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Chapter One
Jarett
I’m walking home from the school bus stop, my backpack torn, hanging from one strap over my shoulder, my ribs aching dully from the beating I took—and gave—after classes ended. A joint hangs from my lips, taking the edge off the pain, off reality.
It’s not enough, though.
I’m late, and I’m not even sure my new foster parents will care. I’m not even sure where this home is that I’m heading toward. What it means. The house down the street is new to me, the people in it strangers. I arrived here almost a year ago, but I still haven’t yet unpacked most of my stuff.
Not that I have all that much. Clothes. Some books. A tablet.
Always ready to move to another foster home, another town. Always ready to leave. When you’re eighteen and can barely remember having a family—though the memory is there just to tease you with what-ifs and smashed hopes—then you know it’s not in the cards. Is there an expiry date to happiness?
I guess I feel that way, that I’ve hit rock bottom with my luck. There’s no getting better, no finding what I’ve lost. It’s over, and I want to punch everything and everyone, make room for my anger. I want to keep punching and hitting and screaming until the rage runs out of me like blood and leaves me empty.
At peace.
Another word that has no meaning anymore.
Taking a long drag on the end of my joint, drawing the last of the smoke into my lungs, I flick it into the gutter and finally notice that someone’s following me.
It’s an old reflex, checking my surroundings. Growing up in the system isn’t easy, or safe. You learn to protect yourself, to look out for danger.
But it’s just a girl. Blond, tall, curvy, in a tiny skirt, knee-high socks and combat boots. Her shirt is tight, her cleavage drawing my gaze.
She’s followed me before. Yeah, I noticed, and damn, she’s too pretty to forget.
But this time she smiles at me, big and wide.
It distracts me enough that she skips across the street and catches up with me. She falls in step beside me as if that’s the most natural thing in the world, and grins sideways at me.
“Hi,’ she says. “I’m Augusta, but you can call me Gigi. Augusta Watson, your neighbor? What’s your name?”
***
Gigi, as it turns out, is one persistent chick. I ignore her questions, ignore her presence by my side as I continue down the street.
Or try to.
She keeps talking, about this and that, school and the neighbors and the classes and the weather, and at first, it’s all white noise. Will her mouth never stop running? Jesus fuck. After all the hours slouched at the back of the class, trying to follow subjects I never really understood—trying my best because during the past few years I just fought and smoked and hated the world—my head is pounding.
The years since Connor died. Foster families that hosted me never really cared about what I did when I wasn’t in their line of sight, not since Connor passed. Connor cared enough to adopt me, but he died five years ago, and since then I’ve been drifting.
Until the Lowes took me in. Will I stay here? That’s the million buck question.
Nah. I’ll probably drift away again soon. Nothing’s permanent in this life. People, places, promises. They change. They fade.
They die.
Gigi is still talking, about someone called Merc and about music. Yeah, she’s persistent, but as we approach the Lowes’ house, my destination, I find I don’t mind. That my heart has stopped racing for the first time in I don’t know how long, and that I wish she’d stay and talk to me some more.
The fuck, right?
She stops, realizing I’m staring at her, and tucks a strand of white-blond hair behind her ear. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“So you can speak. I was starting to wonder.”
I smirk. “I wonder about lots of things.”
“Such as?”
About her, for starters. But I just shake my head.
