Chapter 3
THREE
HARPER
I didn’t speak a word to Silas the whole five-hour drive to Dallas.
I was busy constantly texting Z, but I was also pretty sure that if I answered any of Silas’s probing questions, I’d just start screaming and not be able to stop.
Safer to white-knuckle my phone and pretend the man who abandoned me didn’t exist. Even if he was two feet away, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel like he had any right to be nervous.
A little after eleven at night, I finally get a text back letting me know Z lit out the window into the woods right after I left to avoid Frank’s wrath, and that he’s still lying low.
And people wonder why I’m so pissed off all the time.
I’m angry because life’s not fair.
I’m angry because my best friend is afraid to sleep in his own goddamn bed in case he gets caught off guard by his abusive fuck of a stepfather.
I’m angry because instead of saving him and starting our life together—instead of that courthouse and those vows and getting the fuck out—I got hauled off to a pristine McMansion in the Dallas suburbs like some kind of rescue pet Silas can parade around to prove he’s changed.
We rolled in at midnight. My new stepmother, Helen—because apparently Silas landed himself an actual functioning adult this time—waited up for us.
She came at me with the biggest smile and wide-open arms, gushing about how welcome I was and how she’d already made up the bed with fresh sheets.
I stood stiff for the hug that lasted far too long.
She really had made up the bed, too. I’ve never touched fabric that soft in my life. There was a whole room for me.
Here I was, braced for another shitty Darlene. I was ready for the yelling and resentment, especially for a kid who wasn’t hers.
But Helen? Helen was lovely. Warm. Genuine. The kind of woman who bakes cookies at eleven at night because her new stepdaughter might be hungry.
It was absolutely infuriating.
Because all I could picture was Z in those woods, swatting mosquitoes away, hungry and scared, while I got swept away to some magical bullshit fairytale with soft sheets and homemade snickerdoodles on the goddamn nightstand.
I finally get my wish and got out, but my best friend gets left behind?
How am I supposed to live with that? How am I supposed to eat Helen’s perfect cookies and sleep in clean sheets and pretend I’m not abandoning the only person who’s never abandoned me?
Talk about not fucking fair.
There’s apparently a perfect stepbrother in the picture, too.
I haven’t met him yet. He’s in my grade but went to bed already because of some early morning debate practice.
Their school year started two weeks ago, and McPerfect Stepbrother is already in the swing of extracurriculars.
He was gone by the time Silas finally succeeded in banging on my door this morning, shouting that I was going to be late.
As if I cared about being late. As if any of this matters.
I only dragged myself out of bed and let him haul me to Westfield Preparatory Academy because if I’m out of Silas’s sight long enough, maybe I can find a way to get back to Selbyville. Back to Z. Back to the plan that actually made sense.
I haven’t figured out how to sneak off campus yet, though. The place is off a long, secluded road surrounded by nothing but expensive houses and tall hedges.
If I thought the McMansion was Stepford, I had no fucking clue.
This campus gives serious “Rich People Raising Future Senators” vibes.
Big brick facade, manicured hedges so perfect they look fake, and not a single cigarette burn on the pavement.
A far cry from the cracked blacktop and rusted-out chain-link of my old school back in Selbyville, where the bathrooms didn’t have stall doors and half the lockers were rusted shut.
First thing they did in the office was hand me a godawful gray pleated skirt and blazer and told me to change.
As if wearing their uniform would somehow transform me into one of them.
School here started two weeks ago, but the counselor assured me—as Silas forked over a tuition check from Helen’s bank account, I assume—that the teachers will help me catch up.
Let’s hope for Helen’s sake that they accept refunds.
Because this is just a bump in the road, I think furiously as I glare down at the creased map they gave me this morning.
A too-friendly student volunteer was all ready to shadow me all day, but I noped out of that and just grabbed a map along with my schedule.
The campus is ridiculously large, and I stomp past rows of pristine lockers toward the cafeteria.
My old school had bloodstains in the stairwell that nobody bothered cleaning up.
This place smells like money, success, and lemon-scented floor wax.
If I can just get back to Z and find a way to the courthouse, we can still get that marriage license and—
“What are you hiding in your backpack, freak?”
