But sorry doesn’t change anything.
It never does.
THREE
HARPER
I didn’t speaka word to Silas the whole five-hour drive to Dallas.
I was busy constantly texting Z, but I was also pretty sure that if I answered any of Silas’s probing questions, I’d just start screaming and not be able to stop. Safer to white-knuckle my phone and pretend the man who abandoned me didn’t exist. Even if he was two feet away, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel like he had any right to be nervous.
A little after eleven at night, I finally get a text back letting me know Z lit out the window into the woods right after I left to avoid Frank’s wrath, and that he’s still lying low.
And people wonder why I’m so pissed off all the time.
I’m angry because life’snotfair.
I’m angry because my best friend is afraid to sleep in his own goddamn bed in case he gets caught off guard by his abusive fuck of a stepfather.
I’m angry because instead of saving him and starting our life together—instead of that courthouse and those vows andgetting the fuck out—I got hauled off to a pristine McMansion in the Dallas suburbs like some kind of rescue pet Silas can parade around to prove he’s changed.
We rolled in at midnight. My new stepmother, Helen—because apparently Silas landed himself an actual functioning adult this time—waited up for us. She came at me with the biggest smile and wide-open arms, gushing about howwelcomeI was and how she’d already made up the bed with fresh sheets. I stood stiff for the hug that lasted far too long.
She really had made up the bed, too. I’ve never touched fabric that soft in my life. There was a whole room for me.
Here I was, braced for another shitty Darlene. I was ready for the yelling and resentment, especially for a kid who wasn’t hers.
But Helen? Helen waslovely. Warm. Genuine. The kind of woman who bakes cookies at eleven at night because her new stepdaughter might be hungry.
It was absolutely infuriating.
Because all I could picture was Z in those woods, swatting mosquitoes away, hungry and scared, while I got swept away to some magical bullshit fairytale with soft sheets and homemade snickerdoodles on the goddamn nightstand.
I finally get my wish and got out, but my best friend gets left behind?
How am I supposed to live with that? How am I supposed to eat Helen’s perfect cookies and sleep in clean sheets and pretend I’m not abandoning the only person who’s never abandoned me?
Talk about not fucking fair.
There’s apparently a perfect stepbrother in the picture, too. I haven’t met him yet. He’s in my grade but went to bed already because of some early morning debate practice. Their school year started two weeks ago, and McPerfect Stepbrother is already in the swing of extracurriculars. He was gone by the time Silas finally succeeded in banging on my door this morning, shouting that I was going to be late.
As if I cared about being late. As if any of this matters.
I only dragged myself out of bed and let him haul me to Westfield Preparatory Academy because if I’m out of Silas’s sight long enough, maybe I can find a way to get back to Selbyville. Back to Z. Back to the plan that actually made sense.
I haven’t figured out how to sneak off campus yet, though. The place is off a long, secluded road surrounded by nothing but expensive houses and tall hedges.
If I thought the McMansion was Stepford, I had no fucking clue. This campus gives serious “Rich People Raising Future Senators” vibes. Big brick facade, manicured hedges so perfect they look fake, and not a single cigarette burn on the pavement. A far cry from the cracked blacktop and rusted-out chain-link of my oldschool back in Selbyville, where the bathrooms didn’t have stall doors and half the lockers were rusted shut.
First thing they did in the office was hand me a godawful gray pleated skirt and blazer and told me to change. As if wearing their uniform would somehow transform me into one of them. School here started two weeks ago, but the counselor assured me—as Silas forked over a tuition check from Helen’s bank account, I assume—that the teachers will help me catch up.
Let’s hope for Helen’s sake that they accept refunds. Because this is just a bump in the road, I think furiously as I glare down at the creased map they gave me this morning. A too-friendly student volunteer was all ready to shadow me all day, but I noped out of that and just grabbed a map along with my schedule. The campus is ridiculously large, and I stomp past rows of pristine lockers toward the cafeteria. My old school had bloodstains in the stairwell that nobody bothered cleaning up. This place smells like money, success, and lemon-scented floor wax.
If I can just get back to Z and find a way to the courthouse, we can still get that marriage license and?—
“What are you hiding in your backpack, freak?”
“Don’t!” A girl’s shrill cry yanks my attention toward an open doorway and the courtyard beyond.