ONE
Selbyville, Texas 2016
HARPER
I’ve been toldI’m an angry person and that it’s unbecoming of a lady.
I told the person who told me that—my high school principal last semester—to go fuck himself. And maybe use thegoodvibrator this time to melt the stick up his ass.
Yeah, so... I got suspended instead of just detention.
I can’t help it sometimes. Rage on a low boil just seems to be my default setting lately, and that wasbeforeDarlene kicked me out of my bedroom to sleep on the couch so the most recent asshole of a month, fuckingTodd, could use my bedroom as an office.
God, I have to get thehellout of here.
I’m busy stabbing the shattered face of the secondhand phone I got off Greg—this guy I occasionally hook up with—over and over and over, trying to force the Craigslist roommates and apartments page to load through the stolen Wi-Fi Ms. Hernandez next door doesn’t know how to password-protect.
When fucking Todd sits down beside me on the couch.
Notnearme.
Besideme.
Close enough, I can smell his beer breath and the grease from whatever frozen crap he microwaved for lunch.
“Whatcha up to, kiddo?” His voice drips with fake-dad energy that makes my skin crawl. He scoots closer, invading my space like he’s got a right to it. “Hey, your hair looks real nice when you wear it that way. I ever tell you that?”
I’m seventeen.
He’s forty.
And we both know exactly what game he’s playing, even if Darlene’s too smashed in the back bedroom to notice. I got home from the library in time to hear the tail end of some screaming phone call earlier that had her downing an entire bottle of Jack.
The veneer of her, me, and Todd pretending Todd’snota fucking pervert is wearing so thin I can practically see through it. Like tissue paper held up to the light, all the ugly shit underneath gets clearer.
And people wonder why I’m such a bitch.
Todd doesn’t even do any actual work in his “office.”He just games in there all day while I’m stuck out here, doing homework and sleeping on a couch that smells like spilled beer, with zero privacy.
I’m officially over it. Hence, the apartment hunting, even though I haven’t finished high school yet.
Z and I always talk about getting out once we turn eighteen, but it’s getting so bad here, I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth leaving early. We could hitchhike to Austin. Find some shitty room for like five hundred bucks a month if we shared with roommates.
But five hundred might as well be a million right now. Plus, there’s the fact that Z’s stepdad would have Amber Alerts out for him within the hour just out of spite, but still.
A bitch can dream, right?
Todd slides closer, his arm stretching across the back of the couch, trapping some of my hair underneath. His hand edges toward my thigh.
“You wanna watch a movie together? I could make us some popcorn.”
Or I could stab you in the eye with my number two pencil.
The heat of his body next to mine makes my stomach turn. I spring off the couch like it’s on fire, glaring at him.
“No, I don’t want to watch a fucking movie with you, Todd.”
His face shifts—wounded puppy to angry dog in half a second. “God, why do you always have to be such abitch? I’m just trying to be nice. You need a father figure in your life.”