“Don’t!” A girl’s shrill cry yanks my attention toward an open doorway and the courtyard beyond.
Four girls surround a much smaller girl—freshman, probably, based on the terrified-deer look in her eyes—who’s clutching her backpack to her chest like it’s the only thing keeping her alive. One of the bigger girls grabs for it.
“Don’t!” the girl says again, dancing backward until she runs smack into another member of the mean-girl pack. Caged in. Classic predator move.
“She’s been cuddling it like a baby all day,” jeers the tallest girl—a big redhead with thick thighs and a ponytail curled into identical ringlets to match the other three. Like they coordinated in a group text.
“What is it?” asks the one I immediately clock as Queen Bitch, based on the way the others orbit around her.
She sidles to the center of the group and gets right in the freshman’s face.
“You got weed in there? Ritalin? Or is it just your baby blankie you still carry around because you’re missing Mommy? ”
The girls around her crack up like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.
I roll my eyes. What a cunt.
Still, not my business. I should really just keep walking.
Where the hell are the teachers anyway? It’s lunchtime and apparently an “open campus,” something the guidance counselor who handed me my schedule this morning gushed about, like it was some kind of privilege instead of an obvious lawsuit waiting to happen.
Looks to me like it’s just an opportunity for bullying without any adult supervision.
“No, don’t!” the freshman screeches as the redhead succeeds in wrestling her backpack away. “Don’t open it!”
Something in that voice—that desperate, trapped sound—hits me wrong.
“Hey!” I shout, anger boiling over before I can think better of it. I stomp toward the little group with my most impressive resting bitch face locked and loaded. “I just told one of the teachers I heard fighting out here. They’ll be here any second.”
“McKenzie...” The redhead looks worriedly toward Queen Bitch. “Maybe we should—”
But McKenzie—of course that’s her name—just crosses her arms and narrows her eyes at me like I’m something she scraped off her designer shoe. “She’s bluffing. Open the bag.”
“Wait!” the freshman shouts one last time, but Redhead’s an obedient little soldier. She unzips the backpack.
Baby kittens immediately start jumping out.
Whoa. Didn’t see that coming.
Neither did Redhead, apparently. She yelps and drops the bag when a little gray kitten with snow-white feet leaps at her face, tiny claws out like a fuzzy ninja.
“Pansy!” the freshman yelps, lunging for a kitten as it scampers for freedom across the open courtyard. “Sox!”
The white-footed kitten scampers down Redhead’s body—who’s still screeching like she’s being murdered—and makes a break for the doorway I just came through.
I leap left and dive, hands out, just barely managing to swoop up the little wriggling ball of fur before it escapes inside the building.
My knees scrape concrete, but the kitten is safe, and I pull it against my chest as McKenzie and her pack point and laugh, already hurrying away from the scene before they’re associated with the kitten jailbreak.
“What bitches,” I mutter, cuddling the kitten to my chest while I push back to my feet. The little thing is purring so hard I can feel it vibrating through my ribs.
“Here.” I hand it back to the freshman, who receives the kitten gratefully but is still looking over her shoulder, panic written all over her face as she tries to figure out where the other two kittens went.
“You want me to help you look for them?” The offer’s out of my mouth before I can think better of it.
I’m not really hungry anyway. I don’t usually eat lunch.
Plus, I’ve got a couple of Helen’s cookies stowed away in my backpack if I get hungry later.
Never leave delicious food behind—a survival rule I adopted back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and Darlene would forget to buy anything besides bottom-shelf tequila.
“Really?” The girl looks up at me with these wide eyes, like I just offered her a kidney. “You’ll help?”
“Sure. I’m Harper, by the way.”
“Marie,” she calls over her shoulder, already taking off across the courtyard with the backpack clutched to her chest.
I run after her.
First, we track down the orange cat—Leo, according to Marie’s frantic calling—before we’re hunting for the third and last escapee. Marie is actually a sophomore, not a freshman. She just skipped a grade because she’s smart. Nothing like small talk as you chase kittens around a quad.
“How come you have kittens in your backpack anyway?” I ask, panting, as we zero in on the one she called Pansy earlier. Pansy is currently hiding in a sunken corner by the gutter, making the most heartbreaking little mewling sounds.