lie down back here.” She shuffled toward the back of the
office.
Hunter stood frozen in place, his expression a mixture of surprise,
confusion, and guilt. He glanced at me in childish hesitation, and I nodded
for him to follow.
 She led him to the small room in the back of the office, the same room I
always slept in when I needed to stop spinning. I scooted out of the office as
soon as Hunter collapsed on the orange plastic cot, and did my best to avoid
eye contact with Mrs. Baker. Few people cared enough not to be deterred by
Hunter’s attitude, and instead of thanking her, I’d stood alongside him and
said nothing. I had been in gym that day. I was just as capable of reporting
Scott. Like everyone else, I’d witnessed the torment on multiple occasions,
and like everyone else, I’d said nothing.
I was almost to the door when her soft voice stopped me. “Alice?”
I hesitated, my sweaty hand gripping the door handle. “Yeah?” I turned
around in slow motion.
“Sometimes trusting someone with a secret is giving them permission to
do the right thing.” Her voice was gentle as she looked at her keyboard
instead of me.
My throat went dry, my tongue a beached whale inside my mouth. I
swallowed through the drought and heard the choked sound of my voice
before considering my words. “Sometimes it’s too late.”
 Chapter Twenty-Six

I flew out of Mrs. Baker’s office, tears stinging my eyes. I braced myself
against the water fountain across the hallway and reveled in the small
corner of privacy as I swallowed enough water to relieve red eyes.
“You and I have business to discuss.”
I lurched forward into the fountain. Water soaked my shirt before I spun
around. Scott towered over me. I shuffled backward on instinct, and my
back collided with the wall. The area surrounding his left eye was a deep
shade of purple, and the white of his eyeball was blood red. He looked
demonic and forbidding, but I felt the eruption of heinous laughter,
knowing it must have been Hunter’s fists that had slammed into him.
I glanced up and down the hallway. We were a few feet from the nurse’s
office. A few feet from Hunter and Mrs. Baker, but the door was closed
tight.
Scott placed one hand near my head to box me in place, smirking as he
watched my desperation. “I saw you holding hands with Hunter this
morning. Good relationships start with honesty, and I’m beginning to
wonder if you’ve been honest with him, love.”
My spine went rigid. “Don’t call me that.”
He grinned. “You used to like it.”
I tried to move past him, but he stepped even closer, and I froze,
flattening myself against the wall as best I could. The hallway was filled
with people, but no one noticed us, because if they had, they would have
been staring.
“When are you going to tell him about us?” he went on. “Because while
this has been fun and all, the jig is almost up.”
 “There’s nothing to tell.”
He smiled at me as if I was equal parts idiot and adorable. “Now, we
both know that isn’t true.”
I contemplated murder right then—cold, heart-stopping, blood-flowing
murder. And I wished I had the guts to do it. “Leave Hunter alone.”
His eyes flashed with anger. “What? Are you serious? Look at me!” He
gestured to his own black eye. “You think I’m the monster, but he’s more
violent than I am. I’m tired of you looking at me like I’m the psychopath all
the time.”
“You’re delusional,” I breathed, almost to myself, and his face twisted.
“Listen, Alice, you might want to tread carefully, because you seem to
be under the impression that you’re the only one capable of telling our little
secret. But I’ve got to be fucking honest with you, love, I have no problem
telling Hunter all the gritty details. God knows I’d love to see his face when
I do.”
“So what the hell’s stopping you then?”
His face calmed as he smiled down at me, proud I was finally grasping
the reality of my situation. “I can’t stand it when you’re mad at me.” He
reached out to brush a section of my hair from my shoulder. His lips were
inches from mine, and I stopped breathing altogether. “That, and I’m a
gentleman.”
“Scott?”
I jumped, but Scott didn’t move away from me. His body stayed pressed
against mine, and his brow furrowed in irritation before he glanced lazily
behind him.
Margo’s mouth hung open as she blinked between us. “What are you
doing?”
Of course, Suzanne and Casey stood behind her, and while Suzanne
eyed me with hatred, Casey’s face was scrunched in confusion.
Scott heaved a sigh, annoyed he had to state the obvious. “I’m having a
conversation.”
Not getting the answer she hoped for, Margo turned her blazing gaze on
me. “Get away from him, you slut.”
Scott’s arms framed my head, caging me in place, and my eyes
widened. “Margo, I—”
“What the hell is wrong with you? I said get away from him!”
 Scott dropped one arm, letting me go, and I scooted out from under him.
Margo trailed my movements with a gaze so predatory that part of me was
afraid she might lunge at me. I didn’t know how in the world I was being
blamed for Scott pressing himself into me, but I still emerged with shame.
“Margo, you know I—”
“I don’t know anything about you actually, you stupid slut. What? You
think my boyfriend is up for grabs whenever I’m not around?”
My eyes started to fill with tears, but Scott stepped in front of me,
wrapping an arm around Margo instead. “Take it easy, babe.” She stiffened
under his touch at first but started to thaw as he whispered in her ear.
They walked away a moment later, and Suzanne and Casey trailed close
behind. I stood rooted to the spot, wiping a tear from my cheek as I watched
them. And maybe Margo had a point, because if I really didn’t want Scott
touching me, I could have pushed him away, or I could have called out to
someone, but I didn’t. I just stood there. And if a lion wanders down to a
watering hole and a gazelle just stands there, staring back at it instead of
running, well, maybe the stupid thing deserves to get slaughtered.

I adjusted my bag , inhaling a steadying breath, but froze. Melody leaned

against the opposite wall, her head tilted to one side. We stared at each
other, neither of us moving for several seconds, before I darted the other
way, bumping into people as I went.
I hadn’t even been to my locker, but I headed for the side door and
slipped out the same way I’d come in. I basked in the cool air and sheer
freedom as I moved without indecision, pulling on my hat midstride. I
thought I was free and clear, finally on a one-route escape home, but her
high-pitched voice called me back.
“I didn’t peg you as a skipper.”
I whipped around. She stood on the steps, looking down as she pulled
out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. I stared at her, formulated a
response, thought it over, turned back around, and kept walking.
“Maybe you’re not as much of a coward as I thought you were.” When I
turned around again, she was half smirking, and it infuriated me more than
anything else.
 “If there’s something else you want to say to me, just say it.” My
fingernails dug into my palms, and I knew it would draw blood if I didn’t
let up, but I didn’t.
She glanced between my clenched fists and face several times, grinning.
“If you’re going home to get a gun, well, let me take this opportunity to
apologize.”
I stared at her. “What?”
She gestured at me. “You look like you’re hovering right around a
breaking point, Princess, and I’ve got to be honest, your detachment is more
unnerving than that freshman who wears a trench coat.”
She sauntered toward me, then offered the cigarette dangling between
her fingers.
I scrunched my nose. “And what the hell am I supposed to do with
that?”
She paused to inhale, as if giving me a demonstration, before she
shoved her hand in my face. “This is called a cigarette. Do they have
cigarettes in your ivory tower?”
“Fuck you.”
Her laughter was high-pitched, harmonious and delighted.
The sound of the bell ringing inside was muffled, and she jutted her chin
toward the concealed space shadowed by the stairs. “We should probably
take cover. Unless . . .” She waved a hand at the wide-open parking lot.
“You were headed somewhere.”
I hesitated as she walked away, but not because of her. My mom would
be headed to work any minute, and if she saw me ambling along the
sidewalk home, she’d lose her mind. Gritting my teeth, I stomped after
Melody. She leaned against the wall, the corner of her lips twitching as I
joined her.
We were both quiet for a while as she smoked her cigarette, and when
she finished it, she lit another. It took multiple clicking attempts before she
exhaled, then tucked the lighter back in her pocket. “I heard that stupid
rumor, like, two years ago.”
I stiffened, but she went on, sighing in boredom as if I was forcing her
to tell a story she had no interest in telling.
“From Bobby Harris. He’s such a dick too. He was the one who started
that thing about Kim Nguyen . . . how he apparently found her on that porn
site with, like, three other . . .” She waved a hand. “Never mind, it doesn’t
matter. What I’m trying to say is . . . I’m sorry.”
I squeezed my eyebrows together. “You’re what?”
She squinted at me. “Kohen told me if I didn’t apologize to you, he’d
reconsider our relationship.”
I snorted. “Right, how authentic. Listen, feel free to tell him you
apologized. I really don’t care.”
Her voice turned even higher-pitched than usual, almost hysterical. “I
wish I could say I was too drunk or I didn’t know what I was saying, but the
truth is, I’m a shit person, okay? I have no real reason for hating you. I . . . I
don’t know. I guess it’s jealousy. You’re popular, and everyone wants to be
your friend, and every guy wants to date you, and then, as if that’s not
enough, you have to take my best friend too.”
I laughed. At first, it was out of sheer bewilderment, but then her words
sank in, and the harder I laughed, the more she frowned. When I surfaced,
her eyes were narrowed into slits.
“Last I checked, I’m not popular,” I said. “Also, I have no friends. And
the only guys who have ever been interested in me are the kind who try to
shove their tongues down my throat just because I opened my mouth to say
something pointless like ‘Hey, where’s the bathroom?’”
She snorted. Her face fell before she disguised it with indifference. “The
only boys who have ever been interested in me are the kind who think I
wear fishnet stockings for the sole purpose of having them removed.”
I grinned, glancing at her legs. They were teal blue instead of black
today. “I like your stockings.”
She flipped her bright pink hair and shot me a smug smile. “You and the
rest of the world, Matthews.”
I scoffed, and she huffed a breath of laughter in response before we
settled into mutual silence. Scott was the only person who called me
Matthews. I leaned the back of my head against the cold brick. “The only
boys who have ever been interested in me are the kind who tell me I’d look
hotter in fishnet stockings.”
She burst into laughter, shifting her gaze to assess my own outfit with
pursed lips. “Well, they aren’t wrong, you know.”
I shrugged, the corner of my mouth twitching. “I know.”
Her grin was slow spreading and infectious. “Boys are such assholes.”
 I half nodded but hesitated, embarrassed by how desperate my voice
sounded. “Even Kohen and Hunter?”
Another small smile brightened her features as she leaned her head to
one side in thought. “Well, maybe not Kohen and Hunter.”
And that should have made me feel better, but it didn’t.
 Chapter Twenty-Seven

H unter lay in Mrs. Baker’s office for three days. He’d meet me in the
parking lot each morning, still pale and still coughing. Chris would
smile and I would frown, and Mrs. Baker would wave Hunter to the cot,
looking sadder than I felt.
I clambered into the back room on the third day and closed the door
with a careful click. Hunter was on the orange cot, curled into the fetal
position with both his hands beneath his cheek. His breathing was soft and
steady, and my heart fluttered as I studied him. He was angelic, even with
the faded bruising. When we were younger, my mom forced Chris and me
to go to Sunday school. Hunter reminded me of the archangel who had
fought Satan, then sent him spiraling back to earth. I didn’t remember a lot
of the stories, but I remembered that one, probably because it was
somewhat interesting and read more like Star Wars than the Bible.
His eyes fluttered open, and we stared at each other before he shifted
upright. His black Vans squeaked against the cot’s plastic covering. There
were pink lines across the side of his face, and his hair stuck out in wrong
directions. I don’t know which of us felt more embarrassed that I’d been
watching him sleep.
He scrubbed one hand against his face, glancing at the clock on the
opposite wall. “Have you been sitting there awhile?”
I shook my head, not sure if I was sparing him or myself. “No, I just
walked in.”
He nodded once.
“How are you feeling?”
 He peeled himself from the plastic, his limbs looking as if they weighed
more than usual. “Much better.” He paused, sitting at the edge of the cot for
only a moment, before he stood and grabbed his backpack from beneath the
window.
Mrs. Baker was still at her desk when we emerged, and she glanced up
from the computer as Hunter stopped in front of it.
“I don’t think I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said.
Despite his standoffishness, Mrs. Baker smiled at him with fondness.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
He stood there, searching for something as he stared at her. “Thanks.”
She returned her gaze to her computer screen. “Anytime, dear.”
Hunter gave her a curt nod and held my hand while we strolled out. I
turned around to give Mrs. Baker a timid smile and found her watching us.
She winked at me as the door closed behind us.
The hallways were end-of-the-day busy, louder and more energetic than
usual. Hunter flattened the hair at the back of his head with a firm hand.
“You should tell your brother you don’t need a ride today. We could, um,
hang out?”
My heart stuttered as I stared up at him. His face still had faded pink
lines, and though the right words swelled to the surface, I couldn’t get them
out. If we were a drama, the audience would let out a collective sigh of
sympathy because we were too star-crossed to make it work. And if we
were a romantic comedy, I’d say, It’s not you, it’s me. And I’d walk away,
and he’d watch me go. But I wasn’t the unselfish hero or brave protagonist.
Hunter smiled down at me, and my knees were weaker than my resolve.
When we reached the side door, Hunter held it open for me with an
overdramatic bow, and like the wretched hag I was, I smiled as I walked
through it.
The air outside was freezing, and I paused to zip my coat as Hunter
pulled on the hood of his sweatshirt. When Margo and I were in middle
school, she’d become obsessed with uncovering her psychic abilities.
Turned out, she had none, but she’d spent hours trying to open her third eye
and tune in to dead people. She’d informed me that everyone had an aura,
and though I couldn’t remember all the colors and what they meant, I felt as
if I finally knew what the hell she was talking about as I stood next to
Hunter.
 I suppose that’s how we know whether someone is trustworthy or
trouble. Not just because you know, but because you can somehow see it,
floating above them. Or maybe feel it, I don’t know. His color would be
vivid and genuine, and I wondered what color I’d be. I liked to think I’d be
pretty blue, and maybe I used to be, but right now, with Hunter’s hand in
mine, I’d be storm-cloud gray. I’d be nothing but warnings and gloom, and
I wondered how Hunter couldn’t see me like I could see him.
“How about we go on a proper date?” he said, grinning.
My heart lurched. “What would a proper date entail?”
“Oh, you know, the old Franklin town special . . . milkshakes at Ralph’s.
I’ll put our song on the jukebox, and we’ll hold hands as we walk to the
movies. Who knows, maybe we’ll lie down in the middle of the road like a
bunch of dumbasses. I’m open to whatever romantic shit first dates entail,
no matter the risks.”
I couldn’t help my laughter. “You’ve seen The Notebook?”
He stopped, staring at me as the side of his mouth twitched. “You seem
to be under the constant impression that I live under a rock. Yes, I’ve seen
The Notebook.”
“But . . . why?”
His eyebrows furrowed. “What do you mean, why? It’s a great movie. It
was my mom’s favorite, actually. She used to watch it all the time. I think it
was the first sex scene I ever saw. I was probably six, and I thought
slamming into walls was a prerequisite.”
“Eugh. It’s terrible.”
He gave me a startled glance that transitioned into an eye roll. “Uh-huh,
good try.”
“I’m serious. I think it’s straight-up bad.”
We turned right at the end of the parking lot, and his smile grew
permanent, plastered on his face as though it had always been there. I
remembered the first time I saw it, standing beside Margo’s locker. It had
been as brief as a flickering lightning bolt, the kind you’re not sure was
even there in the first place.
“If you think The Notebook is bad, then something is wrong with you,
but okay, fine, what’s your favorite romance movie? I might need to adjust
my game, because I was definitely about to go all Ryan Gosling on you.”
I cocked my head to one side. “What’s that super romantic line again?
You’ll tell me if I’m being a bitch?”
 He grinned. “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.”
“Right, yeah, that one. That one is definitely worse.”
He laughed, and I tried to memorize every detail. The way our laughter
sounded together. The dimples that were almost there, but not quite. His
straight white teeth that had obviously worn braces at some point.
“So, come on, spill,” he said. “Give me a favorite.”
I chewed on my lip, thinking about it. “Chris and I went through a phase
where we watched Garden State once a week for about two years straight.”
“Hmm, I’ve never heard of it. We should watch it sometime.”
My stomach sank while my heart bobbed to the surface. “Yeah, we
should.”
We headed toward the center of town. It was about a half mile from
school, and we weren’t alone. A large group of guys from school walked
ahead of us, shouting and shoving one another.
“So, what do you say? Milkshakes at Ralph’s then?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know you frequented such establishments.”
He snorted. “Are there other choices?”
And he was right. There weren’t other choices without a car, and even
then, I didn’t feel inclined to gaze at him from across the booth of a
McDonald’s or Subway. I hadn’t been to Ralph’s in ages. I used to sit in the
corner booth in ninth grade, squished between Margo and Casey, admiring
the upperclassmen as they sauntered through in their letterman jackets.
A crowd of our classmates hung around outside of Ralph’s, and I
expected a couple insults or even a dirty look, but they didn’t glance twice
as we walked inside. We were seated in a red booth in the back corner,
outside the bathroom. The diner had all the regular decorative bullshit
where they tried too hard to make it look vintage when, really, the
photographs of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe were probably from Target or
Walmart. They served Coke in old bottles, pretending they had an endless
supply of crates from the fifties even though the place had opened within
my lifetime.
All the waitresses wore a striped pink-and-white dress, even in
midwinter. And yes, every employee was female. Casey had gotten a job
here sophomore year because she said she looked hot in the uniform. She’d
filled out an application at Ralph’s and the deli, and upon hearing she had to
wear a hairnet at the deli, she’d promptly tossed her application in the trash.
I craned my neck to peek into the small window of the kitchen behind the
counter, but I didn’t see her.
I recognized our waitress from school, but I didn’t know her name. She
smiled in mutual recognition when she handed us our menus. I studied her
when she returned, and though I wasn’t positive, I thought I could place her
in Hunter’s grade.
“Hi, guys, are you ready to order?”
Hunter gestured to me, and she redirected her pleasant smile, pen and
pad perched in readiness.
“Know what you want, Alice?” she asked.
I blinked at her. “Oh, um . . . yeah, I’ll have a strawberry milkshake,
please.”
“Sure.” She looked at Hunter.
“Chocolate for me, please.”
She nodded and retreated to the counter, pausing to slide open the
freezer. I watched her, the muscles in her arm pulsing as she scraped out our
ice cream.
There was a collection of people in my grade sitting in the front corner
booth, and a few of them glanced over at me every few seconds. We had
never been friends really, but we used to be at the same place at the same
time often enough. It was weird how things turned out. I pictured myself
sitting among them while Hunter sat here with a different girl, and the
thought made me flinch.
He eyed me. “What are you thinking about?”
The diner grew deafening as our waitress whirred our milkshakes.
“I used to be really different,” I said. The waitress clicked off the
machine halfway through, and the last part of my declaration was too loud
and too jarring.
But instead of shrinking from the admission, Hunter smiled. “Yeah, I
remember you.”
Our waitress carried our milkshakes to our table, then slid them in front
of us, leaving a trail of condensation. Hunter tore the paper off his straw and
stuck it in his ice cream. He leaned forward to suck down a quarter of his
milkshake while I sat there.
He sat back, probably only pausing so his brain didn’t ice over. “You
had a pair of plaid Converse in middle school, and I told you I liked them.
All your friends were there, and they stared at me like I was some kind of
insect, but you smiled and told me you got them at a sidewalk sale for
twelve dollars. That has cracked me up for years.”
The air became hard to choke down. The compliment sounded familiar,
and I rifled through my head but couldn’t quite grasp the memory. “I’m
sorry, I don’t remember that.”
He shrugged, still smiling. “I like that you don’t remember me. No one
knows me for good reasons. I’m the psycho, or the loser, or the kid who
tried to kill himself. I like the fact that up until a little while ago, I was as
ordinary to you as anyone else.”
But Hunter was wrong; I did remember him. Maybe I didn’t remember
him complimenting my shoes in middle school, but I had another memory.
One as vivid as he was now. “I don’t think you’re ordinary.”
He let out a gust of laughter. “Well, how’s that for romance?”
And without warning, another memory slithered into my head, as vivid
as Hunter. I remembered Scott’s breath against my neck. I remembered his
nose brushing along my jaw, and I remembered his voice in my ear. You and
I are going to be the best romance this school has ever seen. And even then,
I didn’t know if it was a promise or a threat, or if there was any difference.
Our waitress came by a moment later. Hunter and I both nodded when
she asked us how the milkshakes were, but when she inquired about
ordering food, I spoke first, declaring that we wouldn’t be eating as Hunter
deflated across from me. I said I had to be home for dinner, even though it
was a lie. In fact, I didn’t have to be anywhere, but I felt like a fraud, and I
slowly realized that being decent didn’t mean sitting there with Hunter; it
meant abandoning him altogether.
I eyed Hunter against the backdrop of the diner, and despite being right
there, I’d never felt farther from anything. He was something mystical,
dangling right in front of me, but no matter how hard I ran, and no matter
how hard I tried, I couldn’t quite grasp him. All the people I knew were just
behind him, loud and squished together. They were his background and he
was my foreground, and if high school were a picture, he’d have to be in it.
If I were more confident, I’d have asked him if I could take his picture
right then, because this was how I wanted to remember him—his green eyes
and dark hair, and a smile for me and no one else. And if he’d asked to take
my picture, I’d have said no. Because he’d end up tacked to my bedroom
wall in the center of my collage, while I’d end up in a flame, and I couldn’t
bear the thought of his grim face as he watched me burn.
 Chapter Twenty-Eight

