Chapter 4
Everly
Seven Months Ago
DO THE PLANET A FAVOR AND LEAVE IT. WE’VE GOT ENOUGH SLUTS, FAKE FRIENDS AND HOMEWRECKERS ALREADY. BYYEEE @its.everly.davis And if you’re just joining us, beware: this bitch will try to steal your man!
The post included my yearbook picture with devil horns added to it, demon eyes in place of mine and flames in the background.
It hadn’t gone viral by internet standards, but everyone in my school, town and pretty much everyone I’d ever met had seen it.
I slam my laptop closed and shove it into my backpack.
I swallow the lump in my throat and blink back the tears.
Fuck them and fuck this place. I stand up from the tree I found to sit under at lunch—alone because that’s my new MO.
I dust off my jean shorts and head to the parking lot.
I don’t care if I get cooked for cutting class. I’m not going back in there today.
As soon as my car comes into view in the student lot, I notice the dangling side mirror first. The flat tires next.
The two I can see are completely deflated.
Walking closer, I can’t stop the tears or the heaving breaths when I see the word slut carved into the hood and the deep scratches in the sides that stretch from bumper to bumper.
I decide right then that I’m leaving. The school for sure.
The town, probably. The planet? Not even a little bit.
Fuck these small-town bullies. My mind is brave, but I’m just tired.
I turn around and aim straight for my locker.
I’m taking all my shit and never coming back.
Hopefully the damage to my car is repairable.
I call for the roadside assistance my mom insisted both Via and I have in case we get stranded and request a tow to my house, which would also get me a ride there.
I take it as a sign of good karma that I’m not, in fact, the devil the bullies claim I am when the tow truck driver shows up within twenty minutes and I can get the fuck out of there before classes let out.
Besides my brief encounter with Dr. Franklin, he’s the only other person I’ve run into.
Thankfully. It’s just me and him in the parking lot while he hooks up my car and hauls us both home.
I can tell he wants to ask me about the vandalism, but I do my best impression of the doctored yearbook photo and give just enough super bitch energy that he doesn’t.
When he pulls up to my house, I ask him to back my car into an area on the side of the garage designed for RV parking and hidden behind a wooden gate.
I sign the receipt, and he leaves. I stand in the front yard staring at the closed gate that hides my car and the evidence of the nightmare I’ve been living since the night of Kendall and Chase’s party. Or more accurately, the morning after.
As I look up the slant of the driveway at the house I grew up in, the only home I’ve ever known, I’m resolved.
It doesn’t feel like my home anymore. If I let myself dwell on it too much, it will break me.
I don’t have a home. I’m barely eighteen years old and I don’t have a home.
I give myself a minute, then square my shoulders and take a deep breath and tuck the sorrow and anger away the way I saw my dad do when I was young.
Military training taught him how to compartmentalize, although I didn’t know that’s what it was called back then.
But I observed the restraint it took for him to exist in civilian life.
I assumed it’s why he preferred to be deployed, off fighting for some cause to being here with a bunch of privileged people who don’t recognize the price of their freedom.
My back pocket buzzed with a text from Via.
Saw the post. Checked your location. OMW.
Her text has pressure building behind my eyes again. This time I let the tears fall unchecked and walk up the front path into the house. Ten minutes later, Via finds me face down on my bed, no longer crying, but the evidence is unmistakable. I feel her weight dip the edge of my mattress.
“I called Allie.”
I roll over and sit up, dragging my fists down my cheeks. “What’d she say?” I don’t ask her why. I know why. We’re out of options. If she hadn’t done it, I would’ve.
“She’s excited to see you,” Via says, sans emotion. We both learned it from our dad. My mom’s MO is the opposite. She overhypes everything. Different execution of the same tactic. Squash it. Tuck it. Ignore it.
“I’m fucking up my plan. Senior year. College. Everything.”
“This is bullshit, Evvie. I know you didn’t do what they’re saying.
Ryan knows it too. He even argued with Chase about it, but he won’t give me any details.
He just said he didn’t realize what a pussy his best friend is.
” She turns her head to look me in the eyes, and I see hers shimmering with unshed tears.
Her knuckles turn white as she clenches the edge of the mattress. She’s pissed, not sad.
That creates a warm glow in my chest. My eyes well up too.
Knowing Via is on my side, believes me, and Ryan too, is all I care about.
Not really, but they are the most important.
I don’t want to care that basically the whole town thinks I’m a slut.
But I do. The bigger part is that all this has derailed years of planning.
I have no idea what I’ll do with my future now.
Not that I’ve decided on a college or a major yet.
I just knew I was going and I couldn’t wait to get there.
Now, I don’t even know what the rest of senior year looks like, much less college.
“It is what it is. I’m not going to stay here and take it anymore. I can’t.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, Evvie.”
I nod once, rub my palms down my thighs, take a deep breath and stand to begin packing up my life. “Me too.”