Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 90972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
He turns his attention back to the laptop. “That gives you more time for your studying.”
Yes, because in Dad’s world, things are that simple. So simple, he never even noticed the stains on my clothes. He would have to pay attention to things in order to do that. Little by little, he’s disconnected like Mom has. His way of coping.
Even though I really should eat something to silence the cries of my empty stomach, I leave the kitchen and go up to my room instead. It’s not like I’ve never gone without food. Not like there haven’t been entire days when I couldn’t get out of bed. I had my share of dark days before the drive-by, but afterward? The regular, functional days became rarer.
And forget good days. There’s no such thing anymore.
As soon as I’m in my room, locked away from the rest of the world, I strip off the clothes I only put on a few hours ago and pull on leggings and a tank top before flopping onto the bed. My heart is so heavy, it hurts, but I can’t bring myself to cry now. I’m alone, and nobody would ever know, but I don’t have it in me.
Not when all I can do is remind myself I have to face those people tomorrow. I can’t drop out—Dad would never get over it. It’s like this is the one good thing he’s still holding onto. Everything hinges on me doing well, being a success. Making him proud.
The pain in my chest gets worse until I can hardly breathe. My heart’s pounding when I place a hand over it, fast enough that I wonder how much faster it could get before it would kill me.
I kind of wonder if I could make that happen. Because otherwise, I’m going to have to endure the same humiliation I endured today. Over and over.
And I just don’t know if I can take it.
Reaching for the headphones on my nightstand, I tuck them into my ears and pull up a playlist of instrumental music I listen to whenever I start to spiral. Whenever I need to relax. I think this definitely qualifies as one of those times, lying here, wishing my heart would explode so the agony of my existence might finally come to an end.
Maybe it would erase the image of a certain smirking face that for some reason makes my body hum with an energy I’ve never felt before.
Chapter 5
Kellen
I still can’t stand Tiana, but there’s one thing I can’t deny by Monday morning: she knows how to get shit done.
I wonder how she finds time to go to school and, like, eat and sleep when it hits me a couple of days after I asked her for help that she must spend most of her time finding ways to make somebody miserable. I mean, she really puts effort into it. I would think she was getting paid once she sends me the two dozen images she put together to post on Tamson’s social media and send around to other people at school.
“Where did you get these pictures?” I ask her the morning after she proudly sent me her work. We made plans to meet up at school before my first class to go over the next steps in the plan.
“Mostly from her old Facebook and Insta posts,” she explains, shrugging. “Just saved the images and did the editing after that. No big deal.”
No big deal. She copied and pasted Tamson’s face onto the head of a porn star giving a hand job. I would swear it was the real thing. There’s another one where Tamson’s smiling face was pasted onto the image of a girl getting gangbanged.
The text Tiana put over the picture reads: Gotta earn my tuition money, guys.
I can get pretty dark at times. I was raised in darkness, I live in it. But even I never thought of anything as sick as this. “Nice work,” I tell her, and the way she smiles tells me the compliment means more than it probably should. The girl is fucking twisted.
“You want me to start texting them out to people?” she asks when I make it clear I’m going to walk off. She might be helpful, but that doesn’t mean I feel like hanging out with her. She would only get the wrong idea.
“No, I’ll handle it from here,” I tell her, though I have to wonder if she’ll listen. “I’m going to post them online first. You can spread them around when I do.”
“Where are you going to post them?” she asks.
This girl never knows when to leave it alone. “Just keep your eyes open, all right? I’ll handle this.”
And it’s easy to do it, too. Almost too easy. All it takes is watching my subject, learning her routine. After the scene she made on Wednesday, she won’t go to the cafeteria anymore to eat. She eats in the library now if she eats in school at all.