A fter Hunter paid for our milkshakes, he walked me home. We trudged

along side by side, the wet slush sinking into my left boot. Hunter wore
his Vans, but he appeared as unbothered by the wetness as he did by the
quiet between us.
The streetlights shone in bright patches on the sidewalk, separated by
stretches of darkness. Nestled in the darkness was the warm glow of the
houses we passed, their windows lit with orange and yellow. We passed one
house in particular with a large front window showcasing the dining room
table. We were undetectable in the dark, but we could see the family inside,
plain as day. Hunter watched them as if he knew them, his eyebrows drawn
together and his face pinched tight as though he was remembering
something unpleasant, before he cut his eyes forward. I glanced back as we
passed, but I didn’t recognize anyone at the table.
When we arrived at my house, it looked as warm and inviting as all the
others. I stopped at the end of the driveway to face Hunter, but before I
could say anything, we were interrupted by beaming headlights as Chris
pulled into the driveway. He stepped out of the car, eyeing us with a shit-
eating grin. I tossed a desperate plea out to the universe that he’d mind his
own business for once in his life, but of course, he didn’t.
Instead of heading for the front door, he walked toward us. I emitted
silent death threats in his direction, promising utter annihilation and pain,
lots of pain, but he wasn’t deterred.
He stopped between us, his face contorted in thought like the
magnificent actor he was. “Hunter, is it?” he asked, as if he couldn’t quite
place him.
 Hunter nodded. “Yeah, nice to meet you. Chris, right?”
Chris grinned, pausing to wink at me as he stretched his arms out wide
on either side of him. “In the flesh.” And then his obnoxiousness reached a
whole new level. “I hope my sister invited you for dinner.”
Hunter shifted, glancing at me. “Um . . .”
Chris’s eyes glinted with entertainment before he shot a horrified look
in my direction. “Oh, dear me, how utterly rude.”
I would have rolled my eyes at his theatrics, but I was too busy
hyperventilating at the prospect of Hunter coming inside.
“My mom’s making fajitas . . . you have to stay,” Chris went on. “She
won’t take no for an answer, and neither will I.”
Hunter’s gaze darted to me, but Chris waved a hand in my direction, the
only indication he was still aware of my existence. “She wants you to stay.
She’s just too shy to say it.”
When Hunter’s eyes met mine, his face was so hesitant that I gave him a
soft smile, because I couldn’t bring myself to do anything else.
Chris swept another hand through the air. “See! There you have it!
Come on . . . our casa es su casa.”
The smell of onion and garlic greeted us, and the living room proved to
be warmer than promised as my cheeks thawed with a mild sting. I threw
my coat and bag on the floor, but Hunter was hesitant as he slipped his
shoes off. He gazed around the cluttered house in interest. It felt intrusive,
and I couldn’t help shifting in discomfort, because even though our house
wasn’t that small, the three-room floor plan was the size of Hunter’s foyer.
“Guess who I found!” Chris called, sauntering into the kitchen.
My mom poked her head out, and her face lit up. “Oh! You must be
Hunter! It’s so nice to finally meet you!”
And I could have died, because she didn’t even have the sense to
pretend she didn’t know who he was. She came bustling out with too much
enthusiasm, and my eyes narrowed, but like Chris, she wasn’t paying any
attention to me. Taking his polite smile as an invitation, she clambered over
to Hunter and threw her arms around his neck in something that could only
be explained as a wholehearted mom-greeting.
Hunter glanced at me in utter confusion before settling on wrapping one
arm around her shoulder in the most awkward embrace in human history. If
I wasn’t so mortified, I would have keeled over in side-splitting hilarity.
“It’s nice to meet you too, Mrs. Matthews.”
 She parted from him and planted a quick kiss on my cheek, immune to
the thought waves I sent in her direction.
“Please! Call me Jane!” She looked between us, and when neither of us
said anything else, she filled the void. “Well, I hope you like fajitas,
Hunter.”
“Um, yeah, sounds great.”
My mom beamed at him, then hustled back to the kitchen to attend to
the sizzling stovetop.
“I’m gonna run my bag up to my room, but you can sit down,” I said,
gesturing to the couches in our living room. They were topped with
blankets, two of my pillows, and a pair of Chris’s socks, and I cringed.
When I returned, Hunter was nowhere in sight, and I followed the sound
of my mom trilling away in the kitchen. Hunter stood tall and lanky in front
of the counter, head bent in concentration, as he chopped a green pepper
with surprising skill. Well, maybe not skill exactly, but it wasn’t his first
time. My mom smiled at me, tilting her head in Hunter’s direction with a
double thumbs-up before handing me a container of mushrooms.
Instead of helping, Chris leaned against the fridge, supervising. He
nodded at Hunter, his gaze full of amusement as he studied me. “Your
boyfriend is proving to be a wiz in the kitchen, Alice.”
I almost fainted out of sheer desperation to escape, but Hunter laughed,
either not noticing the word or choosing to ignore it. “I don’t know what
I’m doing.”
Chris leaned forward to inspect his cutting board, then shrugged. “Well,
it looks good.”
I unwrapped the container of mushrooms and began working at my own
cutting board, grateful to have something to focus on.
Chris opened the refrigerator to investigate the grocery haul. When he
grew bored, he paused beside me for no reason other than to be a bother.
“Those mushrooms are too thick.”
I didn’t even pause. “Well, you can either cut them yourself, or you can
fuck right off.”
Chris burst into laughter, bracing himself against the counter while
Hunter made a strangled sound, unsure if he should laugh or not.
“Alice!” my mom hissed. Her wide eyes darted to Hunter in apology.
Chris plopped down at the kitchen table, smirking at my mom as he
opened a can of ginger ale. “Uh, I’m pretty sure Hunter has heard the word
‘fuck,’ Mom.”
She winced, her eyes going even wider. “That’s not the point.”

C hris didn ’ t contribute to making dinner, but he did retrieve an extra

chair from the dining room so Hunter could join us at the small table
wedged in the kitchen.
My mom spooned rice onto everyone’s plate. “So, do you have siblings,
Hunter?” She paused before giving him an extra serving.
“No.” Hunter’s answer was quick, but his face caught as he glanced at
me, as if I had the magical capability of removing him from the
conversation altogether. “Er, well, I have a stepbrother, actually.”
“Oh! A stepbrother! How nice.”
Hunter flashed her a tight-lipped smile that some might have considered
cute, but to me, it was just plain painful.
My mom returned the pot to the stove because there wasn’t enough
room on the table. “How old is he?”
“He’s a few months younger than me. Goes to school with me and
Alice.”
“Oh, wow!” my mom said, as though a stepsibling was a novel concept
to her. “Are you boys close?”
Hunter shifted in his seat, and I set my fork down, unable to sit by any
longer. “What is this? Twenty questions?”
It was horribly rude, and maybe my mom’s response was an indication
of how insolent I was, because she just rolled her eyes, not at all surprised.
“Ignore her, Hunter. For some reason, Alice is opposed to socialization.”
The side of Hunter’s mouth twitched, giving way to a smile, neutral and
polite. “We’re into different things.”
Chris wasn’t shy about hiding his entertainment, and seeing an opening
in the conversation, he dived in headfirst, his grin mischievous as he gazed
across from me. “Has Alice told you about all the things she’s into?”
I aimed a kick at him from under the table, but my toes connected with
the leg of the chair instead. It was supposed to be smooth, but the thud and
my hiss of pain weren’t at all inconspicuous.
 Hunter shot me a look of concern, and once satisfied I hadn’t broken
anything, he leaned forward in amusement. “You know, now that I think of
it, I don’t think she has.”
My mom might have saved me under different circumstances, but after
my twenty questions comment, she let the wolves have me.
Chris tapped his fingers together in calculation, grinning at me. “Ah,
well, allow me to enlighten you. First and foremost, Lord of the Rings.
She’s obsessed with Lord of the Rings . . . has a Tolkien shrine in her
bedroom.”
I rolled my eyes and faced off. “It’s not a shrine, and I know you’re
trying to embarrass me, but it won’t work. Lord of the Rings is not remotely
weird. It’s a global phenomenon.”
Chris tilted his head, undermining my sanity with raised eyebrows. “She
paints figurines.”
Hunter’s grin was so blinding it heated my cheeks despite my internal
promise that I wouldn’t allow myself to get embarrassed.
“It’s not just Lord of the Rings, though. You have a bunch of little Star
Wars guys too, don’t you, Alice?” Mom asked. She smiled at me as though
that tidbit was helpful. Chris snorted into his glass of water.
I shot her a death glare. “Yes, thank you, Mom.”
Hunter took a sip of water, completely enthralled. “I’d love to see the
collection,” he said, and Chris nodded in seriousness.
“We can certainly make that happen.”
I let out a reluctant sigh, and when Hunter looked back at me, he wasn’t
just smiling. Somehow, seated at my kitchen table, squished between my
mom and Chris, he was genuinely having a good time.
“I can’t believe you don’t watch Game of Thrones,” he said.
Hunter had texted me about a new episode one Sunday and was
horrified to learn I’d never seen a single episode. The next morning, he’d
overheard Margo and Scott in the kitchen, discussing their plans to catch up
on the episode they’d missed. Naturally, Hunter had felt the need to inform
them a certain someone had died. He’d been close to tears when he recalled
the entire incident to me, finding great joy in their stricken facial
expressions.
Chris slammed one hand on the table as he swallowed a mouthful of
food. “Yes! Thank you, Hunter! I’ve been trying to get her to watch it for
ages! I think the first episode of that show is some of the best writing in TV
history.”
Hunter nodded. “Oh, it’s incredible.”
Chris grinned in approval. “We should watch the first episode after
dinner.”
Hunter looked to me with eagerness, and I couldn’t quite bring myself
to squash his elation with an outright no. “Isn’t it super inappropriate?” I
asked, appealing to my mom.
I couldn’t say I was psyched about watching full-fledged sex scenes
squished between my mother, Hunter, and my brother, and I was surprised
no one else had the same thought.
My mom didn’t comment, and Chris rolled his eyes. “I’m sure you’ll
live.”
“Hunter hasn’t seen Garden State,” I said, raising my eyebrows at
Chris, because I knew him as well as he knew me.
“Oh, fuck yes. Sorry, Hunter. Next time . . . we’ll do Thrones next
time.”
My mom checked her watch. “It is a school night.”
Chris waved a hand in her direction. “It’s only seven thirty. I don’t have
anything else to do, and I know for a fact Alice doesn’t. Hunter?”
“Gee, thanks,” I grumbled.
Hunter grinned. “I have absolutely nowhere I need to be.”
“Chris, honey, have you considered maybe Alice and Hunter don’t want
to hang out with us?” my mom asked.
Chris paused, considering it before he shoveled a spoonful of food into
his mouth. “No, not really.”

C hris sprawled on his regular couch, and Hunter and I settled on the other
one. My mom joined us twenty minutes into the movie, and the room faded
to darkness as she switched off the kitchen light. She’d seen it a thousand
times, but like a good sport, she joined anyway, picking up Chris’s feet so
she could sit down. I knew every word, and it was a good thing I did
because, despite the glowing TV, I couldn’t focus on anything besides
Hunter’s leg touching mine.
 I was vigilant of even the smallest movements, and when his fingers
brushed my arm halfway through, my breath stopped. I could feel his soft
breath blowing across the side of my neck, his chest rising and falling. He
readjusted, and I drifted closer to him, his weight pulling me toward the
crack in the couch cushions. With the repositioning, I only had to turn my
head half an inch to align our lips.
I stared straight ahead, unmoving, and when Zach Braff raced through
the airport, Hunter watched me instead of him. I’d seen the movie enough
times to make someone else vomit, but the tears still came, and instead of
wiping them with my blanket, I froze in place as Hunter brushed one away
with tentative fingers.
I guess I thought I was Zach Braff running through the airport to a
crying Natalie Portman, declaring I couldn’t waste any more of my life
without Hunter in it. The movie was romantic and beautiful, but Zach Braff
had it right the first time. He should have boarded the plane and left Natalie
Portman ugly crying near the baggage claim, because how was he supposed
to be with her when he was so messed up?
 Chapter Twenty-Nine

C hris didn’t shut up about Hunter, and my mom was even worse. Chris
liked him because his favorite basketball team was the Los Angeles
Lakers, and my mom liked him because he offered to help clear the table
when Chris and I hightailed it out of the kitchen. Neither of them was crazy
about the smoking, but I guess you can’t win them all.
When we pulled up to the curb the following morning, Chris rolled
down the window and shouted a greeting. Hunter waved back with a broad
smile as if they were old friends, then finally redirected his attention to me
when Chris sped off.
“I fell asleep listening to the Shins last night,” he said, grinning as he
hooked his thumbs on his backpack straps.
And I wasn’t sure if it was because Hunter had sat at my kitchen table
or because he’d joked around with Chris, but separating myself from him
became more daunting than it already was.
“That’s all Chris and I used to listen to in the car,” I said. “Did you
listen to ‘The Only Living Boy in New York’? It was my dad’s favorite
song. Or, I guess, it probably still is. He used to listen to Simon and
Garfunkel all the time when we were kids. When we first watched Garden
State and that song played, Chris just about cried himself to death.”
I hesitated, wringing my hands together, feeling stupid for some reason.
“Or, wait, did you just listen to the Shins?”
I didn’t know if I’d lost him with the rush of words or if I had spoken
another language altogether, but his eyes had glazed over. “I listened to that
song too. I listened to the whole soundtrack.”
 His voice was rough, and I nodded in response, hypnotized by the way
he was looking at me—as if maybe, for one moment, I was the most
captivating thing on earth. I held my breath, afraid his gaze would drop to
my lips and he’d move closer, right in the middle of the parking lot.
“Hiya, guys!”
We both jumped. Hunter’s face darkened as Melody shoved her way out
of a dingy minivan. She waved one arm over her head as if we wouldn’t be
able to spot her otherwise.
By the time she stopped in front of us, Hunter’s mouth had settled into a
firm line. “What do you want?”
She glanced between Hunter and me in uncertainty, and it dawned on
me that Hunter probably hadn’t spoken to her since she’d accused me of
sleeping with Scott.
“No, it’s cool,” she said. “Alice and I are friends now.”
He scoffed, his glare deepening. “Oh yeah? Since when?”
Her light brown eyes darted to me, wide and imploring. “Since
yesterday. Right, Alice?”
I’m not sure if it was Hunter standing next to me or the way his gaze
had seared into me moments ago, but I shrugged. “Yeah, we’re friends
now.”
Hunter’s eyebrows shot up, and Melody threw her arms around me
without any notice whatsoever, almost wringing my neck in the process.
When she let go, she was beaming at me. Melody operated on one of two
relationship levels—mortal enemies or best friends till death do us part—
and it became apparent that sometime during our conversation the day prior,
I’d no longer been declared the enemy.
Hunter glanced between us, his eyes still narrowed. “I have very clearly
missed something.”
Melody ignored him. “We’re all going bowling tonight. You have to
come, Alice. You just have to.” I looked up at Hunter, but she waved a
hand. “Don’t worry, he’s going too.”
His head jerked in her direction. “Oh, am I? Thank you for informing
me.”
I bit my lip, smiling between them. “Sure, I’ll go.”
Melody clapped her hands together in triumph. “Perfect! We can
carpool! Thursdays are cosmic bowling, and it’s only, like, five dollars for a
game and shoes.”
 Hunter’s focus was on me despite Melody chattering between us. “Want
to come to my house after school?” he asked. “We can hang out before we
go.”
A gust of wind blew strands of hair across my face, and Hunter reached
out to tuck one behind my ear. When our eyes connected, he looked as
surprised as I felt, his hand frozen in place as he stared at me.
“Eugh. Vomit. I’m right here, you know!” Melody whined.
Hunter dropped his hand to his side and blinked as though to steady
himself. “Well, go away then.”
Melody burst into laughter, his callousness her favorite thing on earth.
She stepped closer to me, then secured my arm beneath hers and dragged
me away. “Let’s go. It’s colder than a witch’s tit out here, and standing here
watching you two gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes makes me feel left
out.”
She steered me toward school, and I went out of sheer bewilderment.
Hunter trudged behind us, grumbling the whole time.
“Please get rid of her,” he said, low in my ear, but it only made Melody
laugh harder.

H unter and I retreated to his room after school. Scott wouldn’t be home
for a while, if at all, and we didn’t talk about it, but we both knew it. He’d
have basketball practice, and even if he didn’t, he was the type who milled
around the parking lot, too enthralled in his high-lord-jock-of-high-school
experience to return home.
Hunter and I sat on his twin-sized bed, his stereo playing whiny lyrics
and heavy guitars. We worked on our homework—or at least we pretended
to. Hunter plodded through his physics problems, eyebrows scrunched in
deep concentration, while I used his laptop. I twisted a strand of my hair as
I browsed SparkNotes of The Scarlett Letter, and when I looked up,
uncrossing my legs, Hunter was watching me.
I froze, staring back at him, and the faintest sprawl of pink crawled up
his neck. “I’m really distracted,” he said.
I bit the corner of my lip. “Maybe you’re just distracted because physics
is super boring.”
 He shook his head, his eyes wide and honest. “Nope. That’s not it. I
love physics.”
“Can I play you a song?” I asked. I wasn’t sure where the hell that had
come from, and I felt my own eyes widen.
He inhaled sharply, then swallowed as he nodded.
There was a song Chris played in the car sometimes that was as vivid
and heart-wrenching as Hunter. We never spoke when it played. I ducked
my head to pull it up while he switched off the stereo with the click of a
small remote. It was three minutes and thirty-eight seconds, and I couldn’t
bring myself to look at him, not once. When it ended, I shut his laptop and
snuck a look in his direction. His gaze was so intense my heart stopped and
restarted.
We stared at each other as the room glowed dark orange with the setting
sun. Neither of us moved. I couldn’t figure out where the soft light on the
wall started and ended, and I couldn’t figure out where we started and
ended. I felt as if I was standing on the very edge, and either Hunter would
kiss me and I’d teeter off a cliff, or we’d float on forever. He was bigger
than Scott Henderson or the cuts on my wrists, and I itched to reach out to
him and dissolve into everything he was.
“Beautiful,” he breathed, but the song had ended, and he was only
staring at me. He shifted on the bed, then moved closer to me, close enough
I could feel his breath on my face, and before he even reached me, my eyes
were tempted to flutter closed. He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear
just like he had in the parking lot, his breathing heavier and more labored as
he drew closer. His eyes trailed the motion of his fingers, and when his gaze
returned to mine, neither of us moved for several unblinking moments.
“Hunter!”
We both flinched, his breath rattling against mine.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“Hunter!” It was a woman’s voice, and my eyes widened as I processed
the obvious fact that someone else was home. My heart rate picked up in a
way that had nothing to do with Hunter’s lips inches from mine. His fingers
were still brushing against my ear, and he dropped his hand, his head
hanging as he put more inches between us.
“Hunter!”
He swung upright, then stalked to the door like a storm cloud and
wrenched it open. “Jesus! What!”
 A high-pitched voice drifted back. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in
vain.”
His shoulders rose and fell as he caught his breath. He steadied himself
with one hand on the doorframe. When he turned back to me, his gaze was
overcast. “I’ll be right back.”
And then he was gone, leaving me in a room that was so empty I
thought the white walls might swallow me whole.
Footsteps ascended the stairs a while later, and I knew it was Hunter. I
knew his slow, lazy footsteps and the squeak of his shoes, but I still crept
over to the door and closed it . . . because what if it wasn’t? The door swung
open a moment later. Hunter’s eyebrows were furrowed, as if he was trying
to recall something as he studied me and then the door handle, but I said
nothing.
“My stepmom is home,” he said. “I thought they had some function
tonight, but apparently not.”
I nodded.
He scrubbed the side of his face with one hand. “She’s insisting you
stay for dinner.”
I stared at him, because what in the actual fuck. I imagined myself
sitting next to Scott at the dinner table, and the thought was so bothersome I
felt as if I was having an allergic reaction to it, my throat closing in
response. I didn’t know what else to say, so the words that tumbled out were
pure stupidity. “Stay for dinner?”
He nodded, his gaze weighted with remorse.
I swallowed a thick lump in my throat. “I . . . I can’t.”
He tried to smile, but it was so glum it didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s
okay, yeah, I wouldn’t want to stay either. I can meet up with you guys at
bowling.”
“It’s not . . . I want to . . .” I took a deep breath and started in a different
place. “I just can’t.”
He nodded once, walking toward me. He stopped in front of me, then
gave my hand a gentle tug to pull me to him and wrapped both arms around
me, strong and solid. I tried to commit as many details to memory as I
could. The spicy scent of men’s soap and cigarette smoke. His chest hard
and heaving beneath me, reminding me he was as nervous and desperate as
I was. One hand touched my hair, and I thought I’d burn from the inside
out, and though I might eventually forget all the details, I’d never forget
that.
“It’s not a big deal. You don’t have to,” he said. His breath touched the
area of my skin behind my ear. “It won’t be anything like dinner at your
house.”
I leaned away so I could look up at him. “What do you mean?”
He let out a gust of laughter. “It won’t be remotely pleasant. My dad’s a
huge dick.”
He didn’t bother mentioning Scott, and it felt impossible that there
might be a dick who outranked him. “Would he be less of a dick if I was
there?”
Hunter smiled as he twisted a strand of my hair between his fingers.
“Well, that’s irrelevant because you’re not staying.”
I put both hands on his chest, pressing him to tell the truth. “But would
he?”
He concentrated on something over my head, and when he brought his
gaze back to me, there were flickers of torment. “I’m not sure. I’ve never
had anyone over for dinner before.”
 Chapter Thirty

H unter’s stepmom was in the kitchen when we dragged ourselves

downstairs. We heard her before we saw her, and when we rounded the
corner, my heart nearly stopped. Scott leaned against the kitchen island,
holding a small glass bowl while his mom prepped a salad. He glanced up
in disinterest when we entered, but when his eyes landed on me, he dropped
the bowl onto the counter and it shattered. Glass sprinkled across the
counter and floor, but his eyes were too unfocused to flinch.
“What in the world!” his mom said, one hand going to her forehead. She
paced back and forth several times, but instead of collecting materials to
pick up the mess, she accomplished nothing at all. She paused, tugging on
her hair. She looked as if she was on the verge of tears as she twisted
around to face Scott. “That was the lemon vinaigrette!”
No one made any move to clean the glass, and I felt tempted to initiate
the process but thought better of it, hoping Scott sliced his foot open
instead. Hunter let out a long sigh, unbearably bored of the whole situation.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m sure we have other dressings in the fridge,” Scott
said. My eyes flew to his face in shock, surprised by the comfort in his
voice.
She sniffled. “It’s not the same.”
Scott started to wipe up the vinaigrette but paused to glare at Hunter.
“Mind making yourself useful and getting me some fucking shoes?”
Hunter tapped two fingers against his chin. “Hmm, tempting.” He
strolled over to the fridge instead, rifled through it, and emerged with two
salad dressings. “Ranch or balsamic?”
 Scott’s mom’s short blond hair was disarrayed, and she wiped one
finger under her eyes to ensure there was no smearing mascara. “I guess
balsamic.”
“Great,” Hunter said flatly. He put the ranch back in the fridge, then set
the balsamic on the counter and left the kitchen altogether.
I stood there in uncertainty, unsure if I should follow. No one had
spoken a word to me yet, and I didn’t feel like starting a conversation with
Satan’s mother during a mental breakdown over salad dressing. Hunter
returned a moment later, carrying a pair of pink slippers. He tossed them at
Scott’s mom without looking at her, his face masked in the same scowl he
wore at school.
“What about me?” Scott demanded.
Hunter shrugged. “Eat shit.”
And then he tugged me out of the kitchen with him.

