Prologue
—Maksym—
The girl found me in the hallway and grabbed my sleeve before I could walk past. Her fingers were small and cold, her breathing quick like she had been running.
“They’re in your locker,” she whispered.
For a second I didn’t understand what she meant. Then my stomach dropped. I didn’t ask who. I already knew.
I ran.
The door to the room was half open. I could hear them before I even reached it—metal clanging, laughter bouncing off the walls, something hitting the floor.
“Look at this shit.”
I pushed the door open.
My locker hung wide open. Clothes were scattered everywhere—shirts, socks, the gray sweater they’d given me that stillsmelled faintly of bleach. Everything had been pulled out and thrown across the room like garbage.
Three of them stood there. Older. Bigger.
And in the hand of the tallest one—my chest tightened so hard it almost hurt—the bunny.
Pink fur worn smooth from years of being held. One ear bent where it had been stitched back once. It dangled from his fingers like it meant nothing.
The boys turned when they noticed me.
“Well look who’s here,” one of them said, grinning.
The one holding the bunny lifted it higher and looked at it with exaggerated curiosity. “A pink bunny?” he said, laughing. “What are you, a girl?”
The others burst out laughing.
“You sleep with this thing?”
“Maybe he kisses it goodnight.”
“Are you a faggot?”
Heat crawled up my neck.
“Give it back,” I said. My voice didn’t sound the way I wanted it to.
The boy turned the bunny slowly in his fingers like he was studying a strange insect. Then he reached into his pocket. A lighter clicked open and the small flame flickered to life.
My stomach twisted.
“Hey,” I shouted. “Don’t—”
He lowered the flame beneath the bunny’s foot.
The fur caught almost immediately. A thin black line spread across the pink fabric, and the smell hit a second later—burning plastic and cloth.
“No!”
I stepped forward but one of the boys shoved me back hard.
“Stay there.”
