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Lots of love,
Belle.
P.S.
You should marry Louisa. She loves you.
Fifteen Years Old.
Tenth grade starts with bangs.
Not to be confused with a bang.
Ross, of course, is behind the idea.
“Bangs really suit you. I just love your hair. It’s fantastic to work with. I need to straighten my own bangs every morning,” Ross moans.
We made a deal—I’ll give both of us bangs if he agrees to go to Krav Maga classes with me. We go three times a week. The instructors are tired of our faces. But I no longer leave my fate in the hands of men I don’t know.
I watch for Coach Locken in the hallways, in my classes, in the cafeteria. I’m never going to let him do that to me again, and revenge will come.
I’ve seen enough documentaries and watched enough news cycles to know that handing him over to the authorities won’t do any good. I need to take the law into my own hands. Because whether he gets away with what he’s done or not, my life will still be fucked forever.
I refuse to be that girl who messed with her coach. Who let him eat her out for months, and then oops, got scared and told Mommy and Daddy when he took her virginity. No. Screw that. I’m a girl with a plan.
Coach Locken stays away from me.
One month follows the other, and I almost start breathing again.
Then one Saturday morning, bright and early, when Mom’s making pancakes downstairs, Dad reads the paper and Persephone is on the phone with Sailor, something happens.
It’s weird that it happens, because everything else about this Saturday is so ordinary. So mundane. The scent of pancakes wafts under the cracks of the bathroom. So does Persephone’s laughter as she and Sailor discuss how obnoxiously romantic both our parents are (Sailor is, unfortunately, also the spawn of two people who really need to stop pawing one another in public).
I get a text from Locken.
I’m going to do it again if you tell.
Be warned.
Consider me warned.
I’m about to throw up.
But I think I know why he feels confident in telling me this—he knows the authorities are a piece of crap. The school board would never believe me. The local police station is full of his schoolmates—people he drinks beer with—and Southie is just not a place where you go to the police. You take care of shit on your own.
I pee in the toilet. Feel like I stopped peeing—my bladder is empty, I know, because I’ve been peeing fifteen years straight, every day, multiple times a day, without fail—but for some reason, I keep dripping. The cramping in my stomach is bad. Like my gut is constricting against something it wants to purge out.
I look down, between my legs, and frown. A gush of blood comes out. I blink into the toilet bowl, spreading my thighs apart, and I see a clump of … something.
Oh God.
Oh God.
Oh God.
I bend over forward and throw up right there on the tiles. I’m shaking. No. It can’t be. I reach above my head for a towel hanging on a rack and stuff it into my mouth to muffle my cries. I squirm on the floor and scream into the towel.
Crying, crying, crying.
I was pregnant.
The bastard got me pregnant.
Of course he did.
But … why did I lose the baby?
I calculate back and realize the pregnancy was five weeks long. I’d fallen during the last week of summer break. But still. How? Why? How come?
This is the moment I realize I am not myself anymore.
That maybe I’ll never truly be myself, because I didn’t have time to figure out who I was.
This is when I think my faith in humanity will never be restored.
That things cannot possibly get any worse.
And then they do.
I was going to fucking kill someone, and it wasn’t going to be Emmabelle Penrose, even though she was the woman who most deserved my wrath.
Crumpling the handwritten letter, I slam-dunked it into the bin, scooped my keys from the kitchen island, and charged toward the door.
I took the stairs two at a time, almost toppling over on my way to the Bentley.
My first stop was Sweven’s still-paid-for rented flat. The matchbox-sized hellhole from which I rescued her like a flea-ridden puppy.
I banged on the door until my fists were red and sore. No one answered.
“Open the door, Emmabelle. I know you’re there!”
One of her neighbors shuffled outside their apartment, clad in a Big Lebowski robe, a joint dangling from the side of his mouth.
“You’re wasting your time, man. She hasn’t lived here in a few months. Moved in with her rich boyfriend.” The neighbor puffed on his spliff, cocking his head to the side. “Come to think of it, he looked a lot like you.”
She hadn’t come back home.
My next destination was Persephone and Cillian’s place.