H unter and I stood in the corner of the dining room, our close proximity
helping him breathe easier.
“Should we help them?” I whispered, huddling into him.
Hunter’s jaw was clenched tight, but he cracked the smallest smile. “I
certainly have no desire.”
I scrunched my nose. “I can’t believe we’re having store-bought salad
dressing.”
He huffed a breath of laughter and wrapped one arm around my
shoulder, smirking down at me. “Quite honestly, the mere idea is fucking
revolting.”
Scott strode into the dining room, and I stiffened, but Hunter kept his
arm wrapped tight around me. Scott froze, staring at us for one moment
before he caught himself. He set the bowl of salad in the middle of the
table, and when he straightened, his fists were clenched at his sides. He
wore shoes, and the thought of him retrieving them himself made me bite
back a smile.
“So you two are just going to stand in here making out while my mom
tries not to cut herself on pieces of glass everywhere?” His eyes blazed with
anger.
 I felt a little bad, but Hunter’s slow smile was sinister. “So what if we
are?”
Scott turned his furious gaze to me. “What a catch, Alice. Can’t even be
bothered to help out his own stepmother.” He spun around and stalked out
of the room, his shoulders tight.
“What happened in there anyway?” Hunter said, low and taunting. “You
can hang on to footballs when people are trying to tackle you, but you can’t
manage a bowl when you’re standing still?”
Scott didn’t say anything, but the back of his neck burned bright red
before he disappeared into the kitchen.
A moment later, Scott’s mom glided into the dining room, and Hunter’s
arm tightened. “You must be Alice! It’s such a pleasure to meet you!” she
said, as though nothing at all had happened in the kitchen.
“Um, it’s nice to meet you too.”
She beamed at Hunter. “Wow, she’s so pretty.”
Scott stood behind her and folded his arms, looking away with gritted
teeth.
Hunter’s jaw ticked. “Why are you telling me that? She’s standing right
here.”
His stepmom rolled her eyes before winking at me. “Oh, don’t be so
grumpy. Why don’t we sit?” She spun around to look at Scott. “Is that
everything, love?” She assessed the table while Scott’s face turned the
fiercest shade of red I’d ever seen.
I stared at the both of them. Something wasn’t computing.
“Yeah,” Scott mumbled, avoiding my eye.
Scott’s mom took a seat at the foot of the table, her hands clasped
together as she studied the spread. She stood to arrange a few things and sat
back down, evaluating again.
“Let’s get this over with,” Hunter said, his lips brushing against my ear.
He held my hand as he led me to the table, then motioned for me to sit in
the chair beside him.
Scott sat across from us, and I don’t know what else I expected, but I
was still unprepared.
If you had told me one day I’d be sitting in Scott Henderson’s lavish
dining room attempting to enjoy a meal with his family, I would have
laughed until I ruptured something. But there I was, sitting across from the
devil himself with nothing but a bowl of steaming brussels sprouts and a
gaudy candlestick between us.
I glanced around in confusion as we sat in silence while the food cooled
in front of us.
Scott’s mom gestured to the empty seat at the head of the table. “We’re
just waiting for my husband.”
I nodded with a polite smile, hoping my expression didn’t give away the
thoughts in my head.
The table was obnoxiously long, with five chairs spread out an arm’s
length apart. I didn’t know where the fifth chair had come from, because
there were always four, but it matched the others. Maybe they had a reserve
stack of formal dining chairs shoved in a closet somewhere. The dinner
plates were stark white with gold filigree on the edges, and I had a few too
many forks and spoons on each side. I wasn’t sure if the plates matched the
drapes or the drapes matched the plates, but everything matched everything
in a way that made it all feel like a model home. If we weren’t right there,
sitting at the table, I would have been convinced no one lived there at all.
We sat in silence for ten minutes, but it felt as if I lost a few years of my
life. I watched the clock tick mockingly slow while Hunter studied the
ceiling. The front door blew open a few minutes past six, and dress shoes
clicked cool and confident across the foyer. Scott’s mom sat up straighter,
plastering a dazzling smile on her face, and Hunter braced himself as if he
was moments from being carried away by a tsunami.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, maybe a balding ogre or that character
in a movie who’s always cast as the asshole just because he has the face for
it, but Hunter’s dad was none of those things. In fact, he was handsome. He
gave me a pleasant smile before he glanced at Scott’s mom in apology, and
if I wasn’t so struck by how similar he and Hunter were, I might have
smiled back.
He was tall and lanky, dressed in a dark gray suit. Instead of black hair,
his was brown with flecks of gray, and his skin was tan, as though he’d just
returned from a cruise or an all-inclusive vacation. But besides that, his face
was the same. He was older but still striking, and all his mannerisms
combined into staggering familiarity. His eyes were the same intense green,
and when they landed on me again, my heart stopped as if it was
conditioned to do so.
“You must be Alice,” he said, “I was glad to hear you’d be joining us.”
 I couldn’t help gaping back at him. I tried to swallow as my brain
prompted me to say something. “Yeah, hi.”
He returned a curt nod and settled into his chair at the head of the table.
“This looks fantastic, sweetheart.”
I eyed the glass of wine in front of me, unsure if it was meant to be a
test or a subtle indication of high class. I picked up my outermost fork, and
Scott’s mom shot me a concerned glance.
“How about grace?” She brought her hands together as she looked
around the table, ensuring everyone else did the same, including me. I
tucked my hands back in my lap, my cheeks warming. Scott and Hunter’s
dad followed suit as she began rattling off a familiar prayer, but Hunter
stared at the ceiling, his arms folded across his chest in resolute protest.
By the time she finished, Hunter had attracted his dad’s attention.
“Would it kill you to have some respect?”
Hunter shrugged. “Maybe.” And then he was shoveling mashed
potatoes into his mouth, rendering him incapable of continuing the
conversation.
“This looks really good,” I forced out, passing a basket of bread to
Hunter.
Scott’s mom smiled at me as if I was a tiny doll propped up at the table.
“Oh, she’s absolutely darling, Hunter!”
I tried to smile back but failed miserably.
“Okay?” Hunter said, and if I wasn’t so uncomfortable, I might have
laughed.
She reached over to place her hand on top of his, but Hunter slid his fist
off the table. Her pink fingernails tapped the intricate tablecloth a few times
before she brought her hand back to her lap.
“So, what do your parents do, Alice?” Hunter’s dad asked.
Hunter rolled his eyes with a heavy sigh before tearing his roll and
stuffing half of it into his mouth. He was either starving or figured he might
as well get creative with ways to off himself before dinner was over. I
peeked sideways at him.
“My dad’s a lawyer in California, and my mom’s an administrative
assistant at a tax office.”
Scott’s mom clapped her hands together. “How wonderful!”
I stared at her, unsure if she’d misheard me.
 “What kind of lawyer?” Hunter’s dad cut into his steak, glancing at me
with his quizzical green eyes when I didn’t answer right away.
“He’s a public defender.” I took a polite sip of water, too afraid to take a
bite of food in case he asked me another question. I didn’t need everyone’s
eyes boring into me as I tried to swallow an entire mouthful, eyes watering
like a snake gulping down a rabbit, just to ease the awkward silence.
Hunter’s dad pointed his fork at me. “You should tell him to get into IT
law, being in California and all.”
My politeness waned, but I managed a smile as best I could.
“I’m sure if her dad wanted to do that, he would,” Hunter droned,
scraping his fork across his plate with screeching force.
Hunter’s dad eyed him with so much distaste it made my skin crawl.
“I’m making conversation, Hunter.”
“Alice, darling, I think I know your mother,” Scott’s mom said. “Does
she attend the PTA meetings? Oh, she is absolutely darling. What’s her
name again?”
“Jane Matthews.” My mom did go to the PTA meetings when she could,
and though she wouldn’t say a bad word about anyone, she’d wince at being
called darling, especially by someone much younger than her.
“Lovely is a synonym for darling,” Hunter offered, and the entire table
stilled.
“What did you say?” Hunter’s dad glared at him, and the tightness in
Scott’s mom’s shoulders mimicked mine as we held a collective breath. The
electricity in the room grew sharp with warning, promising a storm.
Hunter leaned back in his chair, one lazy arm swung over the back of it,
his mouth twitching. “I was just making conversation.”
“You’ll treat your mother with respect.”
Hunter didn’t hesitate. “She’s not my mother.”
Scott had been following the conversation as though it was an
entertaining tennis match, and unlike his mom and me, he salivated for an
eruption. He lifted his wine glass. “And thank god for that!”
Hunter’s dad’s mouth twisted into a smirk so familiar my stomach
dropped through my chair. “Has Hunter told you about his mother, Alice?”
I wasn’t sure what the best response would be to make him stop talking
altogether, so I tried to answer as neutrally as possible. “Mm-hmm.”
Scott’s mom shushed him with a wave. “Oh, John, please, let’s not talk
about that.”
 “Fine, fine.” Hunter’s dad put both his hands up. “We don’t need to talk
about it, but all I’ll say is you seem like a smart girl, Alice, and it’s
important to be with someone of sound mind because, as it turns out, mental
weakness is unfortunately hereditary.”
“John!” Scott’s mom hissed, her eyes wide with embarrassment.
Hunter’s dad lifted his hands in placating apology before he dabbed the
corner of his mouth with his cloth napkin. Hunter’s expression was black
with rage as he stared at his plate, concentrating on his mashed potatoes and
brussels sprouts as if they were the only things anchoring him to the world.
“So what are your plans after high school, Alice?” Scott’s mom’s voice
was saturated with overcompensating politeness, and I glanced up at her
subject change.
I wasn’t sure what was worse—me or Hunter in the hot seat. Scott
leaned forward, just as interested in my answer as she was.
“College, I suppose. I’m a junior . . .”
“Oh! I didn’t realize you were younger than Scott and Hunter. Is there
anything in particular you’d like to study?”
My smile was so forced it hurt my cheeks. “I’m not too sure yet.” It was
the truth, but I would have said the same thing even if it wasn’t. Scott was
on a strict information diet, and I didn’t intend to start feeding him, no
matter how nicely his mom asked.
“Well, we have all sorts of brochures from when we visited schools with
Scott.” She beamed at him, her chest heaving with pride. “He was recruited
by nearly every school in the Northeast. You should give all those brochures
to Alice, darling.”
Scott’s grin was as evil as ever. “Of course. I still have them upstairs.
Why don’t you come up to my room after dinner?”
I looked away from him and fixated instead on Hunter’s hand gripping
his fork as though he was trying to bend the silver. I might have half
nodded; I couldn’t be sure.
“Hunter’s still trying to decide.” Scott’s mom’s tone was light, and
Hunter’s knuckles turned whiter around his utensil.
“Can we not,” he said through clenched teeth, still glaring at his plate.
His dad let out a surprised laugh. “Not this again, Carol. We both know
Hunter isn’t fit for higher education.”
Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t that, and my head jerked up in
surprise. “Why not?” I demanded, startling even myself.
 The entire table grew silent as everyone stared at me in shock, even
Hunter. My breathing grew shallow as Hunter’s dad raised his eyebrows in
obnoxious challenge. He inspected me before glancing at Scott and his wife
in amusement. “Well, for starters, you can’t just take months off of college
for mental fragility.”
“He’ll probably do community college, won’t you, darling?” Scott’s
mom said.
Hunter twirled his fork in his mashed potatoes, shooting her a sour look.
“Sure, why not.”
“He’s the salutatorian,” I said, even louder. I wasn’t sure if it was Scott
across from me that made me predisposed to rage, but my hands were
starting to shake, and the words coming out were flashing bolts of lightning,
instantaneous and without warning.
Hunter’s dad barked out a harsh note of laughter. “Lord, help us.”
I glanced around the table in disbelief, but all I received in return was
one look of pity from Scott’s mom and matching amusement from Hunter’s
dad and Scott, as if I was as stupid as they claimed Hunter to be.
“Alice,” Hunter said. His voice was soft, but his lips didn’t move as he
traced more shapes into the food on his plate.
And maybe that’s what did it. Maybe it was his softness or his bent
head. Maybe it was Scott leering at me. Maybe it was everything combined
that triggered a defense mechanism I’d long abandoned trying to find.
“He takes all AP classes, and he didn’t even have to stay back a year
when he took that time off.” I clenched my fists beneath the table. It felt a
lot like a panic attack. The same fuzzy vision and choked-down breaths, but
instead of terror, I felt pure, unfiltered rage.
Hunter’s dad chuckled. “Well, I hope so. He’d have to be beyond
incompetent to fall a year behind in high school. And that reminds me, I’ve
been meaning to have a conversation with administration about the school
curriculum. AP classes are supposed to be college-level courses. Pretty
soon, our school district will be as competitive as the inner-city districts, for
god’s sake.” He reached for his glass of wine, swirling it before taking a
swig.
“He doesn’t take any AP classes,” I said, gesturing at Scott.
“I have a full ride to Penn State, thank you very much.” Scott looked as
if he wanted to strangle me, but his gaze darkened with humor as he leaned
forward. “How interesting that you know my class schedule, though.”
 “I only know it because you’re too stupid to take classes at your own
grade level,” I snapped.
I thought the room had been silent before, but there had still been
shifting and breathing. This silence was different. There was nothing but
shattered air and my heartbeat in my ears.
Amid the nothingness, I couldn’t pull my gaze from Scott, maintaining
eye contact with him for longer than I’d been able to tolerate in two years.
If it were just the two of us, he would have been on top of me, his fingers
wrapped around my throat until my lungs gave out and my eyes rolled back.
I was his personal black hole. All his evilness and awfulness disappeared
into me, and I never knew where it went, but I felt it then. I felt all of it.
I stood up, rattling all the unneeded silverware against my plate, almost
taking the tablecloth with me. “I thought the worst part about this meal was
sitting across from you,” I said, waving a hand at Scott. “But sitting here
listening to all of you talk about Hunter like he isn’t sitting right here . . .
like he’s some kind of leper. Mental fragility . . .” I mulled the words over
with a harsh laugh. “If you were my dad, I’d have tried to kill myself too.”
Scott’s mom was stricken, but Hunter’s dad grew furious. His face
hardened with loathing as he leaned back in his chair. He didn’t say
anything for several long moments, and somehow, that was worse. “You’d
be wise to leave, Miss Matthews.”
Hunter was still sitting, eyes wide with disbelief and jaw slack as he
stared up at me.
Not needing to be told twice, I pivoted for the door. “Let’s go, Hunter.”
And then I stalked out of the room, praying he wasn’t too shell-shocked to
follow because I really didn’t want to have to burst back in to drag him out.
 Chapter Thirty-One

I fumbled with my shoes and breathed a sigh of relief when I heard

footsteps behind me. Hunter slammed the kitchen door, and when I
peeked over at him as we crossed the bright white garage, his expression
was dazed. The air outside was so sharp it felt cleansing as it filtered
through my lungs. Hunter punched in the code on the keypad, and the
garage door rattled down, but he still hadn’t said a word.
When he turned around, his gaze was scorching.
I wet my lips. “Hunter, maybe I shouldn’t have—”
He stepped closer to me and brought one hand to the side of my head so
I was pinned against the house. His breath fanned over my face, warm and
steady.
“I notice you’ve slammed me into a wall.” I heard the breathless words
leave my mouth, my eyes widening in surprise.
His lips were inches from mine, and I tried not to stare at them. “If
you’re a bird, I’m a bird,” he said.
“Is this the part where you go all Ryan Gosling on me?” I asked.
His face was half-covered by darkness, but his mouth split into a wide
grin before he tucked a strand of stray hair behind my ear. And this time, he
didn’t stop. His fingers grazed the side of my pulsating cheek, and he bent
toward me, pausing mere centimeters from my mouth. “Please stop talking
about Ryan Gosling.”
And then his lips brushed mine. It was short and fleeting, and when my
eyes fluttered open, he was staring at me, assessing my reaction with
burning eyes. I expected the head-clouding panic or the imaginary crawling
fingers, but they never came.
 It was me who leaned forward, pressing my lips to his, doing my best to
answer the question left hanging between us.
It wasn’t like how I had kissed Brian Cullen, doing it only because I
was supposed to. And it wasn’t like how I had kissed Jeremy at the roller
rink, slobbery and messy. I’d often wondered if Hunter’s lips would be as
soft as I imagined, but they were softer, unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
It wasn’t just the texture either; it was a softness that injected itself through
me. One of his arms wrapped around me, hugging me to his chest, while his
other hand moved through my hair before it brushed along my jaw, cradling
it in place. I twisted my fingers around the back of his neck even though I
couldn’t remember deciding to do so.
When we parted, his eyes were wide and glazed over. It might have
been because of the silence, or it might have been because of the way he
was looking at me, but I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Your
family is insufferable.”
His laughter was an explosion. It carried through the air, alerting the
entire neighborhood of his wonderful existence, and when he kissed me
again, his lips were still curved into a smile. He pulled away and pressed his
forehead to mine as his breathing turned ragged. “Tell me how you really
feel. In fact, feel free to perform your speech again.” His voice was thick
with something that sounded like tiredness, but I knew as well as anyone
that it had nothing to do with his REM cycles. “Better yet, let’s get the fuck
out of here.”

