Before (by pricelezz prince)

Am waiting

Waiting for it

waiting patiently

I de wait like waiter

<<<<<<<<<episode 1>>>>>>>>>>>>> . . . When he was little, the boy used to dream of who he would grow up to be. Maybe a policeman, or a teacher. Mummy’s friend Vance read books for a job, and that seemed fun. But the boy wasn’t sure of his own capabilities—he had no talents. He couldn’t sing like the kid in his class Joss; he couldn’t add and subtract long numbers like Angela; he could barely speak in front of his classmates, unlike funny, loudmouthed Calvin. The only thing he liked to do was read page after page of his books. He waited for Vance to bring them by: one a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. There were periods when the man wouldn’t show and he would grow bored, rereading the same torn pages of his favorites. But he learned to trust that the kind man would always come back, book in hand. The boy grew taller, grew smarter, an inch and a new book every two weeks, it seemed. His parents were changing with the seasons. His dad grew louder, sloppier, and his mum grew more and more tired, her sobs filling the night, louder and louder. The smell of tobacco and worse began to fill the walls of the small house. As sure as the dishes overflowing the sink was the smell of scotch on his dad’s breath. As the months went on, he would sometimes forget what his dad looked like altogether. Vance came around more, and he barely noticed when his mum’s sobs changed in the night. He had made friends at this point. Well, one friend. The friend moved away, and he himself never bothered to make new friends. He felt like he didn’t need them. He didn’t mind being alone. The men who came that night changed something deep within the boy. What he saw happen to his mum made him harden, and he grew angrier as his dad became a stranger. Soon after, his dad stopped stumbling into the small, filthy house at all. He was gone, and the boy was relieved. No more scotch, no more broken furniture or holes in the walls. The only thing he left behind was a boy without a dad and a living room full of half-empty packs of cigarettes. The boy hated the taste the cigarettes left, but loved the way the smoke filled his lungs, stealing his breath. He found himself smoking every single one, and then he bought more. He made friends, if you could call a group of rebels and delinquents who caused more trouble than they were worth friends. He began to stay out late, and the little white lies and harmless pranks the group of angry boys would play began turning into more serious crimes. They turned into something darker, something that they all knew was wrong—the deepest level of wrong—but they thought they were just having fun. They were entitled and couldn’t deny the adrenaline rush that came with the power they felt. After each innocence they stole, their veins pulsed with more arrogance, more hunger, fewer boundaries. This boy was the softest one still among them, but he had lost the conscience that once made him dream of becoming a fireman or a teacher. The relationship to women he was developing wasn’t typical. He craved their touch, but shielded himself against any type of emotional connection. This included his mum, to whom he stopped saying even a simple “I love you.” He barely saw her anyway. He spent almost all his time running the streets, and the house came to mean nothing to him except for the place where the packages occasionally arrived. An address from Washington state was scribbled under Vance’s name on these packages. Vance had left him, too. Girls paid attention to the boy. They latched on to him, long nails digging crescents into his arms as he lied to them, kissed them, fucked them. After sex, most of the girls would try to wrap their arms around him. He would brush them off, placing no kisses or soft caresses to their skin. Most of the time he was gone before they caught their breath. He spent his days high, his nights higher. Hanging out in the alley behind the liquor store or in Mark’s dad’s shop, wasting life away. Breaking into liquor stores, making unforgivable home videos, humiliating naive girls. He had ceased being able to feel any kind of emotion outside of arrogance and anger. Finally, his mum had had enough. She no longer had the funds or the patience to deal with his destructive behavior. His dad had been offered a university job in the United States. Washington, to be exact. The same state as Vance, the same city, even. The good man and the bad man together in the same place again. His mum didn’t think he could overhear her speaking to his dad about shipping him off there. Apparently the old man had cleaned up some, though the boy wasn’t quite sure. He’d never be sure. His dad had a girlfriend, too, a nice woman who the boy was envious of. She got to see the benefits of the new side of him. She got to share sober meals and kind words that he never got the chance to hear. When he arrived at the university, he moved into a frat house, out of spite against the old man. But although he didn’t like the place, moving his boxes into the decent-sized room that would be his, he felt a slight twinge of relief. The room was twice the size that his room in Hampstead had been. It had no holes in the walls; there were no bugs crawling up the sinks in the bathroom. He finally had a place to put all of his books. At first, he kept to himself, not bothering to make any friends. His crowd came together slowly, and with it he fell into the same dark pattern. He met the virtual twin of Mark, all the way over in America, making him start to think this was the way the world was just supposed to be. He began to accept that he would always be alone. He was good at hurting people, at causing mischief. He hurt another girl, like the one before, and he felt that same storm coursing up and down his spine, fighting to destroy his life with its wild energy. He began drinking the way his dad did, being the worst type of hypocrite. He didn’t care, though; he was numb and he had friends and they helped him ignore the fact that he didn’t have anything real in his life. Nothing really mattered. Not even the girls who tried to get through to him. Natalie When he met the blue-eyed girl with dark hair, he knew she was there to test him in new ways. She was kind, the gentlest spirit he had met so far . . . and she was infatuated with him. He took the naive girl from her tidy, unblemished world and swept her into a dustpan, then scattered her across a dark and unforgiving world that was completely unfamiliar to her. His callousness made her an outcast, exiled from her church first, then from her family. The gossip was harsh, the whispers traveling from one judgmental Bible-clutching woman to another. Her family wasn’t any better. She had no one, and she made the mistake of trusting him to be more than he was capable of being. What he did to her was the last straw for his mother. Shipping him to America, to the state of Washington, to be with his would-be father, his treatment of Natalie got him exiled from his London homeland. The loneliness he’d felt all along was finally achieved in real life. The church is packed today, rows and rows of us, all joined together to worship on a hot July afternoon. Every week, usually the same people, all of whom I can call by their first and last names. My family lives like royalty here in one of Jesus’s smallest venues. My younger sister, Cecily, is sitting next to me in the very front row, her small hands picking at the chipped wooden pew. Our church has just received a grant to renovate some of the interior, and our youth group has been helping gather the supplies donated by the local community. This week, our task is to obtain paint from locals and paint these pews over. I’ve been spending my evenings going from one hardware store to another, asking for donations. As if to underscore the futility I feel about this task, I hear a faint snapping sound and look over to see that Cecily has broken off a small piece of wood from her seat. Her fingernails are painted pink to match the bow in her dark brown hair, but boy, can she be destructive. “Cecily, we’re fixing these next week. Please don’t.” I gently take her small hands in mine, and she pouts just a little. “You can help paint them to make them beautiful again. You would like that, wouldn’t you?” I smile at her. She smiles back, an adorable missing-teeth smile, and nods her head. Her curls move with her, making my mum proud of her work with the iron this morning. The pastor is almost finished with his sermon, and my parents are holding hands, staring toward the front of the small church. Sweat has been gathering on my neck, rolling in sticky drops down my back as words about sinning and suffering float around my head. It’s so hot in here that my mum’s makeup has started to shine down her neck and smear black rings around her eyes. This should be the last week without air-conditioning we have to suffer through. Or it better be; even I might feign illness to avoid this sweltering place if it’s not. At the end of service, my mum stands to talk to the pastor’s wife. My mum admires that woman a lot—a little too much, if you ask me. Pauline, the first lady of our church, is a tough woman, with little empathy for others, so really I get why my mum would be drawn to her. I wave to Thomas, the only boy my age who’s in the Youth Group. As he walks by, he and his entire family, following the line of people exiting the church, wave back to me. Ready to get some fresh air, I stand and wipe my hands on my pale blue dress. “Can you take Cecily to the car?” my dad asks with a knowing smile. He’s going to try to get my mum to stop talking, just like every Sunday. She’s one of those women who chat and chat after saying goodbye a minimum of three times.. . . .. . . To be continued.

