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I nod, miserable when I should be happy. Even now, she’s more interested in protecting my dad than she is protecting me.

We go to the mall the next day for the contacts. They are four hundred dollars a year, after rebates, an amount my father just can’t quite get over. “I’m disappointed in you, Grace,” he says. “Do you know how much good four hundred dollars could have done for a family in need?”

You can’t buy much of anything for four hundred dollars. That won’t pay someone’s rent. It wouldn’t feed them for long. And if you didn’t mind buying yourself a bunch of eight-hundred-dollar suits when you took this job, arguing that you had to “look the part,” why should I apologize for trying to look mine?

I keep the response to myself, but I meet his gaze, refusing to give him the apology he’s seeking.

“I just don’t know who you are anymore,” he concludes.

I’m not sure you ever did.

I’m not sure either of us did.

12

Ifeel naked without my glasses on Monday.

There’s nothing standing between me and the world, no layer between me and the stares, the slurs.

“You think contacts are going to make you cool, Prairie Girl?” shouts Kendall across the hall when I am putting my books away.

“Do you think being a stupid cunt makes you cool, Kendall?” asks Kappy, coming up beside me.

“Oh look,” says Ashleigh. “Prairie Girl’s fat friend is standing up for her. Maybe you two should go to homecoming together since no one else wants you.”

“Maybe you should go suck a bag of dicks,” replies Kappy. “I heard it’s all you’re good for.”

I very nearly laugh. I must be getting used to Kappy’s mouth.

“Anyway,” says Kappy, turning toward me, “you finally got contacts! Is it because Mac McAllister broke your glasses?”

My hand shoots to my mouth, a reflex. I iced my lip all weekend so that the swelling would be gone by today, and apparently, it was all for nothing. Someone—Ford, probably—made sure everyone heard.

“Who told you?”

She shrugs. “Hallpass. Plus, Mac was bragging about it to anyone who’d listen before the game.”

I barely know who Mac McAllister is, which I almost find more disheartening than if I had known him. How can complete strangers hate me that much?

“But get this,” she says. “Someone jumped him on the way home from a party Friday night, and now he’s a walking bruise.”

My mouth wants to curve into a smile. I should be better than celebrating someone else’s pain, but I’m not. “Well, I guess what goes around comes around.”

She rolls her eyes. “You totally do not get it. Someone beat him up for you. It’s romantic.”

I laugh unhappily. “I assure you, if someone beat Mac up, it had nothing to do with me.”

She sighs. “I know you think everyone outside your precious community is a violent asshole, and we just beat each other up all the time, but it’s really not like that here, despite the shit that’s happened to you. I can count on one hand the number of fistfights I’ve even heard of at this school. It’s not a coincidence.”

“I don’t think everyone here’s a violent...whatever...but I also don’t have a lot of evidence to the contrary.”

“Of course you do. I’m amazing. Mrs. O completely adores you, and Alex Torres stares at you all hour in English and I doubt you’ve ever even looked at him twice.”

I blink at this. Alex is cute and a good student, but I haven’t noticed the staring. I imagine she’s misinterpreted something.

“You guys are all great,” I reply softly. “But there are a lot of people who aren’t and the rest act scared to even make eye contact with me.”

Kappy puts her hands on her hips. “Oh, and at your old school, there was no queen bee everyone didn’t want to piss off?” she demands. “If we can share ninety-six percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, I know that queen bitch gene cannot just be here at Penhallow.”