Page 3

Hailey

Pretty privilege is real. I know because I’m pretty as hell, poor as shit, and powerful as fuck.

Being a pretty, poor girl means that you’ve got a choice. You can either use what you’ve got to your advantage or wait for someone to take it from you. That last one happens way sooner than people want to believe. My older brother, Quentin, decided I couldn’t ride my bike by myself anymore when I was in fifth grade and a UPS driver pulled over to let me know that he liked “nice high titties” and that I had them. Quentin was already roughly the size of that guy’s truck, so when he came barreling out of our driveway, the UPS man took off.

From that point on I noticed how boys reacted to me, and which ones had something I needed. In junior high that meant someone grabbing me a Coke during study hall and spotting my pool pass, the tradeoff being a kiss under the bleachers and seeing me in a bikini all summer. By senior year it means Ethan Brimley’s got me covered on BYOBs and I’m guaranteed shotgun in his truck anytime I need a ride. The tradeoff got higher, of course, but boys will be boys; then they turn into men, and men rule the world. I can fight against that and lose, or I can play the game my way—and win.

Then Ava Germaine showed up and told everyone this shit ain’t a game.

She strolled into Bethington High smelling like the city and social justice, which isn’t the best way to make friends around here. Yes, I know that women are second-class citizens. I know it in ways her upper-middle-class ass has only read about on CNN. I also have my own ways of handling it. Ethan might think he wears the pants in this relationship, but I have pants, too. And they don’t come off if he’s not acting right. Ava would say Ethan needs to respect me for who I am, not for what’s between my legs. But who I am is a Wagner who lives in a house with a collapsing roof that shelters three generations. Who I am is a poor girl from the wrong kind of family. Who I am is a girl standing in the free lunch line and low-key staking out the lost and found for a decent hoodie.

And nobody respects that.

The only thing poor kids have to offer the world is our bodies. For girls that means being sexy, for boys that means being violent. When it comes to me and Quentin, that plays out like this—I put out for boys who are better off than us, and he beats the shit out of them on the football field. When we’re older it might look like me doing porn and him going to war, but I’m doing everything I can to avoid my fate, and his was sealed by someone else. Someone who took half of what he had to offer the world and drove away while he bled out.

“You think she’s okay?”

Quentin rolls up next to me, his wheelchair crunching on the gravel of our driveway, shading his eyes as he looks across the road to Restoration Acres, where Ava’s car is parked next to the office. I slipped the newspaper clipping with Widow’s hiring notice under Ava’s windshield wiper at school, not because I wanted to help her out after what happened but because I need to keep an eye on her.

“She’s definitely not okay,” I tell him, and Quentin’s brow furrows like it does whenever there’s someone he can’t save. Sometimes I wish I was more like him, maybe even a little more like Ava. A better person, a nice one. But then I look at where that landed both of them, and I reconsider.

“What about you? You okay?” Quentin asks, a question that used to mean he’d heard that somebody needed a beating and all I had to do was drop a name. Now it’s different. He’s still big as hell and intimidating as fuck, but he can’t protect me the way he used to, and he knows it. Now that question means Talk to me; we’ll figure it out together.

“I’m fine,” I say, which isn’t true.

I’m not fine, because everything is on me now. With Quentin sidelined and no college football in his future, I’ve got to come through or we could lose what little we do have.

“God, she’s so tiny,” he says now, watching as Ava appears from the back acre.

This is how Quentin organizes his world; other people are categorized by their size. Me, I look at boys in descending order of what they can do for me, and girls as potential threats to me getting it. Ava wasn’t even a blip on my radar. She’s built like a prepubescent boy and has no interest in maximizing her potential physical qualities, relying instead on her personality to be attractive. So, in other words, she’s fucked.

At least, that’s what I thought. Then she started talking. Loudly. Talking and pointing at things that aren’t quite right, things that we’d all just accepted. Then Ava said it didn’t have to be that way, and she may not be something to look at, but damn if she isn’t interesting to listen to. Some people started to take notice, and everything I’d based my entire future on became threatened not by a girl who was going to take my man away from me, but by a girl who was going to take my man down.

So I did what I had to do. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t exactly feel bad, either. It’s like the time in elementary school when I found an old lunch box in the lost and found, lunch still in it. I don’t know how long it had been lost, but I was damn hungry when I found it and didn’t stop chewing when Mrs. Hadley discovered me curled up under the stairs, jaws just about stuck together from who-knows-how-old peanut butter. When you’re poor, you do what you have to do to survive. And that goes double if you’re a Wagner.

I’m the only person who knows what actually happened to Ava Germaine that night.

And nobody can ever find out.

Three

Micah

Fuck, I’m conscious.

This is my life, the first thought my brain provides as soon as I wake up every day. I try not to think too hard about the fact that I’m happiest when I’m completely unaware of where I am, what is happening and—mostly—who I am. I roll onto my back, close my eyes against the light coming through the window, try to grab a few more minutes. Just a little more time before the next thought comes.

What’s the worst thing that could happen today?

“Shit,” I say to the ceiling. The truth is that I don’t have any idea what the worst thing is, but because I don’t have the answer, my brain will go in search of options.

Maybe today he’ll figure it out.

Yep, that one. It’s been in circulation for two years and never fails to get results. My body goes still, choosing the freeze option from the trauma buffet. I’m very still under my sheets, like a cat lying low when it sees a car coming. But sometimes the spot they’re lying on is right in the middle of the road, and they end up flatter than they intended. Freeze isn’t the best response, but there’s nothing for me to fight, and I can’t exactly erupt into flight because I’m buck naked. Naked and apparently not afraid—or at least, part of me isn’t.

“Where the hell were you last night?” I ask, lifting up the sheet. Some people wish their dogs could talk. I wish my dick could, because it has a lot of explaining to do.

Cassie Bradley was happy to spend time with me at Ethan’s party, especially around two in the morning, when couples started pairing off and finding empty tents. I’m no saint, so when Cassie—a sophomore who I can’t claim not to have noticed—attached herself to me around the fire ring right before things started to break up, I did nothing to discourage her. She’s nice. She’s cute. And I remember thinking that if she could make my thoughts stop for just a little bit, anything else she had on offer would be a fringe benefit.