T he bowling alley was busier than I’d expected, but unlike most places,
there wasn’t a particular crowd it attracted. It was as though the universe
had vomited a whole hodgepodge of people, directing its retching into a
dingy garbage can with retro lights. I felt a certain comforting nostalgia
from the guy handing out shoes without glancing up from his phone and the
inescapable smell of sweaty feet.
Hunter and I held hands. Our shoulders bumped together as we made
our way through the alley, spotting everyone at the last lane. Melody stood
on a retro plastic chair. She ordered Kohen with a flick of her fingers, while
Max bowled grandpa style, his legs spread wide as he lobbed the ball down
the lane instead of rolling it. It went right for the gutter, almost getting stuck
before continuing at a snail’s pace, and I pressed the side of my face into
Hunter’s shoulder to suppress my laughter.
Melody cheered when she spotted us, then scuttled off the chair to
throw her arms around me. We’d gone from enemies to friends who hugged
each other, apparently, and I wrapped an awkward arm around her, trying to
get used to it.
“Hunter said you were having dinner at his house.” She leaned back in
horror, studying my face. “How was it? Awful? It was totally awful, wasn’t
it?”
I grinned, Melody’s newfound friendliness infectious. “Awful is an
understatement.”
“Eugh, you poor thing. I wouldn’t have gone near that with a ten-foot
pole. Seriously, you couldn’t pay me to have dinner at Hunter’s house.
What’d you think of Carol? She’s a riot, isn’t she? And not in a good way.
Have you met Carol, Kohen?” She took a swig from a see-through cup as
everyone else crowded over.
“What’s up, Alice.” Kohen smiled, wrapping one arm around Melody. I
smiled back, but it was interrupted by a yelp as Max tumbled into me.
“Heyo, Princess!”
I emerged from his arms and inched closer to Hunter. Hudson stood
behind Max and offered me a hesitant nod.
“You want a beer, Alice?” Max asked. There was a pitcher on the table,
and I nodded, glancing around the alley. The closest employee was a guy
about our age, and if his efforts wiping a table were any indication of his
dedication to his job, I could rest assured he wouldn’t be barreling over to
check our IDs anytime soon.
When Max returned the pitcher to the table, Hunter scoffed. “What am
I? Chopped liver?”
Max shrugged, ignoring him as he led me over to the group of plastic
chairs. They were in the middle of a game, so Hunter and I teamed up with
Melody and Max, alternating turns. To them, bowling was a social outing,
while Kohen was more competitive.
When it was Hunter’s turn, he examined the balls with careful
consideration. Once he selected one, he strode forward, cradling the ball in
his palm. He never paused to put his fingers in any of the holes before he
brought his arm back and swung it forward. The ball thundered down the
lane, and I wasn’t the only one staring. The people next to us nudged one
another, their eyebrows climbing to match mine. Hunter bowled an
effortless strike, and Max leaped from his chair. Hunter spun around,
shooting me a wink.
“Fuck me, I forgot how good he is,” Kohen grumbled.
Hunter took the chair across from me and lounged back. He pinned me
with a pair of raised eyebrows as if waiting for something.
“Why do you bowl so weird?” I asked.
He huffed out a laugh, crossing his feet at his ankles. “I don’t know.
That’s how I’ve always bowled.”
“It’s so . . . odd.”
He took a sip of his beer and grinned at me. “Thank you.”
When it was my turn, I managed to knock down a total of one pin
during my two attempts. I scurried back to my seat, face burning from the
attention while Melody gave me a standing ovation. I ducked into the seat
next to Hunter, and he leaned in close, his lips brushing my ear. “Have I
ever told you you’re cute when you’re embarrassed?”
“Have I ever told you I hate you?”
His laughter rumbled through every part of me, forcing a smile.
“Hunter, why don’t you keep taking turns!” Max called from the table.
The waitress had dropped off a plate of chicken wings, and he dug in, the
game a distant thought.
Hunter swung upright when it was his turn again. “Watch and learn,
Alice.”
While I had to lug the bowling ball to the lane, Hunter’s hold on the ball
was as lazy as everything else he did. He shuffled a few steps, light on his
feet. His back foot lunged behind him, and he held the position long enough
to watch his ball crash into the pins. All ten of them went flying, and
everyone but Max let out a collective moan. He strolled back to the seat
beside me, and he had to be the only person in the entire world who could
make such smugness charming.
“He’s always been good at things that require balls, Alice!” Max called,
halfway through gnawing on a chicken wing.
“Jesus.” Hudson sat across from us, and he glanced around with wide
eyes. “I mean, it’s not even remotely clever . . .”
Kohen inspected the available balls on the rack. “Has he ever been
clever?”
 I twisted around in my seat. “Thank you for that, Max.”
He nodded, beaming at me.
Kohen walked back from a spare and jutted his thumb at the lane.
“You’re up, Princess.” I wasn’t quite sure when everyone had started using
the nickname, but he said it without hesitation or malice as he slumped into
the seat beside Melody.
I sifted through the rack of balls, picking a glittery purple one because it
was the lightest. As I made my way to the lane, the chanting started with
one voice. “Al-ice! Al-ice! Al-ice!”
I peeked behind me, wide-eyed. Melody stood on her chair, jabbing her
fist into the air, and it took only an instant before everyone else joined in. It
grew louder and louder, and my face burned hot as I stared back at
everyone. Hunter leaned forward, eyes bright, chanting my name with a
wicked smile.
Max cupped his hands on either side of his mouth. “Come on, cut the
shit, Alice! We want to see more than one pin down!”
We’d attracted an audience. The group of boys two lanes over joined in,
pausing from their own game to watch. I shuffled around to face the pins,
deciding to get it over with before the entire alley was watching. Despite
the attention, I managed to roll the ball somewhat straight, albeit slow, and
when it knocked over four pins, the entire place erupted.
Max and Kohen charged forward and threw their arms around me, then
each of them tried to lift one of my legs and hoist me into the air. My hand
gripped Max’s hair out of sheer bewilderment as we almost toppled over.
“I have another turn!” I said.
Max and Kohen stilled. They exchanged glances before removing their
hands in slow motion. “Well, uh, this is awkward. I guess we’ll . . . uh . . .
let you take that shot then.”
They both backed away, and I picked up my purple ball again, because
all the ruckus had provided more than enough time for the pins to reset and
my ball to return.
“Let’s see it, Alice!” one of the boys from the other lane called, still
watching. “Go for the spare!”
I shot them an awkward nod. I’m not sure if it was Hunter’s loud
laughter or all the pressure, but I cracked and cannoned the ball right into
the gutter, and everyone seemed to love that even more than the four pins.
 Melody initiated a round of applause as I shuffled back to the group.
“You’ll get it next time! Keep your head up!”
I took the seat next to Hudson because it was the only one open. He
eyed me with what appeared to be amusement. “I’m glad you’re here.”
I jerked my head to look at him, but he tore his gaze away. I slid my
hands against my jeans. “Uh, thanks. I’m glad . . .” I stopped, then started in
a different place. “Me too.”
When he looked back at me, there was a ghost of a smile, but he
shrugged in a way that was so like Hunter it was disconcerting. “I was
getting tired of being the worst bowler, but based on that pitiful
performance, you have most definitely taken the title.”
My laughter was sudden, and he didn’t join me, but he almost did, his
lips twitching with the effort.
 Chapter Thirty-Two

A twas
eight o’clock sharp, the alley lights shut off. For one moment, there
nothing but pitch darkness and yelps, but something whirred, and
colorful swirling lights danced across the lanes and walls.
“Cosmic, baby!” Max shouted. He punched both hands in the air and
abandoned his chicken wings. A psychedelic pop song blasted through the
speakers, and he grabbed Melody by the waist, pulling her onto the
hardwood floor. She giggled as they dipped and spun each other, but it
wasn’t just the two of them for long. Kohen joined, bobbing his head and
shuffling onto their makeshift dance floor. They whooped and cheered,
crowding around him.
Hudson nodded toward them in seriousness. “Let’s see it, Alice.”
I grinned, watching them. “I can’t remember the last time I danced.”
He smirked, looking past me at Melody making a beeline toward us.
“Well, let’s hope you start remembering, because you’re not gonna have a
choice.”
Before I had time to react, she tugged on my hand and yanked me
upright. For some reason, I grasped at Hudson. I wasn’t sure if I intended to
drag him with me or anchor myself to him, but either way, his eyes widened
before he burst into surprised laughter, wrenching his hand from mine.
“Absolutely not.”
Melody pulled me to the floor, then twirled me under her arm. At first I
tried to protest, but it was futile, and we spun around each other, laughing
and shrieking. When she let go of me, Max’s fingers caught mine, and he
pulled me farther into their circle. I used to dance with Margo and Casey at
parties, bending forward and trying my absolute hardest to look effortless,
but as we jumped and twisted in a sloppy circle in the bowling alley, the
entire world could have been watching and none of us would have cared.
Hunter sat in the same chair, and when I looked back at him between
my twirls, red-faced and sweating from the heat and laughter, he was
leaning forward, watching me.
I made my way over to him, and when I reached for his hand, his eyes
widened. “Please don’t,” he breathed, but I’d adopted Melody’s inability to
take no for an answer and pulled on him anyway.
I expected him to resist, but his eyes were locked on mine, and he was
much lighter than I expected. He trailed behind me, his hand rigid but still
gripping mine. When we made it to the floor, he stared at me in wide-eyed
panic. He didn’t move as everyone else cheered around him.
“Looking good, Hunter! Love the moves!” Hudson shouted.
Hunter scowled. “Will somebody go get him?”
Not needing to be told twice, Max and Melody headed over to harass
Hudson. Turned out, he was much more resistant than Hunter. Not one to be
deterred, Melody took it upon herself to initiate a lap dance, and that’s when
Hudson relented, swearing profusely as he stalked to the dance floor
without anyone needing to drag him at all.
He filled the space next to Hunter, standing just as still. I twirled around
in front of Hunter, and when I turned back to him, his eyes were wide with
desperation. “I really don’t know how.”
I flung my arms around his neck. “You don’t have to do much of
anything.” And he didn’t. He didn’t do anything at all as I twisted in front
of him.
We formed a circle, and when I was shoved in the middle, I did my
usual routine without a thought. It was the same one I used to do with
Margo, all hips and shoulders, and Melody dived in with me, following my
lead. Our tight-knit circle cheered, and I grinned. My hair stuck to my neck,
and my laughter was easy.
“Well, damn,” someone said, but we were yanked out and replaced by
Hunter. I almost joined just to save him, but Kohen shoved Hudson in, and
they stared at each other with matching bewildered expressions, neither of
them able to figure out how they’d gotten there.
“You have to do something!” Max yelled.
Hudson rolled his eyes. He shrugged at Hunter before starting a slow
and painful lawnmower routine. Hunter copied him, his movements jerky
and adorable, and when he glanced up at me, he mouthed, “I hate you.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, and he grinned back before they switched
into the shopping cart. When everyone had had enough, they called them
out and Max jumped in. His moonwalk was terrible, but like usual, he
managed to captivate the crowd. I grabbed Hunter’s hand and pushed onto
my tiptoes to press my lips to his ear. “You’re cute when you’re
embarrassed.”
He wrapped one arm around me, pulling me close as he planted a kiss to
my temple. His lips lingered against my skin as he laughed. “Just you wait,
Alice.”

W e cleared out around nine thirty, swapping hugs and shouted goodbyes
across the parking lot. Everyone piled into Hudson’s jeep, and he offered to
squeeze us in, but Hunter waved a hand, insisting we’d be fine on his bike.
When their car pulled away, Hunter and I were alone again, and the only
sound between us was our shallow breaths and the distant echo of falling
pins.
He moved closer to me, then brushed one hand against my cheek. It was
slow and purposeful, and I grabbed a fistful of his sweatshirt in response.
The action was so desperate that my cheeks burned, but he smiled. I wanted
to be as close to him as possible, close enough that our veins intertwined
and our blood twisted and pooled to the same places, our hearts pumping in
the same rhythm. His lips were inches away, and then they were on mine.
His fingers slid to my neck, drifting across my skin, and I held on as tight as
I could, afraid if I let go, I might faint to the ground.
When we broke apart, he was breathing hard, his gaze darting between
my eyes and my mouth. I remembered my first kiss at the roller rink, how
I’d tossed and turned in Margo’s bed afterward, unable to help my dorky
smile. I hadn’t thought I’d ever feel that again, but I felt the same wondrous
excitement. The same thrill in the deepest part of my stomach, as if kissing
Hunter might just be the single best thing that ever happened to me.
His nose was touching mine, and he smiled against me. “I can’t stop.”
I swallowed and I knew he could feel it, his hand cradling my neck.
“Me neither.”
 He pressed his lips to mine without hesitation, and the kiss grew quicker
and more frantic. I wrapped my arms around his neck, twisting my fingers
through his hair. He pressed closer to me, and I let him, never once
considering the fact that he was a boy and if he didn’t want to stop, I wasn’t
strong enough to make him.
I pulled apart when fresh air became a necessity. “My mom will
probably be wondering where I am.”
He blinked to steady himself. He nodded, his forehead still pressed
against mine as he squeezed his eyes shut, gathering the courage to break
apart for good. And then we did. He bent to unlock his bike, but it took him
several tries and a few curse words before the lock sprung free.

H unter parked his bike alongside my mom’s car, and we both slid off,
silent as we faced each other in my driveway. I couldn’t think of much else
besides his lips against mine, and I could tell his thoughts reflected my own.
I felt too awkward to keep standing there, and for whatever reason, my
brain settled on curtsying as an appropriate alternative. “Thank you for a
wonderful evening,” I said, straightening from the curtsy.
He gave me an old-fashioned bow, grinning. “The pleasure has been all
mine.”
I smiled back at him, and when our gazes collided, his eyes flickered to
my lips. I gave him a limp wave. “Okay, bye then.”
I knew if he started kissing me again, we might not stop, and I certainly
didn’t intend to be witnessed by Chris, who was undoubtedly peeking out
the front living room window.
So, instead of launching myself at him, I took a deep breath and turned
away, heading for the front door. Except I didn’t get far because his fingers
caught mine. I turned back, prepared with a laugh, but he didn’t move
closer to kiss me. In fact, it didn’t even look as though he wanted to. I
faltered, dizzy from the whiplash of his facial expressions. He had been
playful a moment ago, but his face was suddenly lined with seriousness, his
gaze avoiding mine as he concentrated on where my fingers met his.
“Hunter?”
 He took a deep breath. “Before you go . . . listen . . .” He lifted his head
to meet my uncertain gaze, the area between his eyebrows creased. “I really
like you, Alice. Like, I really, really like you.”
I blinked at him, my heartbeat thumping faster than it had outside the
alley. “I like you too.”
His smile was slight, but he didn’t release my hand, and my heartbeat
grew faster because he wasn’t just standing there. He was searching for
words. Words that were harder to say than confessing feelings. He
concentrated on something in the distance, and when he returned his gaze to
me, his eyes were filled with torment. “I need to ask you something.”
I stilled.
He scrubbed the side of his face with one hand. “I’m sorry, I know I
have no right to ask.”
I waited.
He nodded to himself, taking another breath as he refocused on me. “I
know Scott has always been infatuated with you, but lately . . . well . . . at
dinner . . .” He closed his eyes for a moment as he inhaled through his nose.
When he opened them, I almost wished he hadn’t. “He’s . . . oddly
possessive.”
My muscles were frozen with fear. Like maybe if I stayed still enough,
he’d forget I was there. My heart thudded against my chest. I thought it
might crack my rib cage. In fact, I hoped it might.
“I know you’ve had other boyfriends, and I’ll never be mad at you for
things that happened before we started hanging out, and I know it’s none of
my business.” He was rambling now, his eyes a mixture of anguish and self-
deprecation. “But . . . the way he looks at you . . . and the way you guys
interact with each other. I don’t know . . . it’s the way you look at an ex-
girlfriend or the hatred you have for an ex who you can’t believe you ever
dated. It’s like you guys have a history far beyond knowing each other at
parties or whatever. And I know Melody said that thing, and I never
believed her, but is there any truth to it? Did you guys ever have . . . ? A
thing? Or did you . . .” He trailed off, his face turning bright red.
Maybe I was offended. Maybe I was even mad at Hunter, because if he
had looked away that one day in gym class like everyone else, we would
never be standing here. He would still be seated in the corner of the
cafeteria, and I’d still be seated in the middle.
 “I promise it won’t change anything, and I could never be mad at you
for it. I just . . . I feel like I need to know.”
Okay, I was mad. But not at Hunter. Because it wasn’t Hunter’s fault he
asked these questions—questions he deserved answers to. It was my fault. I
had known we would end up standing here, and instead of being decent for
once, I had kissed him anyway. I had known what I was doing. Just like I
had known what I was doing when Scott’s fingers skimmed my waist. I
remembered grinning up at him and then my lips on his as if I’d been
starving.
I cut my wrists because I wanted to feel something, but I felt this. I felt
it like the final, deep cut. I felt it like throwing myself off a building, and it
hurt, but it wasn’t the hurt I expected. I had thought the worst part would be
my body slamming into pavement, but it wasn’t. It was all the things that
caused me to contemplate jumping in the first place. It was everything I was
and everything I did.
Battery acid dripped down the back of my throat, and I swallowed it,
staring up at him.
“No, never.”
 Chapter Thirty-Three

“A lice? Is that you?” My mom poked her head out of the kitchen, a
bright smile plastered on her face.
I shrugged out of my coat and placed it on a hanger in the front closet. It
fell right to the floor, but instead of picking it up, I kicked it deeper into the
closet so I could close the door. “Who else would it be?”
Her face fell at the sound of my voice, and it normally might have
squeezed my heart.
“Is everything all right?” She held a dish towel but tossed it on the
kitchen table as she made her way toward me.
I exhaled, annoyed by the simple fact that she stood in front of me. “I
don’t feel well.”
She studied my face, but when she tried to bring a hand to my forehead,
I flinched away.
She sighed. “Let’s not start this again, Alice. You’ve been doing so
well.”
“I’m sick. You have to be the only parent in the entire world who makes
their kid go to school when they’re fucking sick.”
She recoiled. Her eyes widened before her face pinched in irritation.
“Do not speak to me like that. You aren’t sick. Just like you haven’t been
sick the hundreds of other times you’ve missed school. Tell me what’s
really wrong. Did something happen? Was it something with Hunter?” The
irritation disappeared, replaced with sadness. “I can’t help you if you don’t
tell me, Alice.”
I hated her softness. I hated it as much as Hunter’s. I gritted my teeth
and looked away from her. “I’m going to bed.”
 She sighed again, watching me go, both hands gripping the banister as
she stood at the bottom of the stairs. Chris’s bedroom door was closed, and
I issued a silent thank-you to the universe.
When I reached the top of the staircase, her voice was forgiving behind
me. “I love you, sweetheart.”
I wasn’t sure if she intended for me to hear it or if she said it because
she needed to, but it punched a hole through my heart, and my face flooded
with tears before I reached my bedroom door.
My bed was piled high with blankets and clothes, and I shoved them off
in one swift motion, the fabrics tumbling to the floor in soft, messy heaps. I
wished it were loud. I wished I could break my furniture or shatter
something important, but my breakdown was as meek as I was.
I opened my top dresser drawer and snatched the razor from beneath a
tangle of sweatpants. I slammed my bathroom door and shoved my sleeves
up, not stopping to consider Hunter’s lips on mine. My scars were webs of
white and pink—nothing red.
As blood pooled to the surface, I stared at myself in the mirror. The
truth was as jarring as my stinging arm. There was only one thing I hated
more than Scott Henderson, and that was the person staring back at me.

I thought my mom might reconsider in the morning, but she didn’t. I

looked terrible, and Chris made a point of noticing, shooting me a sidelong
glance every few seconds on the way to school. “Are you high?”
I glared out the window instead of acknowledging him. My eyes did
sting a bit, so I wasn’t surprised they were bloodshot.
“Hungover?”
“Drop me off out front.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Uh-oh, trouble in paradise?”
I gave him a scathing look. “I’m not in the mood, Chris.”
He was quiet after that, and I tried not to dwell on the fact that I might
have hurt his feelings.
Instead of stopping at my locker to ditch my coat, I headed straight for
Mrs. Baker’s office. She nodded me into my usual room, and I curled up on
the cot, staring at the blank white wall. My phone vibrated sometime later,
but instead of reaching for it, I closed my eyes.
I woke to Mrs. Baker’s hand on my forehead, and it wasn’t pleasant. I
jerked from her grasp and bolted upright. In the very next moment, my back
was to the wall, and my knees were drawn tight to my chest. She let out a
small yelp, shuffling backward as if I was one of those trick statues people
put on their front porch on Halloween.
“I’m so sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
I shook my head. “No, no, no. It’s okay. I think I was having a bad
dream.” But that was a lie. I hadn’t been dreaming of anything at all.
She nodded but didn’t come any closer. “Are you feeling all right?
You’ve been sleeping quite a while.”
I looked at the clock. Six periods had passed, including lunch, and I
hadn’t even changed positions. “I have really bad cramps.” Again, a lie. I’d
had my period two weeks ago, and during that time, I’d found sanctuary on
the same cot. Her expression was odd as she studied me, and it was possible
she remembered. “I guess I should probably attend something today.”
“You can stay here if you need to.”
I was beginning to feel too big for the room, so I pushed onto my feet,
shooting her a polite smile. “I have a quiz in chemistry.” That part was true.
Besides, my nurse’s office privileges were a tricky thing to maintain, and
while I yearned to lie in the office all day, I never wanted Mrs. Baker to
think I was taking advantage of her kindness.
I headed for the door, but her soft voice stopped me. “Are you sure
you’re okay, Alice?”
I froze. Her face was lined with a deep sadness, and I bit my bottom lip.
I couldn’t bear to look at her, so I stared out the window instead.
It had begun to snow, and I remembered when Hunter walked me home,
and I’d felt stuck in a snow globe. A still world where all that was left were
frozen flakes and him beside me. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the
flakes to stop, but they kept falling, and she kept watching me.
I flipped the question around in my head. I wondered how many times
she’d asked me that, how many times anyone had asked me that. The snow
on the ground was gray instead of white, and it was all wrong. It had been
wrong for years.
I looked down at my hands, fiddling with my fingers as unshed tears
blurred my vision. “I don’t know.” And it might have been the only
somewhat truthful answer I’d given in almost two years.
 Chapter Thirty-Four

