Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
“And what happened with the first person to make me feel like I was never going to be alone again?” she asks, meaning my cousin, Hawke. “I straddled him.”
I pinch my eyebrows together. “Ugh.”
“In your old car…” she taunts, and I hear a click.
“Christ.” I growl under my breath. “Move.”
I shove her out of the way and pull out her key chain, tossing it back at her and opening the door.
Hawke is a year older than me, so he’s been alive every single moment of my life. I knew him before he noticed girls at all. Before he had muscles.
I don’t care to hear about him doing things that will give me unwelcome mental images. But as my friend, she wants to talk to me about her boyfriend sometimes, and it’s ew-y.
I enter the empty school, the hallway dark and quiet, and she follows me in, slamming the door. The music and cheers pounding from the stadium seep in, but only as a distant thrum as light from the moon and the football field spill through the overhead windows.
I start walking, Aro’s unusually calm voice falling in behind me. “And I don’t look at facing people with guns as something that was smart,” she reminds me. “I did what I had to do, you know?”
I throw her a soft smile. I know.
She came from Weston, the dark and dilapidated mill town across the river where all the area’s young criminals live, because police don’t go there. It sits less than ten miles away, but it’s another world from Shelburne Falls. Their newest building is from the turn of the century—the one before last, I mean—and you’d be lucky to find two working street lamps in a row.
But even if she grew up with the advantages I’ve had, she still wouldn’t appreciate people telling her she can’t have what she wants.
“And I have to do this,” I explain.
I have to train, even if it’s on my own. This town thinks they know who I am, because they know who my parents are, but no one really wants me to be me. They don’t see me. They see a Trent.
We walk, and I pull off my jacket and boots, leaving a mud trail down the hallway.
I gesture to room fifty-eight as we pass. “That’s the room where my mom cried and told my dad in front of the whole class how much she missed him…”
Aro’s heard all the stories from when me and my cousins’ parents went to school here.
We keep going. “And that’s the lunchroom where Uncle Madoc asked her to prom,” I chirp, walking by the windows of the newly renovated cafeteria.
We arrive at the gym, and I wave my hand to the door on the right. “And that’s the locker room where my dad punched him afterward.”
And then I stop, turning and jerking my chin at the locker with the number 1622 on it, sitting in full view of everyone who passes by. “And that’s the locker where the cell phone was found.”
It sits, along with two others, in a display case with trophies, championship banners, old photos, swim ribbons, newspaper clippings of successful alumni (including, not only my parents, but Madoc, the Mayor, and Aunt Juliet, the novelist), and some vintage clothing items. The exhibit spans nearly twelve feet down the long wall.
I stare at the chipped yellow lockers, number one-six-two-two on the left.
“How do you know that’s the one?” she asks.
I don’t blink, and I don’t look at her. “Hawke hacked some old school records when I asked.”
The metal corners are rusted where the paint has worn away, and dents and scratches are scattered across every square inch from the vents to below the handle.
More than twenty years ago, my parents lifted that handle to discover my dad’s stolen cell phone that Nate Dietrich used to make my mother believe my dad had posted a video of them having sex.
That was the locker of his partner in crime, Piper Burke, and it didn’t register with the administration when they decided to install new ones last year and save a few of the old for a nostalgic showcasing of the school’s history, but it did with my step-cousin, Kade. He didn’t want this locker trashed, so he made sure it was one of the artifacts preserved in this long glass case I have to walk past several times every day.
A lot of people saw that video all those years ago, and they had kids who are here now. It hasn’t been forgotten, and while no one would dare say a word to my parents, the secret that’s not really a secret still slowly fills any space I walk into like a ship filling with water.
I doubt Kade thought of that, though. All he cares about is that Nate and Piper had a kid, and that kid just started high school here this year. The sins of the father and all that…