W hen the final bell rang, I booked it to my locker, intent on getting the
hell out of school. I cut through the atrium because despite it being the
place where everyone lingered at the end of the day, it was still the quickest.
Scott sat on the rails of the ramp leading to the cafeteria, surrounded by his
usual posse. I kept my head down as I hurried through, but as I was about to
make it to the other side unnoticed, a hand touched mine. I jerked from it,
swinging around, but instead of Scott’s, Hunter’s fingers jumped from my
skin.
He put his hands up. “Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you. Have
you been here all day? I tried texting you. I figured you’d skipped.”
I cursed my stupidity. Hunter’s last period alternated between study hall
and health, and the study hall room was on the other side of the atrium. At
this point, I wasn’t sure who I wanted to run into less—Hunter or Scott.
I tried to smile. “Hey, yeah, sorry. I forgot my phone at home. I wasn’t
feeling great, so Mrs. Baker was nice enough to let me use the cot.”
He stepped closer, his eyes darting to every inch of my face. “Are you
feeling better?”
“Yeah, like a million bucks after sleeping all day. Listen, Chris is here,
and he’s been texting me all day about how I better be on time because he
has somewhere he needs to be.”
Hunter stared at me. He didn’t say anything for several long moments,
his mouth settling into a frown as he studied me. “I thought you forgot your
phone.”
“Well, I mean . . .” I glanced to the right on instinct, and my eyes locked
with Scott’s. His face split into a wide grin as he pushed off from the railing
and started to make his way over to us. “Chris is gonna lose it if I don’t
hurry up, but come to my locker with me.” I grabbed Hunter’s hand and
pulled him with me out of sheer desperation, but it was futile. Borderline
pathetic even.
“Alice!”
Hunter froze. He still held my hand, so I was forced to stop beside him.
Four of Scott’s friends stood behind him, making his confrontation even
more forbidding.
“We missed you in gym this morning,” Scott said.
Unlike me, Hunter didn’t flinch. He looked around the atrium in mock
confusion and then back at Scott. “It seems you made a wrong turn
somewhere. Your throne is over there . . . among the other morons.”
The rest of the atrium craned their necks in interest, and instead of the
normal after-school roar, it became a hushed whisper.
Scott’s demonic grin turned my stomach worse than any glare could.
“So you guys are officially a thing, huh? I mean, it must be pretty serious
for Alice to come to our house for dinner. I think you’re the first human
being Hunter has ever introduced to our parents.” He paused to wink at me.
“They were not impressed, by the way, but I’m sure you already knew
that.”
Hunter rolled his eyes. “Is there a point to any of this?”
Instead of responding, Scott turned his bright smile on me, eyes
gleaming with pure evil. It was as if he’d written a secret script, and to his
absolute elation, Hunter was saying his lines exactly as predicted.
“What do you think, Alice? Is there a point to any of this?” His voice
was too casual, and I knew where it was headed. It was the same way
Margo started out in crowded bathrooms. Her voice rising and rising until
she reached her crescendo.
I stared back at him. I could feel Hunter’s gaze darting between us
before he gave my hand a gentle tug. “Come on,” he said. “I’m not going to
stand around for this stupid shit.” When I looked up at him, he gave me an
encouraging nod and motioned to the double doorway I’d been desperate to
disappear through.
Scott laughed, and it sounded cackling mad as it bounced off the high
ceilings. I felt hypnotized by his grin, but when Hunter gave my hand
another gentle pull, I managed to scramble forward. We made it a good five
feet, but Scott was hot behind us, and that’s when Hunter teetered. He
turned around in a fury, tucking me behind him. “What? What the fuck is
with your obsession with her?”
We stood in plain sight near the double doors, and the room reached
almost perfect silence. They stood chest to chest, their breaths heavy in
anticipation of a fight. I could practically hear the chanting of the
bloodthirsty crowd before it even started. Scott’s demeanor had been
composed, but his body pulsed with the same rage tightening Hunter’s
fingers into fists.
“My obsession?” Scott tipped his head back and laughed. “This gets
better and better.” He looked at me. “I was trying to be a gentleman. Really,
I tried.”
When his gaze snapped back to Hunter, his glare was brutal. Hunter
didn’t move, but his shoulders tensed with the same uncertainty lining his
brow. The crowd shifted closer, and I steadied myself because I knew what
a derailing train looked like, and I knew when it ran me over, I wouldn’t
survive, so what was the point of trying to shield my face? I deserved
annihilation—merciless and grisly.
“Listen, bud, I promised her I wouldn’t say anything, but this has gone
on far too long. As your stepbrother, I really feel like I should be honest, so
I’m just going to go ahead and say it . . .” His voice had grown louder, and
he paused for effect as we became the single most interesting thing that had
ever happened in that atrium. “I fucked your girlfriend.”
Hunter froze. I thought he might combust in a fit of violence. Maybe
charge at Scott. That’s what everyone thought. I saw the curling grins and
shining eyes in the crowd, but Hunter didn’t move an inch, not even to
breathe.
Scott’s gaze returned to me in mocking recollection, eyes glinting with
humor. “Your virginity, correct, Alice?”
Hunter turned a fraction of an inch to me, his face as blank as a sheet of
paper. Despite the crowd of people watching, silent tears of confirmation
streamed down my face. His eyes widened, and his face went from
tormented to flat in an instant. It reminded me of the first time he caught me
staring at him in the hallway.
“Hunter, wait, it’s not . . .” I stepped toward him. I thought he might
surge forward. I thought he might attack Scott, but just like that first time in
the hallway, he turned around and walked away.
 Scott watched me in amusement, and when Hunter disappeared through
the set of double doors, he took a snide step toward me, his voice low
enough that only I could hear him. “Next time you come to my house for
dinner, have some goddamn manners.”
He stepped away from me, his four friends following, but I stood rooted
to the spot. Everyone was staring at me in fascination, and I felt as if they
could somehow see inside me. That they could see the disgustingness
slithering through the pit of my stomach. But Scott didn’t glance up. He had
ruined me for the thousandth time, and as I stood there, lifeless and
expended, he rejoined his friends, laughing as though I was nothing but skin
and bones he could nudge aside.
“I always knew you were a slut,” Suzanne sang. “Who has sex with
stepbrothers? That’s so gross.”
Scott’s jaw hardened, but he still didn’t glance at me. My eyes met
Margo’s instead, and there was a flicker of something. Maybe pity, maybe
interest, maybe a mutual memory, but she tugged her gaze away before
running her fingers through Scott’s buzzed hair and kissing him on the
mouth. I watched them exchange saliva, my head tilted to one side. It was
like watching boring performance art; everyone said it was beautiful, but I
felt as if I’d missed the point somewhere.
“Is she going to keep standing there?” a snotty voice said. Probably
Erica.
I scanned the crowd but stilled on pink hair. Melody leaned against the
entrance. She watched me with folded arms and raised eyebrows. Her
fishnet stockings were red today, and the last time she’d worn them, Scott
had asked her if she’d had a long night at the strip club. And despite her
standing on the fringes and me standing in the middle, I thought that meant
something.
Brian was there, and I blinked at him walking toward me. He shoved his
hands in his pockets and glanced around as though he hated my guts for
making him do this. “Come on, Alice.”
I stared at him.
“Come on, let’s go. I’ll come with you.” His voice was so quiet the
atrium grew silent again, inching forward, desperate to hear the words we
exchanged.
He reached for my arm, and I tugged it back. “Don’t touch me.” I
managed to start walking. Brian followed, his head bent in embarrassment,
and though Scott hadn’t spared a glance in my direction since leaving me in
the middle of the atrium, his eyes dug into my back, the feeling as familiar
as the clothes on my skin.
Brian and I didn’t say anything until we reached the end of the hallway,
but I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. Brian Cullen sure as hell wasn’t
my knight in shining armor. “I don’t need your help.”
His stride stayed steady beside me. “Okay.”
I stopped at my locker, rolling my eyes as he stood rigid next to me, his
hands still wedged in his front pockets. His practiced innocence was almost
as infuriating as Scott’s display. I pulled out my coat and slammed my
locker shut. I walked away, but he jogged a few steps to keep up with me.
“I can drive you home,” he said.
I spun around. “Why are you even here?”
He ran a hand through his hair, glancing away and back. He huffed out a
sigh. “We used to be friends. I mean, before everything, we were always
friends.”
“So?”
“Listen, I’m sorry, okay?”
“What are you even apologizing for? Are you sorry you talk shit about
me at your lunch table? Are you sorry you stand around while Scott acts
like a total dick? Are you sorry you helped beat the shit out of Hunter for no
reason? Have you apologized to him? Or is it your apology to me that’s
supposed to help you sleep at night?”
He scoffed, eyes hardening. “So you befriend one loser and suddenly
you have a moral compass?”
I walked away, and this time, he didn’t follow. When I reached the side
door, his voice was quiet behind me, the words laced with regret even as
they left his mouth. “You act like you’re so high and mighty, Alice, but I’m
not the one who carried on a relationship with someone, all while failing to
mention I slept with his brother.”
I stiffened, one hand on the door as I stared into his eyes. “Go to hell,
Brian.”
 Chapter Thirty-Five

A tstarted
first, I tried to text Hunter. Then I tried to call, and when his phone
going straight to voicemail, I stopped. Turned out, Hunter
wasn’t the only one getting messages. I received notifications all weekend.
But they weren’t shitty apologies—no, not for me. It seemed the girls in my
class felt the need to inform me what a slut I was, just in case I managed to
forget.
The boys were even worse. Some said hey, while others requested
various favors. One boy asked me if I’d let him put his dick in me if one of
his parents somehow married into Scott’s family. I tried to convince myself
the unoriginality was the most offensive part, but that wasn’t true. The
words cut me sharper than any razor, and instead of the calm relief that
followed cutting, I felt nothing but stinging hurt. I should have turned my
phone off and deleted all my social media, but I didn’t. I huddled beneath
my blankets and read each word as if it was scripture.

I t didn ’ t stop there either . On Monday morning, I made my way to my

locker, but I stopped two feet in front of it, blinking back tears as people
weaved past me. Someone had spray-painted four silver letters, S-L-U-T,
the edges curling and feminine. My locker-neighbor sidled up beside me.
She threw a dirty look in my direction as if I’d painted the letters myself
and had just taken a step back to admire my handiwork.
 The awful word followed me, drifting behind me like a ghost. Every
time I turned around, the voices dispersed, and my head spun, wondering if
I’d imagined the dirty looks and cruel whispers or if they were really there.
I walked past Hunter’s locker on my way to homeroom, hoping to catch
sight of him. I didn’t know why, maybe for my own self-destructiveness.
But I froze. My stomach lurched forward, because his locker was worse
than mine—so much worse. The tears surged to the surface again, except
this time, I couldn’t blink them back. People watched me beneath hushed
murmurs and snickers, and I could feel their entertainment as I charged
toward his locker, my heart pounding.
The same picture was taped to Hunter’s locker over and over and over.
They covered every inch of it. There had to be at least fifty, and I grasped
for them, ripping them down in desperate handfuls as I tried to choke down
air in the process.
“Leave it,” a clear voice said from behind me, and I spun around.
Hunter’s face was blank as he stared past me at his locker.
My face burned as he inspected it, his head tilted to one side in
narrowed interest. I’d tried burying the picture two years ago. I’d even
reported it to Instagram, and it had disappeared for a while, but there it was
again, mocking me. Scott was sitting on the black leather couch in his
basement with me on his lap. My dress was short and black, and it had
ridden up to the tops of my thighs. He was grinning, his arms wrapped
around me, and instead of looking at the camera, both my eyes were closed
as I pressed my lips to his cheek.
Hunter stepped forward as though I wasn’t standing there. He bent his
head to put in his locker combination and swung it open, lazy as ever.
“Hunter.” My half whisper was weaker than my attempts not to cry.
He unzipped his backpack, ignoring me.
“Hunter, please.”
He straightened, and the muscles of his jaw throbbed alongside his
temple. “What do you want, Alice?”
I stiffened, staring at him, because even though I knew he was furious,
the hatred was still gut-wrenching. I felt a tear slip free. “Can I please take
them down?”
His gaze swept over my face, catching on the tear, and I thought there
might have been a flicker of sympathy. But when he looked back at his
locker, he shrugged. His gaze darkened as he closed it. “Nah. I like it. You
look hot.”
The words were an electric jolt, but I still couldn’t bring myself to step
away from him. “It’s really complicated.”
He swung his backpack over his shoulder and pinned me with a scowl
usually reserved for everyone else.
“It didn’t have to be complicated.” He pointed at me on Scott’s lap.
“That’s the sort of thing I meant when I asked if you guys had a history. You
could have told me, but you didn’t. You think I’m pissed because you slept
with him or sat on his lap at a party, but I’m not. I’m pissed because I
straight-up fucking asked you. I expect him to lie and twist things, but I
never expected it from you.”
I stepped closer to him, but it was like stepping closer to a rattlesnake
after it promised to bite you. The muscles in my legs burned with pleas to
back up, but I was desperate. “I . . . I’ll tell you the truth.” I was still trying
to sort out the truth, but I’d try. For Hunter, I would. I had to.
Instead of listening, he laughed. It was cruel and cutting, and I faltered
under his glare. “You’re not getting it, Alice. I don’t give a fuck now.”

T he dirty looks didn’t subside. I entered the gymnasium at the last

minute, delaying the inevitable as best I could. Hunter stood against the
opposite wall, and my stomach heaved. I was afraid I might start retching,
but instead of stomach acid, my heart would flop onto the gymnasium floor,
still beating. His gaze didn’t bother to meet mine, but I knew he knew I was
there. I could see it in his tight shoulders and grim jawline.
I was one of the few people who took a spot on the attendance line as
everyone else socialized in small groups around the gym.
When Mr. Downs entered, Hunter dragged himself over to the
attendance line with everyone else, and I risked a peek in his direction. He
slouched in place, staring straight ahead in boredom as if there was nothing
within a few hundred miles that could hold his interest. Mr. Downs went
down the line, pausing to look at his clipboard as he still tried to memorize
our names after five months.
 He instructed us to start with a game of knock-out, and I was careful to
ensure I was always a ten-foot distance from both Scott and Hunter. Hunter
maintained the distance, but like usual, Scott violated every boundary I tried
to put in place.
“It’s a little colder than usual in here today, huh?” He dribbled a ball
between his legs, grinning at me.
I stepped forward in line, not even sparing him a glance. Everyone was
monitoring us, and I didn’t intend to give them even more to talk about.
He stepped closer to me. “Aw, come on. Don’t be mad, love. You know
I can’t bear the silent treatment.”
The line inched forward, and when I still didn’t respond, his eyes
flashed with impatience before he threaded his fingers through my ponytail.
You’d think I’d wrench my head from his grasp, not caring if he ripped out
my strands from the roots, but with his hands on me, I couldn’t move. His
fingers fluttered from my hair to my shoulders, and he drew me close as he
pressed his head to mine. I could feel his beating heart against my shoulder,
and I wanted to stab it from his chest as his voice fell low and husky in my
ear. “You drive me crazy, Alice.”
I swallowed, planning an elbow to his ribs, but my muscles didn’t
follow my numerous commands. I stood frozen and useless. “Is there a
reason you’re touching me?” I gritted out. I tried to twist my neck to glare
at him, but any movement would bring his lips to my cheek.
He squeezed me tighter, then brushed a strand of hair out of my face,
the gesture so soft that it was worse than if he’d yanked my hair out. “Don’t
act like you don’t love it.”
And then he let go. He released me as easily as he’d grabbed me. I tried
to get my bearings, blinking back hot tears as I shuffled forward.
Scott dribbled the ball toward the basket and slapped Trey’s hand when
it soared through the net. My gaze shifted to Hunter. He was staring back at
me as if trying to memorize every detail, and I froze, realizing the entire
gymnasium had witnessed Scott’s and my embrace. And while I had hated
every disgusting second of it, I hadn’t even tried to move away. Hunter was
about six people behind me, and I thought there had been a flicker of
sympathy before, but there was nothing left in his gaze now but smoldering
hatred.
“It’s your turn, slut.”
 I jerked my head back to the front. One of the girls stood in front of me,
cradling the basketball with an outstretched arm as if disgusted we even had
to share it. She was the same girl who always huffed and rolled her eyes
while I waited to change inside a bathroom stall. She shoved it toward me
again, and I took it in a daze. I hesitated before I took my miserable shot.
The guy behind me knocked me out after a few tries, and I retreated to the
loser side, careful to stand as far from the blond girl as I could.
Hunter appeared to be trying for once, though you couldn’t tell the
difference in his demeanor. He made his shots with ease on the first try, then
tossed the ball to the next person in line as if his success was all some
effortless accident. It reminded me of the bowling alley, and my throat
bobbed, thinking of his lips pressed against mine.
“I guess I get it. I mean, he is hot.” It was the same girl who’d called me
a slut. She turned her head in my direction after Hunter took another shot. I
thought her name was Stacy, but I wasn’t sure. I pretended I’d suddenly
gone deaf as her three friends glanced in my direction.
“He’s not as hot as Scott.”
“I guess it depends what you’re into,” the one closest to me mused,
watching Hunter as he cycled to the back of the line.
“I don’t really blame her . . . if I could have sex with Scott Henderson
and someone else, I probably would too.”
“Well, it’s the brother thing that’s so weird.”
Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, as unrelenting as the not-so-
whispers.
“But they’re not actually related.”
“Still . . .”
“Are you saying you’d have sex with two people at once?”
“Well, of course I wouldn’t, but then again, I’m not a whore.”
Hunter scooted forward in line, and though I’d promised myself I
wouldn’t cry for the hundredth time that day, my vision grew blurry, and I
prayed he couldn’t hear them.
“Can you even imagine carrying saliva between two brothers? It’s so
incestuous it makes me want to vomit.”
“Again, they aren’t related . . .”
“They live together, though.”
“So?”
 “So, that means she was literally having sex with one of them while the
other one was right there and vice versa.”
“Eugh. She’s vile.”
Hunter was still standing in line, but the back of his neck was bright red
as he gripped the basketball as if he was trying to deflate it with his bare
hands. He spun around without any warning, and I almost cowered from his
murderous glare, but for the first time that morning, he wasn’t scowling at
me. “Do you guys mind?”
His harsh voice carried across the gymnasium, and I ached with
embarrassment. The group of girls stilled beneath his lethal gaze, staring at
him with wide eyes, but blond Stacy was braver than the others. “Aw, are
you still in love with her even though she used to bone your brother?”
By now, everyone had been briefed on the scene in the atrium and at
Hunter’s locker, and how both had ended with him storming away from me.
It also wasn’t exactly a secret that Scott and Hunter loathed each other, a
fact that made the drama all that more interesting.
Hunter’s eyes cut to mine. His forehead furrowed in confusion before
his gaze snapped back to theirs. “I couldn’t give a shit. I just can’t
concentrate on my free throws with all your mindless racket.”
 Chapter Thirty-Six

I avoided my room after school. My wrists were already stinging, and I

didn’t have any more figurines to paint. I was lying on the couch, tuning
in and out of Teen Mom, when there was a knock. I never answered the
door, but I scrambled across the living room before Chris could even
deliberate if he had heard something from his bedroom.
I swung the door open, almost choking on my own heartbeat, but I
wasn’t met by Hunter standing on the other side of it. Hudson stared back at
me, and he looked as disappointed as I felt.
I glanced at the street and back at him as though expecting someone else
to pop out from behind our front bushes. “Um. Hi?”
He didn’t bother with a greeting. “Got a minute?”
I hesitated. “Uh, sure.” I opened the door wider. “You want to come in?”
He peeked past me. “Not particularly.”
He turned around and bounded down the three front steps as if I was
expected to follow. I gritted my teeth but still grabbed my coat, rolling my
eyes as I closed the storm door behind me.
Unlike Hunter, he wore a brown corduroy coat, but his black jeans were
the same. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, then stared at me as if he’d
already lost all his patience. “What happened?”
I swallowed. “What do you mean?”
His gaze hardened. “Stupidity doesn’t suit you, Alice.”
“You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
He shrugged, not caring either way. “What happened?”
I looked away from him. “Why don’t you go ask Hunter?”
He took a step closer. “Because I’m asking you.”
 I had no idea how much he knew, but even if I did, it wouldn’t have
mattered. “We broke up.” It felt weird to say it out loud. We’d never
specified we were together, but we were.
His eyes narrowed, and the longer he studied my face, the more irritated
he became. “So that’s just it then?”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I guess.”
And then he was even closer, breathing down on me with far too much
indignation. “I thought you were different, Alice.”
I took a half step back. “You don’t even like me!”
Instead of denying it, he squinted at me. “What does that have to do
with anything?”
I threw my hands up. “Because why do you even care?”
He stared at me as though maybe stupidity did suit me after all.
“Because unlike you, I care about him. And unlike you—”
The storm door closed with a slam, and Chris stood on the front step in
his sweatpants and socks, eyeing us. “Hi there. Couldn’t help but overhear.”
His voice was light as he leaned against the railing. He wasn’t wearing a
coat, and he folded his arms across his gray T-shirt.
Hudson froze, staring at Chris, and out of nowhere, his cheeks went
pink.
Chris smiled. “I hope you’re not being a dickhead to my sister.”
“It’s fine, Chris,” I mumbled.
Hudson forced the words out. “We were having a conversation.”
Chris gestured forward with a small bow. “Well, carry on then.” But he
remained where he was, watching us.
Hudson turned back to me. “I . . . um . . . I should go.”
“Aw,” Chris said. “Don’t go. Whatever will we do without your lovely
company? I don’t know about you, Alice, but I know I won’t be the same
without this guy. It’s almost too much to bear, really.”
Hudson went still. His eyes widened as he stared at Chris, but then he
blinked several times as though to steady himself. He opened his mouth but
closed it and walked away instead.
I watched him go, and when I turned back to Chris, he was grinning.
“Okay,” he said, “on a scale of one to father-with-a-shotgun, how badass
was that?”
I frowned.
 “I totally rattled him! Did you see his face? I scared the shit out of
him!”
My eyes narrowed as I watched Hudson. “Yeah, I don’t think you
rattled him in the way you think you did,” I said, shuffling up the steps.
Chris’s face fell as I shoved my coat into the front closet. “What’s that
supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” I muttered.
I started making my way upstairs.
“Who even was that? What happened with you and Hunter?”
I kept going.
“Alice!”
“Nothing,” I called back, slamming my bedroom door shut behind me.

M y locker had a fresh coat of paint the next day, but the following
morning, W-H-O-R-E glittered back at me. It was embarrassing enough, but
more embarrassing that the janitor would be called to paint over the cruelty
for the second time in three days.
When I slipped out of second period, I passed Hunter’s locker to ensure
there weren’t any new pictures, breathing a sigh of relief because his locker
remained plain steel blue. I’d returned to his locker after gym two mornings
prior, intending to take the rest of the pictures down, but they were already
gone. Maybe it was the same janitor. Maybe it was a teacher sniffing out
high school brutality. I didn’t know who it was, but my skin prickled with
heat because in those pictures, I was a slut, and I hated that someone had
the evidence.
I made my way to the cafeteria and scanned the room for an empty
table. I’d expected Hunter to abandon the cafeteria altogether, settling
instead on chain-smoking cigarettes outside, but he was still there, hunched
over in his corner. I eyed a table in the opposite corner, so far on the
outskirts of popularity it was as abandoned as Hunter’s. I focused straight
ahead as I passed my old table. Scott lounged in the middle, watching me
with a twisted grin.
“There goes the slut,” Suzanne said, her voice drifting from the table.
Margo was seated next to her, passive and amused, while Casey’s careful
gaze was focused elsewhere. There were others there too, and they turned
around in entertainment. I’d become everyone’s favorite pastime.
“How about a blowjob, Alice? I hate seeing your mouth wasted on the
school psycho.” The voice was low and criminal, edged with sleaziness. He
hovered on the fringes of Scott’s usual crew. He had dark hair that was
slicked back and a sharp nose. Unlike the rest of the table, he leaned back in
his chair as if he was trying too hard to perfect the laid-back position. His
eyes darted to Scott’s friends, and he smiled, pleased with himself when
everyone cracked up with laughter.
Except for Scott. He didn’t laugh, and for some reason, that infuriated
me more than anything else. The words slammed into me, and my pulse
took off at a violent pace, rattling my brain until I blinked stars. Why wasn’t
he laughing? His eyebrows drew together, and the corner of his lips dipped
into a frown, but that wasn’t even the worst part. He eyed me with a certain
softness, almost as though he was contemplating defending me.
I clenched my fists at my sides. Normally I felt terror when he turned
his attention on me, but this was different. “Why are you looking at me like
that?”
Scott’s eyes widened in surprise, and just like that, the softness was
gone. “You better keep walking, love.”
I didn’t move.
Everyone else had grown silent, and he cocked his head, watching me
with amusement. “Is there something you want to say?”
I didn’t know if it was the rage still coursing through me or if it was a
gradual slip into insanity. “You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

I ate my lunch in silence, concentrating on the table in front of me. I opted

to follow Hunter’s lead and work on my homework. I heard the clicking of
heels, louder and louder, and I smelled her expensive perfume before she
even sat down. I’d been with her when she bought it at Macy’s, both of us
spritzing our wrists at the mirrored counter. Margo never ventured
anywhere without her posse, and I glanced around, preparing for an
ambush, but she was alone.
 She dropped into the seat across from me. “You and I need to have a
little chat.”
I sighed, waiting for her to continue.
“Did you like our gifts?”
I rolled my eyes, because of course Margo was behind the letters on my
locker. “Loved them. Very creative. Thanks for that. I’m guessing Hunter’s
locker was you too?”
It made sense. If anyone had that picture, it was Margo. After all, she
was the one who had taken it, but her eyes narrowed. “Why the hell would I
hang up a shit-ton of photos of you with my boyfriend?”
I shrugged. Maybe she had a point, but it didn’t really matter. I opened
my math textbook and thumbed to the right page. I hoped she would drift
away, but she didn’t move.
“Stay away from Scott,” she said.
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious. I see the way you look at him.”
I stared at her in disbelief. Margo was the only person in the entire
school who could truly make sense of my hatred. Beyond Hunter even. And
I knew we weren’t friends anymore, but her heartlessness cut the inside of
me worse than Hunter’s rejection. In that moment, I thought I might hit her.
Maybe shove her to the floor, and then, for once, I’d be smirking down at
her. But I did one better.
My lips curled into a cruel smile as I leaned closer, intent on injuring
her no matter the cost. “He’ll never like you like he likes me.”
Her eyes widened as she gazed back at me.
“It’s pathetic to watch, you know. Making out with him in the cafeteria,
clinging onto him at parties, begging him to hang out with you and invite
you to things. Every time you look away, who do you think he seeks out?
And it’s because you’re way too desperate. Do you want to know how you
get him to look at you like he looks at me?”
Her breath grew heavier. For once, she didn’t interject.
I held her gaze, unrelenting. “Be more unwilling.”
Her inhale was sharp, and then her eyes narrowed. “You’re such a lying
cunt.”
I ignored her, sliding my finger to the first problem as I copied it into
my notebook. Not one to be outdone, she slammed my book closed. I
yanked my hand out with a hiss of pain, but she wasn’t fazed.
 “Do you remember back in ninth grade when you slept over, and we
tried smoking weed for the first time on my balcony?” she asked.
Of course I remembered that night. It had to have been April, and the air
was still nipping cold, but we sat there anyway, wrapped in blankets with
our legs dangling over the edge. We’d been drinking too. We snuck into her
parents’ liquor cabinet, then squatted in the dark as we rifled through
clinking bottles. I remembered unscrewing the caps so we could sniff the
inside, but it only made us sputter and cough. We stole an entire amber-
colored bottle, and no one ever even noticed.
“It was right after you turned all emo,” she went on, “and you launched
into some bullshit about how you’d thought about killing yourself. We were
so shit-faced you probably thought I didn’t remember, but I do.”
I stared at her, and she lifted one shoulder, looking away from me, but
when her gaze returned, her eyes were hot with hatred. “Sometimes I wish I
would have told you to just go ahead and do it.”
 Chapter Thirty-Seven

I left after that. I walked through the middle of the cafeteria and past
Hunter’s table, but he didn’t glance up. The walk home was mindless and
mind-racing at the same time. I felt nothing and everything all at once.
The house was quiet, and I headed straight for my bedroom. I didn’t
bother to take off my coat and shoes until I locked the door behind me.
It wasn’t because Hunter broke up with me, and it wasn’t because
Margo was a total bitch. Chris said I was dramatic, but I’d been reasonable.
For two years, I’d been fucking reasonable.
I wrenched open my top dresser drawer, then dug through it until my
fingers stilled on sharp metal. The blade was old, and I inspected it before
rifling through my medicine cabinet in search of another. Sure, maybe I was
vile, but I wasn’t unsanitary. I knocked over boxes and bottles, and a
container of eye shadow fell into the sink. It cracked into tiny pieces of
blue.
I stared at it. I remembered begging my mom to buy it for me when we
stopped at Walgreens. I’d sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor with
Margo and Casey as we spread the blue powder over our eyelids, perfectly
complementing our uneven eyeliner and burned curls. I still had a photo
tacked to my wall of the three of us grinning at the camera. Chris had told
us we looked like ladies of the night, and at the time, we were thrilled,
thinking we’d been compared to the kind of regular adult women who
frequented fancy restaurants and upscale bars.
I’m not sure what it was about those stupid memories, but I started
crying, and once I started, I couldn’t stop. The tears dripped down my face,
soaking my cheeks and neck.
 I found something sharper, and as I pushed up my sleeves, I admired the
mangle of lines. I traced the one I’d inflicted the night prior with the tip of
my finger, the line still red and angry. I carved a line to match, except this
time, I pressed harder. Usually I cut without emotion, but rage coursed
through me with urgency. Blood welled to the surface, and I slid down the
wall. I sighed, leaning my head back and letting my eyes flutter closed as
everything poured out.

I opened my eyes some time later, jerking forward. “Oh, fuck . . .

motherfuck—”
I reached for the closest towel and hissed as I applied pressure, but the
blood soaked through too quickly. There was way too much, and it was way
too dark, and as I started to stand, I teetered to one side, feeling light-
headed.
I stabilized myself against the sink with both hands, but the towel
dropped to the floor. Everything was too slippery, and the corners of my
vision went black. And that’s the exact moment I panicked. Thick tears
mixed with snot, and when I glanced up at my reflection, I froze, staring at
the person staring back at me. Her eyes were a draining brown and her face
was cadaver white, and I blinked at her, unsure if the words were out loud
or in my head. “Holy shit. You did it. You’re actually dying.”
I flew from the bathroom. My backpack was in the middle of the floor,
and I yanked at the zippers, blinking through blurry tears. My phone wasn’t
in any of the compartments, and sobs ripped from my throat. I crawled for
my coat, then rummaged through the pockets, but still nothing. I curled into
the fetal position, my sobs too debilitating for me to do anything other than
lie there as I bled out onto my bedroom carpet.
I felt the same way I had during the few hangovers I’d experienced:
utter regret mixed with the promise I wouldn’t drink that much or even
attend a party ever again. Chris told me life restarted after a bad hangover,
and maybe this was similar. I wasn’t vomiting, but I still hated myself, and I
still clung to promises that all the wrong I’d done to myself, well, I’d never
do it again.
 My thoughts drifted to my life before, reveling in the memories. I
thought of Chris on a bright stage, beaming out at a standing audience right
before he bowed. As he straightened, his eyes always scanned the rows,
searching for someone in particular. And when they stilled on me beaming
back, he always winked.
I thought of my mom, sitting at our kitchen table, her colorful reading
glasses perched on her nose as she threaded a piece of string through a
painted Luke Skywalker. I pictured her stepping back from our Christmas
tree, admiring my artwork upright and center.
I thought of Hunter’s gaze, intent on mine as the sun glowed orange
between us.
And I thought of the morning announcements a few weeks ago, Scott
grinning as he held up his signed Penn State papers.
And then my thoughts drifted forward, imagining life after. Scott would
go to college and hold hands with girls and laugh at parties, and I’d be a
black-and-white obituary photograph. The same girls would whisper as
Hunter walked past them in gym class. Can you believe she killed herself?
And he’d have to stand there and take his free throws with nothing but
memories of my lips against his.
He’d kiss someone else eventually, and right before his lips met hers,
he’d whisper that the last girl he kissed ended up killing herself. Maybe
he’d cry. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, I was sure he’d be mad at me,
because even though the things everyone said about me were true, we’d had
a deal, hadn’t we? Weren’t we specifically trying not to kill ourselves?
Chris would definitely cry, and I sobbed harder thinking about it. I’d
wreck my mom. I wouldn’t just hurt her; I’d destroy her. She’d stop going
to work and she’d live at my grave, talking to me as though I was still there.
She’d tell me all the things I could’ve been and all the things I could’ve
done. And I’d watch her with sadness, because how could I have been
anything when I couldn’t even manage decency?
And then, there’d be my funeral. My dad would fly in from California,
and he’d sit in the front row with Chris and my mom, staring forward in a
daze because he didn’t even know me. He didn’t know I’d stopped hanging
out with friends. He didn’t know I’d started lying in bed for hours at a time,
and he didn’t know Chris had had to sneak into my room and yank my
blinds open. I must have been so exhausting for Chris, but I could hear his
teasing voice as though he was standing right in front of me. Stop being so
dismal, Alice.
The pews in the church would be full, and people would have to stand
in back because the town was small and I was young. Everyone would be
there—Hunter and Melody and Hudson and Kohen and Max and Brian and
Margo and Casey and Mrs. Baker. Suzanne would post a photo about how
we were such good friends, and as everyone took their seats, the church
doors would open with a bang. Scott Henderson would slink into my
funeral, and I wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it because I’d be
dead.
There was a shirt above my head, and I scrambled forward, grabbed it,
and tied it around my wrist with clumsy movements. I pressed into the
fabric, hard enough to make myself wince, and then I pressed harder,
promising not to let go. It grew red, but the flow was getting slower, and I
wrapped another shirt around it, tying it tight and pressing into it.
Everyone would read my obituary, and it’d list who I was related to and
my mediocrity at Franklin High, but it wouldn’t say why I did it. People
would exchange confused glances and hushed guesses, but they’d get it
wrong, wrong, wrong, a thousand times wrong.
I wanted Scott Henderson’s face plastered next to me on that obituary
page. Maybe that picture of the two of us.
I had let the truth get twisted. I’d let rumors and doubts and self-hatred
cloud my head, but there had been two of us there that night, and I
remembered every second of what happened. I was dying because I’d let
Scott Henderson take all of me. Not just once, two years ago, but over and
over. Every day since. The evidence was right there in front of me, dozens
of straight lines on my arms like the bruises on Hunter’s face. The razor
cutting across again and again and again, never relenting. I wanted blood,
but for the first time, I didn’t want mine.
 Chapter Thirty-Eight

I probably needed stitches, but the blood slowed eventually. I wrapped my

wrist tight with white bandages and tape, and when I went to sleep that
night, I set my alarm for every hour. I suppose it didn’t matter, because if
the bleeding restarted and I ended up dead, I wouldn’t wake to hear it, but
every time I did jolt awake, I liked knowing I was still alive. I needed to
still be alive because if I left this earth, Scott Henderson was coming with
me.
The next morning, Chris dropped me off in front of school again, and
this time, it wasn’t to avoid Hunter.
“Have a good day,” Chris said, already checking the rearview mirror.
I leaned over as I held the door open. I smiled at him. “You too, Chris.”
He blinked at me, staring out the window even after I closed the door.
As expected, Scott was leaning against the front railing, surrounded by
six or so friends as everyone else bustled past them. I joined the crowd, and
like usual, his eyes found mine. His friends talked and joked, but he ignored
them, watching me instead.
I held up my middle finger and stared straight back at him as I shifted
my backpack on my shoulder. His mouth spread into a smirk, his eyes
darkening, and when I was a few feet from him, still holding my middle
finger over my head, he called out to me. “You better watch it, Matthews.”
I knew how he operated by now. I knew I was only riling him up, but I
still smiled back. “Go fuck yourself.”
I leaned back in homeroom , listening to the morning announcements
with disinterest.
Suzanne sat in front of her normal background as she shifted a stack of
papers. “There’s a change of schedule today. We have a morning assembly
at ten o’clock. Everyone is instructed to head to the auditorium directly
following third period. Please stick with your third-period class, as you’ll be
seated accordingly.” She glanced at something off-screen. “This assembly’s
topic is bullying.”
I had my feet propped up on the chair in front of me, but they slammed
to the floor as I burst out laughing. It flowed out of me, becoming more
hysterical by the second until the entire room was staring at me. I looked at
the kid next to me. His name was Timmy Gonzalez, and he was as quiet as
they came. “Can you believe her?”
Timmy stared back at me as if petrified I might drag him into my
insanity. His round eyes flicked to my hands placed on my desk. White
bandaging poked out from beneath my long-sleeved shirt, and his gaze
darted between my wrist and my face multiple times as I watched him with
raised eyebrows.
“Alice!”
I rolled my eyes to our homeroom teacher standing at the front of the
room. “Yes?”
“Why don’t you excuse yourself and go get a drink of water.”
I folded my arms. “I’m not thirsty.”
“Well, be quiet then. You’re being extremely inappropriate.”
I tilted my head, putting my feet on the chair in front of me again. “Did
you know she was part of the upstanding little crew who spray-painted slut
on my locker Monday and whore yesterday? I think that’s far more
inappropriate than I’m being.”
“Snitch,” someone coughed, and I whipped around in my seat.
“Why don’t you come say that to my face, Bradley.”
He was seated in the back corner, and he startled under my glare. He
glanced between me and Mrs. Morton, his face already settled into an
apology.
“Alice!”
My gaze snapped back to her. “What? The only thing Bradley is good
for is being a huge dickwad, and you know it as well as I do.”
 Her face scrunched tight as a slow pink sprawled across her fair skin.
But it wasn’t embarrassment. I was pissing her off.
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll get a drink of water.” I dragged myself from my seat
but paused to glance at Timmy. “Let me know what else I miss from our
fearless leader.”
He stared at the desk in front of him, like maybe I’d go away if he
concentrated hard enough. And though he didn’t say a word, the side of his
mouth twitched before I stalked out.

I grumbled my way into the assembly after third period. My history class
filled a few rows in the middle of the left section. Since freshman year, I’d
only stepped foot in the theater during our several pointless assemblies, and
every time, it left me breathless. Our auditorium was old wood and intricate
colors, the ceiling painted like the Sistine chapel. The chairs were deep red,
not quite comfortable but too vintage to consider swapping out. The theater
had an additional front entrance, and I’d heard it existed for years before
they built the high school beside it. When you stood on stage, it felt as if
you were on Broadway instead of in a high school auditorium, and in all my
pathetic existence, that had been, by far, my favorite feeling in the world.
Except for maybe when Hunter kissed me.
I scanned the crowd for Scott, but I didn’t see his buzzed head. I spotted
Hunter down in front, on the left side as well. His class was filing into their
seats, and my heart rate sped off as I watched him saunter along, following
the person in front of him. He managed an aisle seat out of sheer luck, and
when he slumped into it, he pulled his hood up and leaned back as though
he planned to sleep his way through the presentation.
His teacher stood in front, and she said something in his direction. He
didn’t move, and she said it again, motioning at her own head. He pushed
his hood back, and she gave him a double thumbs-up and matching bright
smile. I bit the corner of my lip. Hunter was either rolling his eyes or
grimacing, and I wished I could see which.
The lights dimmed, and I settled back into my chair, positioning myself
so I had a view of the back of Hunter’s head. Mrs. Rosin’s heels clicked
onto the stage and paused at the podium. “Good morning.”
 There was a rumble of return greetings. Mostly teachers.
“I am very pleased to announce that we have a special guest with us this
morning. Mr. Robert Lawson.” There were a few random claps, and she
smiled in acknowledgment before bending her head to read straight from a
paper. “Mr. Lawson is a social worker by trade with an impressive work
history. He has worked in schools, mental health facilities, and even
prisons. His primary passion lies in anti-bullying campaigns, and four years
ago, Mr. Lawson started his own nonprofit organization, Words Hurt.
Words Hurt envisions a world without bullying. A world where every
student can feel comfortable and safe at school.”
Mrs. Rosin took a breath. “Earlier this week, one of our own
experienced a vicious act of bullying.” Hunter lifted his head. “A student’s
locker was defaced, and we’re here today to remind each other that we have
a strict no-tolerance policy at Franklin High.”
I snorted, the noise earning me several dirty looks despite my being the
poor bully victim she referenced.
“Please put your hands together to welcome Mr. Lawson.”
The round of applause was pitiful, but he still bounded on stage with
enough energy for a metal concert. “How are we doing on this magnificent
Thursday morning, Franklin High?”
“For the love of god,” I muttered, settling farther into my chair. Sure,
the school might have had the right idea, but if anyone was going to
convince Scott Henderson to stop breaking noses and convert from
Satanism, it wasn’t this guy.
“Thank you so much for that dazzling introduction, Mrs. Rosin. Like
Mrs. Rosin said, my name is Robert Lawson, but you can call me Rob. A
few years ago, I started Words Hurt after seeing the numerous negative
effects bullying has on our youth and teenage populations.”
He strode across the stage, comfortable beneath the bright lights and
peering faces. “I was working in an inpatient psychiatric facility at the time,
and I saw the detrimental and sometimes life-taking effects of bullying
firsthand.”
He waved a hand at a PowerPoint slide that lit up behind him. “Slightly
over fourteen percent of students in high school consider suicide. Seven
percent act on it. Take a moment to think about that. Think about how many
people are in this room right now.”
 There was a period of silence, accompanied by shifting. Hunter’s head
lolled to one side, his long legs stretched into the aisle. I was pretty sure he
was dozing at this point.
“This is where it really gets scary. Victims of bullying are two to nine
times more likely to consider suicide than students who aren’t bullied.” He
paused, appealing to the crowd. “Two to nine times.” He held up a finger as
he moved across the stage again. “Another study found at least half of
suicides among young people are related to bullying. And here’s the real
kicker—it’s all completely preventable.”
I turned to the girl next to me. “Am I in The Twilight Zone?”
She scrunched her nose.
“Like, is this all really happening right now?”
She faced the front with a hushed whisper. “Shhh.”
I looked down at the white bandaging wrapped tight around my wrist
and pressed one finger to it. I let go with a sharp inhale, because it hurt like
hell.
“So if I could please have four volunteers . . .”
My hand shot into the air. I didn’t even know what I was volunteering
for, and I’d never volunteered for anything in my life, but as his gaze drifted
over me, I waved my hand, sitting up even straighter.
“Okay, yes,” he said. “Someone’s enthusiastic. That’s what I love to see.
You, in the blue. Now I need three others. Come on, don’t be shy.”
I launched forward and shuffled out of my row, grinning to myself as I
made my way down the aisle. Maybe it was all an extension of my mental
breakdown. Maybe I was still right in the thick of it. Or maybe I’d lost so
much blood my brain had suffered permanent injury. Either way, I kept
walking. I passed Hunter in his aisle seat, and at first, he glanced up in
disinterest, but then he did a double-take, his entire body going rigid. I
circled around front, climbed the five steps, and then I was on stage,
shielding my eyes with one hand from the familiar bright lights as I met
Rob in the middle.
He was still coaxing out three other volunteers, and I stood there like an
idiot, staring out at the crowd staring back at me. There were X’s taped to
the floor, similar to the ones I’d followed when I performed in front of the
entire school as JoJo. I stood near one now, and I stepped toward it. I
looked out at the audience again, the same sea of faces that used to energize
me. My mom and I had sat a few rows back from where Hunter sat now
when Chris first stunned the audience with his rendition of Mulan.
I reached for the microphone. “Can I say something?”
Rob pulled it back on instinct, his eyebrows furrowing.
Mrs. Rosin had been seated in the first row, and she clicked over to the
bottom of the stage. She pinned me with her famous no-nonsense look, all
warning eyebrows and hands on her hips. “Alice, do you need to return to
your seat? This is not the time nor the place for a scene. Please follow Mr.
Lawson’s instructions.”
I squinted at her. “Isn’t this whole thing because someone painted the
word slut on my locker?”
And that’s what did it. Rob shifted forward, his kind face lined with
compassion and . . . opportunity? “Your locker?”
His eyes were bright, and I nodded, smiling back at him, because with
me standing there, he was about to have the best damn presentation of all
time. He didn’t need volunteers or heartfelt stories. I was skin and bone and
filleted wrists. I was a real-life example, and unlike all the other bullied kids
who had sunk lower in their seats, I was offering up my services.
“I’d like to hear what she has to say!” Melody’s high-pitched voice
floated from the balcony.
There were a few murmurs of agreement, probably from people who
were just interested in watching my train wreck. But whatever the case, the
audience was captivated for the first time, and Rob knew it as well as I did.
He bent his head toward me, one hand on the microphone. “What would
you like to say to your classmates?”
“I want to tell them the truth.”
He hesitated. “You mean you want to tell them how their bullying has
made you feel?”
I nodded in earnest, smiling up at him. “Yes, exactly.”
He considered me for several moments, and then, like an absolute
lunatic, he handed me the microphone. “I think this will be a learning
experience for all of us.”
Mrs. Rosin’s wide eyes matched mine as I gripped the microphone with
sweaty palms. I stared down at her in shock, waiting for her to order me off
the stage, but she pressed her lips together. “You have three minutes.”
I found Hunter then. He was leaning forward, his eyes latched on to my
face, watching me with profound concern for my sanity. I tore my gaze
from him, scanning the crowd again, and finally settled on Scott seated in
the middle. We stared at each other, and despite his boredom with my
theatrics, his eyes narrowed. There was some shifting and coughing, but
besides that, the entire place was silent as everyone waited.
“Hi. My name is Alice Matthews. This is the first time I’ve stood on a
stage since I quit drama club in ninth grade.” I squinted, shielding my eyes
with one hand. “I forgot how bright it is.” My gaze darted to Hunter, and
though he hated my guts, he looked amused for one blinking moment. I
swear the lights went dimmer an instant later, and I aimed a silent nod at the
balcony before staring out into the crowd again.
“I almost killed myself yesterday.”
Silence. From the corner of my eye, I saw Hunter shift even farther
forward.
“Yeah, it wasn’t really intentional. I mean, it was sort of intentional.” I
lifted one arm. “I cut my wrist, and I meant for it to hurt, but I didn’t mean
to, like, actually die or anything.”
No one moved. I glanced at Rob. “I guess I’m part of your statistics.”
Was I trying to make a joke about suicide? I shook my head. “That’s not . . .
Christ.” I took a steadying breath. “I would have become the poster child
for an assembly like this.” I waved an arm at the curtain behind me. “A
banner with my face on it would have hung just there.”
I looked out at the crowd, scanning the faces. “In a couple days, you
painted slut on my locker, and you sent me awful messages, and you told
me to kill myself all because you heard a rumor that I had sex with someone
two years ago . . . but that’s still not why I did it.”
“Alice,” Mrs. Rosin said, but her voice was soft instead of irritated.
I put one hand over the microphone. “Just one more minute. Please.”
My voice was even but my cheeks were wet, and she just stared at me.
“None of you even bothered to ask me if it was true.” I hesitated,
redirecting my gaze to Hunter. His eyes were locked on me, wide with
torment, and my heart stuttered because he wasn’t looking at me as though
he hated me anymore. He was looking at me as though I was the most
painful thing in the entire world. “Well, one of you did.”
I could see his chest rising and falling. I faced everyone else again,
forcing my words to go louder.
“I’ve spent years hiding and blaming myself, but I’m done. And if
you’re going to make my sex life the topic of your lunchroom gossip, I
want you to know the truth.”
My gaze flickered between Hunter and Scott. “I went to a party at Scott
Henderson’s house my freshman year. You all saw the picture.”
The room was so silent it was eerie. I couldn’t bring myself to look at
Hunter, so I settled on Scott instead. My throat caught and the words were
thick, but I had to say them. I had to finally say them. “I went to a party that
night . . . I wore a dress that was too short . . . I drank too much . . . I kissed
him in that picture . . . and I even agreed to go upstairs with him.”
We stared at each other. “I also begged him to stop.”
His eyes gleamed with warning, but just like him, I didn’t stop. And
when I spoke the next part, my words were for him and him only. “But he
went ahead and raped me anyway.”
The microphone was wrenched from my grasp, but I let it go with ease.
I watched Scott, unable to take my eyes off his face, and as I stood there in
front of the entire school, the bright lights shining down on me, all I felt
was calm.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
 Freshman Year

“W ear something hot.”

I sifted through my closet, cradling my phone between my ear
and shoulder. “How hot?”
“Hot, Alice. Like ‘we are the only freshmen who got invited’ hot.”
I held up a dress for inspection. “How about that black dress I bought at
the mall a few weeks ago?”
“Which one again?”
“It’s plain black . . . tight . . . I said it was too short, and you said there’s
no such thing.”
She let out a gust of laughter. “Yes, oh my god, that dress is perfect.”
I tossed it on my bed and began rummaging through the shoes piled at
the bottom. “Is Casey coming?”
“I don’t know. She’s being a pain in the ass. Her cousin was supposed to
buy us a bottle, but now she’s saying she might have to meet us there
because it’s her grandpa’s birthday or some shit.”
I placed a pair of black stilettos next to my dress, half listening. “Hmm,
that sucks.”
“Yeah, totally. Oh! Brian’s going, by the way.”
“I thought we were the only freshmen who got invited?”
“Well, yeah, except for him. His sister’s a senior.”
“Oh yeah . . . Carly.”
Margo huffed. “Forget about Carly. Maybe you and Brian can finally
agree to start dating again, and then get married and have each other’s
babies.”
 “Right, don’t think so. Hang on, why is a senior going to a sophomore’s
party?”
“Oh, Alice, this isn’t just any regular old sophomore party.”

A nd M argo was right . No one was missing the party. Even if it was
thrown by an underclassman. We knocked on the heavy door, peeking
across the front lawn already littered with red cups and a few stumbling
people. After we’d waited a few minutes, three upperclassmen pushed us
aside and strolled in. They rolled their eyes as we followed.
Margo nudged my shoulder as she gazed around in wide-eyed interest.
“Okay, whatever you do, act like you belong here.”
“Yeah, right.”
We wandered into the kitchen and hovered between groups of friends
we didn’t belong to. Margo cracked first. “This is so embarrassing. We
should just go. We are literally the only ones who don’t have any alcohol.”
“It’s fine,” I murmured, eyeing the group of guys next to us. “Hey!” It
came out of nowhere, and Margo inhaled as though I’d shot her in the chest.
The one closest to me gave me a quick once-over, and when he lifted his
gaze to meet mine, he smiled. “Hey.” His hair was long, almost to his
shoulders, and sandy brown. He was tall, and I figured he had to be older,
maybe a junior or senior.
He and his friends watched in interest as I plucked a red plastic cup
from the counter, inspected it for cleanliness, then held it out to him. “We’re
looking for donations.”
He grinned. “Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
He moved closer to me, leaning over to pour something purple into my
cup before turning to the rest of his friends. “What do you think, guys? Care
to make a donation?”
His friends shuffled forward. They offered their drinks one by one with
sly smiles, as if sharing their alcohol benefited them as much as it did us.
“So you ladies smoke?” the tall one asked.
My eyebrows pinched together as I tasted my drink. “Smoke what?”
For some reason, he laughed. “Anything.”
 “No,” I said at the exact same time Margo said, “Yes.”
They all laughed again. I looked at Margo in surprise, but she just
shrugged.
“Better get on board . . .” He hesitated, gesturing to me in question.
“Alice. It’s Alice.”
He smirked, placing his hand on his chest. “Aaron. Well, we’re going to
go . . .” He held up something in explanation.
It didn’t look like a cigarette, but I wasn’t sure what it was, so I settled
on an awkward nod.
“Let me know if you change your mind,” he said, leaning close to me as
he walked by. “Oh, and Alice?” He twisted around to showcase his bottle of
vodka. “Find me when your donation runs out.” His grin spread wide. “I’m
feeling generous tonight.”

“T hat donation thing was genius !” Margo said, pressing into me as we

headed into the basement. It was more crowded than the upstairs, and we
hung around near the bottom of the stairs, too overwhelmed to venture any
farther. We’d been to parties before, but this was different.
“I didn’t know this many people even went to our school!” Margo
shouted in my ear, and I nodded in disbelief.
There was a long table in the far corner littered with red cups and
surrounded by people cheering. Two couches were crowded with couples
desperate to get closer to each other, and the dance floor was crammed with
people who looked as if they were having the type of fun you could only
hope to be part of.
We finished our drinks in a rush and stumbled onto the dance floor,
pulling and tugging on each other’s hands. We pushed into the middle and
twisted our hips into each other as we joined the meshing crowd. I caught
Aaron looking at me a while later. He stood at the edge of the basement
with the same friends as upstairs. I waved at him over my shoulder, and he
tipped his drink at me. Margo pressed her hips into me, and I wrapped my
arms around her, keeping my gaze on him. His eyes dropped to our hips.
When we made eye contact again, his cheeks were hot, and I was grinning.
 “He can’t keep his eyes off you,” Margo said in my ear, both her hands
now on my waist. “He’s definitely the hottest one.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, and she rolled her eyes. “I guess I’ll have
to settle for his friend.” She eyed them. “He’s pretty hot too, I guess. Come
on, let’s get more to drink.”
When we stopped in front of Aaron, he raised his eyebrows. “Nice
moves.” He reached for his bottle of vodka.
“Do you dance?” I asked.
“I try not to.” He grinned and I laughed easily. Probably too easily.
Margo’s cup had been refilled too, and she knocked into me, laughing
and flailing before she leaned into Aaron’s friend. His eyes widened in
surprise, and he glanced around as if he couldn’t believe his luck.
Unlike his friend, Aaron eyed Margo with some annoyance, his
eyebrows stitching together. “Your friend is wasted already.”
“I can hear you!” Margo yelled, but Aaron snickered.
Someone pushed behind us, and Aaron jumped forward, grabbing the
someone by the arm. He threw his arm around a boy who looked quite a bit
younger than him with a blond buzz cut and clear blue eyes. “You’re in
luck, ladies,” he said, thumping the boy on the chest. “The man, the myth,
the legend . . . the party host.”
I gave the boy a polite smile, figuring he must be the infamous
sophomore, and it was confirmed when Margo almost keeled over. The
blond kid grimaced, and it was clear he was uninterested in the interruption
as he craned his neck toward wherever he had been heading.
“I swear your parties get better every time.” Aaron kept his arm around
the boy’s shoulder and beamed at him, and I cringed at his idolization.
“Uh, yeah . . . okay . . . well, I’ll see you, man.” The blond kid reached
to lazily slap Aaron’s hand, but his eyes flicked to me and the polite smile
on my face, and he stilled. “Holy shit. You are, like, insanely hot.”
His gaze crawled down the length of me, and my eyes widened for a
moment before I regained my composure. I shrugged, far more confidently
than I actually felt. “You caught me on a good day.”
He grinned, turning his entire body toward me as he abandoned
whatever he had been heading off to do. “I haven’t seen you here before.
What’s your name?” He leaned in close, and I inhaled, the strength of his
cologne making me dizzy. It smelled like Abercrombie & Fitch, and he was
hotter than one of the models.
 “Alice.”
“Scott,” he said, gesturing to himself, but he said it as if I should already
know it.
“Do you go to Franklin?” I took a sip of my drink and tilted my head to
one side in polite interest. His eyebrows shot up as he stared at me. Margo
sputtered into her drink, and Aaron whacked her on the back without
dragging his gaze from our conversation.
Scott laughed, stepping even closer to me. “I do. You?”
I nodded. “I’m a freshman.”
Margo tried to wedge herself between us. “I’m Margo. I’m a freshman
too.”
Scott glanced at her. His brows furrowed as if he was just noticing her
standing there. “Yeah, what’s up.” He returned his gaze to me. “So what do
you think of the party, Alice?”
I could practically hear Margo grinding her teeth over the throbbing
music. “It’s all right.”
He tipped his head back and laughed, and when his eyes met mine
again, his were blazing. “You’re a tough one to impress.”
I mock sighed. “The house is too big, the dance floor is too small, I
can’t get a decent drink, and I can’t find a boy who likes to dance as much
as I do.” It was so obnoxious I hated myself on Aaron’s behalf. All I got
was a huff from his direction before Scott yanked me to him with a wild
grin.
“Well, you’re in luck, love,” he said, his voice hot in my ear, and then
he tugged me away, my heart beating so fast I was afraid it might stop
altogether. He pulled me to an exclusive table, and I left Margo behind
without so much as a backward glance.
Several people were lurking around the table, and they nodded at us. I
nodded back, feeling shy all of a sudden as I leaned into Scott. His fingers
twisted with mine as he poured two drinks one-handed. He pushed one
toward my mouth.
I took a swig and started choking immediately, my eyes watering from
the smell alone. “Is this supposed to taste good?”
He grinned and took a long drink from his own red cup. “Not really, but
you wanted something decent, and that’s a three-hundred-dollar bottle of
whiskey.”
 My eyes widened in surprise, but I schooled my features. “What? You
out of Smirnoff or something?”
He burst into laughter, and I couldn’t help grinning back because up
until that point, the only person who found me funny was my own brother.
The liquor tasted terrible, but I drank it anyway as he watched in
appreciation, laughing when my face pinched in distaste. We took sips
together, leaning into each other as we laughed and sputtered, sharing the
same cup of Coke as a chaser. When we finished, he pulled me to the dance
floor, the liquor burning bright and energetic in my chest.
We fought to the middle of the floor and found a spot beneath the
glittering disco ball. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressing into him
with ease. He returned the favor, his fingers trailing lower and lower. I
turned around and bent forward as Margo and I had practiced, and his
reaction was better than I possibly could have imagined.
“Fuck,” he muttered. His fingers gripped my hips even tighter.
People pushed into us from every direction, but his hands didn’t leave
me, not even when other girls tried to push themselves between us. I turned
back toward him. With my shoes on, I was tall enough that our gazes were
level. I’m not sure if it was the alcohol or his bright desperate eyes, but
when his gaze dipped to my mouth, I pressed my lips to his. His mouth was
warm and hungry, devouring me as his hand came to my hair. When we
broke apart, his lips were pink, and I could taste the liquor, strong and
daring.
“Goddamn,” he said.
“What?” I asked, biting my bottom lip.
“Nothing . . . I . . . you are so fucking hot.” And then his mouth was on
mine again, and neither of us said anything for a long time.
We stayed like that the whole night, intertwined with each other as we
alternated between the dance floor and makeshift bar. I mostly lost track of
Margo. She surfaced from time to time, and I remembered her snapping a
picture of Scott and me on the black leather couch. I huddled around her
phone to inspect it, stumbling before she grabbed my elbow to keep me
upright.
I don’t know what time Scott pulled me toward the basement stairs, but
Margo was nowhere to be seen. I was supposed to sleep over at her house
because, unlike mine, her curfew was flexible.
 Scott paused to kiss me in the huge foyer beneath the largest chandelier
I’d ever seen. “I’m so obsessed with you,” he panted. He pulled me up the
stairs, and for some reason, I went.
The marble staircase was long and winding, and I giggled when he tried
to push open the first door on the left at the top of the stairs. It was locked,
and he banged his fist against it. “Motherfuckers!” He looked down at me,
his expression twisted in thought, before he pushed me into the room across
the hallway instead. “Come on.”
We stumbled inside, and he shoved me against the wall, the back of my
head smacking into it. I laughed out of sheer surprise, but I wasn’t sure he
even heard it, because his lips were on my neck as I scanned the room. It
was dark, but there was one large bay window on the opposite wall. The
light shone through it, illuminating a double bed and a sitting area near the
window. It must have been some sort of guest bedroom, because it was
plain and formal.
We staggered toward the window, clinging and laughing. He lost his
balance on the way, whacking his shin on the four-poster bed, but managed
to steady himself against me. With the weight of his body and wobbliness
of my own legs, we collapsed on the floor behind an old-fashioned couch. I
barely had time to sputter a laugh before his mouth was on mine again.
As his lips trailed the length of my neck, I tipped my head back and
grinned at the ceiling. I wasn’t completely inexperienced. Brian’s hand had
skimmed my thigh a time or two, but that was about it. My virginity had
already become an irritating weight, and while the kissing was exciting, the
prospect of going all the way before Margo and Casey was positively
thrilling.
His hand came to the inside of my thigh, then slipped under my dress. I
pressed my hips against him, encouraging the slow, methodical rhythm I
expected, but without any warning at all, one finger shoved its way inside
me. And it hurt.
“Wait.” I pulled my lips from his as I breathed hard against him.
His eyebrows furrowed. “For what?”
My reaction had been reflexive, and my cheeks turned pink in the dark
between us. Instead of waiting another second, his fingers continued their
onslaught. I attempted to tolerate it, more afraid of being called a prude than
the threat of his strength on top of me. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited
for the pain to subside, but it didn’t.
 “Wait, stop,” I said again, unable to help myself. I placed both hands
against his chest and tried to sit up. Maybe we were in the wrong position.
Maybe something was wrong with me. Maybe I just needed a second to
breathe.
He stared at me, and I stiffened as his gaze turned dark and irritated.
“What the hell, Alice?”
I blinked as if awakening from a stupor. Suddenly, the formality of the
guest room was unnerving, and the floor was uncomfortable beneath me. “I
don’t . . . can we maybe take a break for a minute?”
He tipped his head back and laughed, except this time, it wasn’t because
I was funny. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”
His lips pressed against my neck again, and I tried to wriggle out from
under him, desperate to put some distance between us.
“Come on, Alice. You can’t wear a dress like this, kiss me first,
practically have sex with me on the dance floor all night, come upstairs
with me, and then try to pretend like you don’t want me to fuck you.”
Hysteria trickled into my brain, and the next words out of my mouth
were just plain humiliating. “Wait, I thought . . . I thought you liked me.”
He frowned. “I do like you. That’s the whole point.”
He caught my jaw with one hand and held it firmly in place as he
mashed his lips to mine with so much force it was sure to leave bruises. At
that moment, I realized shoving his hand in my underwear had been his way
of trying to seduce me, and whatever scant etiquette there had been was
clearly gone.
“Try to relax. I swear it’ll feel good.” He shoved my dress above my
waist in one quick motion. Panic clouded my brain, but the words in my
head were heavy and hard to reach. I tried to wedge my knee between us,
my wrists straining against his chest, but he dropped on top of me, his
weight crushing.
I grew desperate. My fingernails scratched at his arms, then clawed at
my bare thighs. “Wait . . . please . . . I need a second.”
But he didn’t hear me. He only paused to yank my underwear down as
if it was nothing but a mild inconvenience. He fiddled with his belt, and I
tried to thrust him off me, but he didn’t even budge. He pulled his jeans and
boxers down just enough for something to spring out, and revolting nausea
rolled through me when I saw it.
He hesitated, staring down at me. “Are you a virgin?”
 My eyes widened, the words caught deep in my throat.
“I’ll take that as a yes. In that case, maybe it won’t feel so good, but
next time will be better, I promise.”
His finger touched me, and I seized. I tried to squeeze my legs together,
but he thrust his finger inside of me anyway, and I bit my lip, wincing in
pain.
“Come on, Alice. You’re only making it worse for yourself,” he said
softly. He took his finger out, and my brain slowed in sheer horror as I
watched him stick it in his mouth. His eyes were heated, hot with intent,
and I thrashed against him as he repositioned himself. I tried to cry out. I
tried to push him off me, shake my head, anything to make him hesitate, but
he didn’t—not for one second.
He clamped one hand over my mouth as he kneed my legs apart,
crushing one of them with his own. I felt him against me, and it spurred
something deep and dormant. I shook in frantic desperation, bucking with a
strength that hadn’t existed a minute ago, but it was futile. It all was.
I drifted away then, watching myself as I looked down from elsewhere.
I watched a girl with blondish-brownish hair as her head lolled to the side,
the tears finally ebbing as everything that made her alive dripped out. And
as the fight became too difficult, she stopped fighting altogether.
I watched as his breath grew more and more ragged, and eventually, he
collapsed against her. I hoped his weight might kill her. I watched his wet
lips press against her neck. And I felt it too.
“That was incredible.” His fingers skimmed her cheek as if she was a
porcelain doll instead of skin and bones. “You and I are going to be the best
romance this school has ever seen.”
And if he didn’t shatter her into a thousand pieces, I vowed to do it for
him until there was nothing left but dust.

I don ’ t know when he left. I winced when he pulled himself out of me,
and I heard him zip his pants and close the door behind him, but I lay there
for what seemed like hours, blinking when bright light poured into the room
from the hallway. I heard people come in, but I didn’t even bother to pull
my dress down. The couch concealed me, but even if it hadn’t, I didn’t have
the energy or the will.
“What the hell are you doing? You can’t smoke in here!”
“Oh, give me a break.”
“Just put it out,” the boy said, and I didn’t need to see his face to know
it was pinched with irritation.
The girl huffed. “Fine.” Despite her returned irritation, her voice was
high-pitched and cheery.
“Now, what are we doing in here exactly?” His voice was still cool, but
instead of irritated, he sounded bored out of his mind.
“Hiding.”
“If you have to hide from your boyfriend at a party, you probably
shouldn’t be dating him.”
“It’s not . . . I like him . . . it’s . . .” She stopped. “Do you think I’m
pretty?”
He scoffed. “Yeah, of course I think you’re pretty.”
“I don’t think Keith thinks I’m pretty.”
“Well, Keith is a fucking idiot.”
They were quiet for a minute, and I thought I heard light footsteps as
one moved closer to the other. “If you think I’m so pretty, maybe we should
just have sex.” Her voice was flirtatious, and I closed my eyes, expecting
the sick sound of desire, but he laughed.
“Uh, yeah, I’m not having sex with you.”
“See, I knew it! I’m repulsive! You obviously think so, and Keith
obviously thinks so.”
“Jesus. Just because I don’t want to have sex with you doesn’t mean I
automatically find you repulsive.”
“Well, come on then!” she pressed, her self-esteem back intact.
I heard the fiddling of something, maybe metal, but it faded with the
distant sound of shifting. “Stop it.”
They were both quiet again.
“Why don’t you want to sleep with me?” She sounded as though she
was a few helpless seconds from tears.
He sighed. “For starters, you have a boyfriend. He is quite literally in
this house right now, so excuse me if I don’t want to fuck someone else’s
girlfriend. Secondly, it’s degrading. Don’t you think you deserve better than
having casual sex with me just because your asshole boyfriend makes you
feel like shit for one night?”
“Not really . . .”
“Well, you do. And you deserve better than that jackass. He’s
unbearable.”
“You’re just mad because he called you Holden Caulfield.”
“That too.”
“I think it was supposed to be a compliment.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Hmmm,” she hummed.
“He’s probably wondering where the fuck we both are.”
“You’re making me paranoid.”
“You should be.”
“Should I go look for him?”
“I’d say so.”
“Will you come with me?”
“I think I’ll pass, but thanks for the offer.”
I heard a faint noise in the hallway, and I seized, terrified they might
leave.
“Oh shit,” she whispered, “is that Keith?”
“Sure sounds like it.”
“What should I do?”
“Gee, I don’t know, maybe go out there and say, ‘Hey, Keith, what’s
up?’”
“That sounds suspicious.”
“Right, totally.”
I heard the sound in the hallway again as the guy they were talking
about must have moved closer, calling her name.
“Okay, I’m going out there.”
“Thank fuck. You’re giving me a migraine.”
“Whatever. See you later, asshole.”
I heard her footsteps move across the room as she headed for the door.
“Hey,” he called, and she stopped. “You’re the prettiest girl I know.”
She laughed, delighted and good-natured. “You’re a big fat liar, but I
love you anyway.”
A sliver of light peeked in the room again, but then the door closed, and
it was only the two of us. I heard him shuffle around the bed toward the
window, and I held my breath.
“Fuck it,” he muttered to himself, and I flinched at the sound of
scraping wood before realizing he was opening the window. After more
scraping and breathlessness, I heard the snap of a lighter as he exhaled. He
stood like that for a long time, the smell of cigarette smoke drifting to me
despite the open window. I listened to his soft inhales and exhales, and I
tried to match my breath to his. I tried to imagine how I’d feel standing next
to him, gazing out at the moon.
A small part of me wanted to call out to him. Despite his flatness, he
sounded like the type of person who might call 911 or at least show a little
sympathy. He could have had sex with his friend if he’d wanted to, but he
hadn’t, and that had to mean something. Maybe he’d help me fix my dress
or offer to drive me home, but I was too afraid, so I didn’t say a thing. I lay
there instead, matching my breaths to his as I tried to cling on to the only
thing left to cling to.
He left eventually, and when I couldn’t lie there any longer, I climbed to
my feet, wincing from the pain between my legs. I pulled my dress down
and smoothed my hair with shaky fingers. I forgot my shoes. I didn’t know
when they’d come off, but I abandoned them in that bedroom as I padded
down the twisting staircase in my bare feet. I focused on each stair in front
of me, terrified if I looked up, Scott might be staring back. A boy and a girl
climbed up the stairs, their hands intertwined, but they didn’t glance twice
at me. No one did.
I pushed open the solid front door, and as the party raged on, I crept
across the front lawn, my feet cold and wet as I walked home.
 Chapter Forty

T he auditorium was silent. It was the type of stunned silence that

followed one of Chris’s performances—a brief beat of it before the
place would erupt in applause. I used to crave it when I performed. I would
hold the last note, my heart beating faster and faster as I waited for it. But
when the applause started immediately, even with fervor, my heart would
sink, and I’d stretch my cheeks wide, doing my best to hold my smile. I was
a good performer, but I wasn’t like Chris. I never made an entire crowd
forget they were sitting in theater seats.
But it was there then. The auditorium filled with that same daze as wide
eyes stared up at me. It stretched on and on and on, but instead of holding
my pose, I just stood there, arms at my sides, as I stared back. And then,
like with any good applause, the room did explode.
Scott stood first, the antique chair creaking beneath him. Hunter shot to
his feet next, and Mrs. Rosin pointed a stern finger at him. “Hunter! Sit
down!” She glanced around, trying to locate Scott, because even if we all
agreed he deserved it, she probably didn’t want him being murdered in the
middle of a high school auditorium. And based on Hunter’s expression,
murder was inevitable.
Scott stood in the middle of the auditorium, hands resting on the seat in
front of him. Hunter started toward him, but one of the math teachers
jumped forward. I’d never had him, but everyone knew him. Mr. Collins
exclusively taught the smart kids, but even if you weren’t enrolled in his
class, you still hoped he’d learn your name.
He was younger and more agile than the other teachers, but despite that,
I still expected Hunter to skate around him. Mr. Collins put a hesitant hand
on Hunter’s arm, and when Hunter didn’t shove him away, Mr. Collins
wrapped his arm around Hunter’s shoulders instead. They stood shoulder to
shoulder like that. Hunter’s chest heaved, and Mr. Collins talked low in his
ear.
There was a shuffle in the middle of the auditorium, but instead of
pushing and shoving across his row, Scott whispered and nodded as people
moved limbs, letting him pass through. When he made it to the aisle, I
steadied myself, waiting for him to run, but he didn’t. He straightened the
collar of his button-down shirt and gazed up at me with raised eyebrows.
“Making a false rape accusation is a crime, you know.” His voice swept
across the auditorium, and I hated that he could captivate an audience.
Mrs. Rosin pointed another finger. “Scott, stop talking and stay there.”
She turned back to me. “Alice, get down from there.” She ran a hand
through her hair. “Everyone, back to class!”
No one moved.
Scott’s eyes narrowed. “Please don’t tell me you’re falling for this.” He
thrust a hand at me, standing in front of the entire school. “She’s desperate
for attention. Everyone knows it.”
Mrs. Rosin turned to one of the other teachers. Her voice was low, but I
still heard it, and Scott must have too. “Can you please go call Bill?”
The teacher nodded before scurrying off to call our only security
personnel.
Scott clasped both hands together as he took another step forward. “Yes,
smart. She’s clearly having some kind of psychotic break.”
Mrs. Rosin frowned. “Stop talking,” she said, drawing the words out.
She turned back to a collection of teachers milling around the bottom of the
stage, unsure how to be useful. “Can you please get these students back to
class, for god’s sake?”
The teachers dispersed, waving rows of students to their feet with as
much enthusiasm as construction workers waving cars through an
intersection. Their attention stayed on Scott and me, just as interested in
watching our scene play out as the groups of my classmates moseying
across their rows.
Scott’s nostrils flared as he took another step forward. “She’s sleeping
with my stepbrother, who happens to be the same person that gave me this
black eye.” He glanced around the auditorium and then back at Mrs. Rosin.
“You’re aware of that, right? It’s a complete hoax.”
 There was some shifting and shuffling, but no one said a word.
Scott ran a hand through his hair, still glancing wildly around the room.
“This is insane.” His gaze caught on Brian and Josh as they were ushered
from a row a few feet from where he stood. “I mean, people were there. She
was all over me that night. Everyone who was there knows it.” He gestured
from Brian and Josh to Mrs. Rosin. “You guys were there. Go ahead, tell
her.”
Josh licked his lips. “I . . .”
Brian took a half step back. His eyebrows furrowed.
Scott’s wide eyes landed on me. His gaze flitted over every inch of me
as if he was seeing me for the first time. It dropped to my feet and grazed
over my legs. I could feel it probing to the deepest parts of me, and though I
yearned to look away, I stared back.
“Do you think I’m really that desperate?” His laughter echoed off the
chandelier. It carried over the balcony. It resonated through my head,
rattling my teeth together, but it was met with silence.
Everyone had stopped moving. The teachers no longer waved people
through their rows, and shuffling feet didn’t sound across the auditorium.
The stage lights had switched off at some point, and with the house lights
on, I saw Melody standing in the first row of the balcony. Her arms were
folded across her chest, and as she stared down at me, she brought one hand
to her face to wipe her cheek with a swipe of her finger.
I spotted Margo next. She was a few rows behind Hunter, and her eyes
were as wide as they had been when I told her why I left her at that party.
She had been sympathetic. I remembered her arm around my shoulders and
her hand in mine. She had also been delicate as she brushed strands of hair
from my face and asked if it was possible I might have misremembered.
And then I found Hunter, but unlike Melody and Margo, he wasn’t
looking at me. His unwavering gaze was fixated on Scott.
Maybe Scott felt his descent right then and there. His eyes danced over
the crowd, finally stilling when he found green eyes blazing back at him.
Scott and Hunter stared at each other, Hunter’s chest heaving with effort.
Maybe effort to stay in place. It stretched on forever. Mrs. Rosin didn’t
order commands. People stopped ambling toward the auditorium doors.
Everyone waited. And when Scott spoke, his voice was low, his words for
Hunter. “She practically begged me for it.”
 Hunter didn’t hesitate. He was out of Mr. Collins’s grasp as if his arms
were nothing. Mr. Collins was hot after him, and other teachers darted
forward, shouting and waving their hands, but Hunter was only accessible
by the row of students he barreled through, and none of them dared to slow
him down.
The back door opened with a bang, and Bill, the security guard, charged
in, barking orders at groups of students. “Back to class! Show’s over!”
But once he spotted Hunter, he was moving too fast to shout more
orders. Hunter made it to the aisle, mere feet from Scott, but there was a
collision of teachers, and somehow, they managed to rein him back.
Scott shuffled backward from the commotion, his eyes wide and his
face so white it looked as if there wasn’t a drop of blood left in his body.
There was a brief scuffle of limbs, and Hunter’s black sweatshirt was
pulled every which way, but he calmed surprisingly quickly. Mr. Collins
gestured for space, his arm around Hunter again, their heads ducked low as
he steered him away from Scott.
Hunter looked up at me then. His green eyes dug into mine, and in that
moment, I was hit with a wave of regret. Not for the way I handled things,
but I wished I would have called out to him that night.
Hunter twisted out of Mr. Collins’s grasp again, but this time, everyone
had it wrong. He didn’t try to spin left or push through the group of teachers
separating him from Scott. Instead of charging any farther, he swung onto
the stage.
The tears came faster, and I wiped them away as he crossed the distance
between us. “Hunter, I’m—”
He tumbled into me, wrapping both arms around me as he pressed his
quivering lips into my hair.
“Don’t you dare, Alice,” he whispered, and the apology brimming on
my lips died before it reached the air between us.
 Epilogue

M yadmitting
dress was pale blue—long-sleeved, of course. Standing on a stage
I cut my wrists was one thing, but showing it was another. It
had been sixty-something days since I last cut, but the scars were still there,
brutal and ugly. I smoothed the hem of my dress. It fell halfway down my
thighs, and though it was dressier than anything I’d worn in two years, it
was way too casual for prom.
“Alice!” Chris called, seconds after there was a knock on the door.
I looked at myself in the mirror one more time before I slipped on my
flats and headed downstairs. Hunter stood at the bottom, but he wasn’t the
only one. Chris leaned over the banister, and my mom enthusiastically
introduced herself to everyone else wedged between Hunter and the front
door. She exchanged a hug with Max. Melody clapped while I descended.
Hudson inspected his fingernails, and Chris ignored all of them as he
beamed up at me.
Hunter wore a black suit that I would have never guessed he owned, and
instead of dress shoes, he wore a new pair of Vans. I smiled as I imagined
him pacing through rows of a shoe store with Hudson close behind,
grumbling and pointing out recommendations.
He tipped his head at the crowd behind him, half smirking. “They
insisted.”
“You look awesome!” Melody said, bouncing up and down.
I shot her a grin. “You too. I like the stockings.”
She wore a black corset dress that transformed into a big netted tutu at
her hips. Underneath it, she wore her famous fishnet stockings. Hot pink,
for prom. Hudson and Max were dressed normally, but Kohen wore a suit to
match Hunter’s.
When I made it to the bottom of the stairs, Hunter extended a small box
of white flowers in my direction. “For your wrist.” He rubbed the back of
his neck, his cheeks going pink. “I think.”
Chris coughed to cover up his laughter, and my mom grinned.
“Where’s mine?” Melody demanded, turning to Kohen.
Kohen glanced between Hunter and Melody with wide eyes. “I’m
nineteen years old going to your high school prom. I figured that was
enough.”
Melody put her hands on her hips. “Well, it isn’t. I’m going to be the
only one without a corsage.”
Kohen frowned at Hunter. “Thanks a lot, dude.”
“You were supposed to get him a boutonniere,” Hudson said, staring at
the ceiling. He leaned against the front door, still not keen on being in my
house at all.
Melody and Kohen both swiveled in his direction. Melody’s mouth fell
open, and Kohen grinned.
“Yes, thank you! And where the fuck are my flowers?” Kohen flinched
and glanced at my mom. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
She waved a hand, too happy to be bothered.
Chris’s eyes gleamed, sly and teasing, as he studied Hudson. “Well,
well, well. Who knew you were so cultivated, sunshine.”
Hudson’s jaw clenched. Hunter glanced between them, eyebrows
scrunched in thought, and it occurred to me then that neither Hudson nor I
ever told Hunter about his visit to my house.
“Sorry, have you two met?” Hunter asked.
Hudson looked away, his face pink, but Chris grinned. “We had the
pleasure when you broke up.”
“I didn’t get you a boutonniere,” I started to say, ignoring them, but my
mom bounded toward the kitchen.
“Hang on!”
She came bustling back with a similar box and handed it to me instead
of Hunter. There were small blue flowers inside, the same light shade as my
dress, and when I looked back at her, she had tears in her eyes even though
she was smiling.
W e collected on the front lawn. It was finally warm enough where you
didn’t need a coat, but I still shivered when the wind blew. Instead of her
phone, my mom had her Nikon camera. Chris stood behind her, peeking
over her shoulder through the lens and smiling as he watched us huddle
together.
Hunter wrapped one arm around me. Hudson stood stiffly on the other
side of him. Kohen and Melody clung to each other, and Max lunged in
front of us, his arms outstretched on either side.
We rotated through multiple combinations after that. Hudson hightailed
it out of the frame as soon as he was told to, but Max dragged his feet,
shooting us jealous glances.
When it was Chris’s turn to take a picture with me, his smile was so
wide and bright I figured he’d dull me altogether, but I didn’t even care.
Chris lived in the spotlight, and as he wrapped a tight arm around my
shoulders, I was just glad I was the person he looked for when the crowd
cheered. “You’re my favorite person in the entire world,” he whispered.
And as my mom snapped the picture, there were tears in my eyes too.
Scott holding me down in that bedroom was the worst moment of my
life, but sitting in my kitchen with my mom and Chris as I recalled what
happened that night and all the days since was a close second. They did
everything right, which might have been worse. Because I saw the way
Chris looked at me when he thought I didn’t notice, and I heard my mom
crying late at night sometimes when she thought I was already asleep.
“How about I take one of you guys,” Melody said, motioning for my
mom and Hunter to join Chris and me.
The four of us grinned at the camera, and even if my eyes were closed
or my hair was blowing across my face, I was putting that picture front and
center on my bedroom wall.

W e left a little while later . I hugged my mom and Chris while Kohen
and Melody climbed into his car.
 “Are you sure I can’t come?” Max asked, peeking into the passenger
seat.
Hudson tucked an arm around him and pulled him back, wearing a rare
smile. “Don’t worry, they won’t last long.”
They set off, walking to Hudson and Kohen’s apartment while we drove
away. Our music blared as we waved goodbye to Chris and my mom on the
front lawn.
There were a few hotels in our town, but our prom was in our
gymnasium. The most exclusive event of high school, and it was planned to
take place on a basketball court that reeked of feet. I wished Margo and I
were still friends only so I could internally giggle at her absolute horror.
The prom committee did put in some effort, though. There was a long
red carpet leading to the gymnasium entrance, and the arch was covered
with dangling silver fringe and balloons.
We stood at the edge of the carpet as our classmates pushed past us.
“I have a flask,” Melody offered.
Hunter inspected the decorations. “This is literally my nightmare.”
Kohen nodded. “I am way too old to be here.”
I smiled as we dragged ourselves forward. It had all been Melody’s
idea. I wasn’t sure if it was nostalgia or what, but as the school year ended,
she’d become insistent on attending prom. So naturally, that meant Hunter
and me too.
We were way underdressed. Every other girl wore a floor-length gown
and heels, while I looked as if I was going to an Easter brunch, and Melody
hadn’t bothered to un-scuff her combat boots. People stopped and stared at
us, but that wasn’t the only reason.
Kohen shifted. “What the fuck is everyone looking at?”
Melody grinned, glancing around. “Alice is popular. Haven’t you
heard?”
I scoffed. “How did you describe it, Hunter? Social exile?”
Now that we were in the gymnasium facing our classmates, Hunter’s
scowl was back as if it had never left, but he smirked.
“This is just plain uncomfortable,” Kohen said, eyes going even wider.
I shrugged. “I’m the girl who was raped. It’s sort of like being a zoo
animal.”
Hunter squeezed my hand. “I’m the kid who tried to kill himself. You
get used to it.”
 Melody flipped her pink hair. “Everyone wishes they could be me.”
Kohen snorted. “You know, that probably is it. All the girls are
wondering how you snagged such a hot college dude.”
He was hunched over a second later, laughing as he gasped for breath
while Melody stalked toward the punch table.
We all followed, and their gazes did too. My eyes flitted over the crowd.
Suzanne’s dress was yellow and Casey’s was pink. Margo’s hair was long
and wavy, and her makeup was flawless. I knew she’d had it done at a kiosk
in the mall only because she’d managed an invite to prom since freshman
year, and her routine was the same. Her arms were wrapped around
someone’s neck, and I nearly tripped over my feet when I realized it was
Brian. Trey and Josh stood in the corner, lurking near the DJ booth as they
surveyed the dance floor.
Everyone was there—except one.
Scott Henderson wasn’t mine, but he always accompanied me
somehow. Where I went, he did too, and when people’s gazes drifted to me,
they thought of him.
After that day in the auditorium, some people were supportive, but not
everyone. Mrs. Rosin made a statement, asking everyone to refrain from
gossip, but it was high school, after all. Amid positivity, my inbox became
littered with accusations. Some called me attention seeking. Others called
me a liar. But there had just been two of us in the room that night, and my
truth wasn’t up for debate anymore.
“Do you want to dance?” Hunter asked.
I grinned at him. “I thought you’d never ask.”
We stood in the same gym where Scott had pressed against me. We
stood inches from the same wall Hunter had been lounging against when
Scott broke his nose. And despite all that, Hunter laughed. “Me neither.”
He led me to the dance floor. We settled near Margo and Brian, and
though Margo didn’t glance in my direction, Brian shot me a quick nod.
I nodded back, and Hunter wrapped his arms around me. His lips
pressed to my temple as a new song started.
We kissed and we swayed, and the hair on the back of my neck didn’t
prickle with the awareness of Scott’s gaze digging into the back of me. He
wasn’t there, and I was still trying to get used to what that was like.
 Note from the Author

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 About the Author

Allison Rogers began creating stories at a young age. She and her brother would sit cross-legged for
hours, immersed in their made-up worlds and multidimensional characters. Since then, Allison has
always been a sucker for tragic outsiders, a sardonic sense of humor, and absorbing portrayals of
growing up. Now, as an adult, she has moved on from daydreaming to writing YA novels. Allison
lives in New England with her husband. They share an allergy to cats and dogs, which most people
find heartbreaking, but also kind of romantic.
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