Hmm

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@jummybabe @denciebabe @victoriouschild @hormortiyor @froshberry-2 @dbramo @lesky @jerrie @bhorllhyqueen @ladyg New story here guys

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episode 2 I didn’t take after her in that way. Instead, I strive to take after my dad, whose few words usually hold a lifetime’s worth of meaning. And I know my dad loves how much of himself has been passed down to me, from his quiet demeanor, to his dark hair and pale blue eyes (the most obvious traits), to our height. Or lack of height. The pair of us barely stand five and a half feet, though he’s ever so slightly taller than me. Cecily will surpass both of us by age ten, my mum teases us. I nod to my dad and take my sister’s hand. She walks quicker than me, the excitement of youth causing her to rush straight through the remainder of the small crowd. I want to pull her back, but she turns back to me with the biggest smile on her face, and I can’t bring myself to do anything but run with her. We break into a sprint, rushing down the stairs and onto the lawn. Cecily dodges an elderly couple, and I laugh when she shrieks and barely misses knocking down Tyler Kenton, the meanest boy in our church. The sun is bright and the air is thick in my lungs and I run faster and faster, chasing after her until she tumbles onto the grass. I drop down to my knees to check on her. I lean in and brush the hair back from her face. Little pools of tears are threatening to burst, and her bottom lip is trembling fiercely. “My dress . . .” She pats her small hands on her white dress, focusing on the grass stains on the fabric. “It’s ruined!” She buries her face in her dirty hands, and I reach for them, pulling them down to her lap. I smile and speak softly. “It’s not ruined. It can be washed, darling.” I swipe my thumb across the tear trying to roll down her cheek. She sniffles, not ready to believe me. “It happens all the time; it’s happened to me at least thirty times,” I assure her, even though it’s a lie. The corners of her mouth turn upward, and she fights a smile. “Has not.” She calls me out for my fib. I wrap my arm around her and pull her up to stand. My eyes glance over her pale arms to make sure I didn’t miss anything. All clear. I keep my arm around her as we walk across the churchyard toward the parking lot. My parents are approaching us from that direction, my dad having finally gotten Mum to stop gossiping. During the drive home, I sit in the backseat with Cecily, drawing little butterflies in her favorite coloring book while my dad talks to my mum about the raccoon problem we’ve been having in our bins out back. My dad leaves the car running when he parks in the driveway. Cecily gives me a quick kiss on the cheek and climbs out of the backseat. I follow her and hug my mum and get a peck on the cheek from my dad before I step into the driver’s seat. My dad looks down at me. “Be careful now, Junebug. There are a lot of people out today with the sun.” He lifts his hand to shade his squinted eyes. It’s the sunniest day Hampstead has had in quite a while. We’ve had the heat, but no sun. I nod and promise my dad that I’ll be safe. I wait until I’m out of the neighborhood to change the radio station. I turn the volume up and sing along to every song on my way to the center of the city. My goal is to get three buckets of paint from all the three shops I’m visiting. I’ll be happy with one from each, but my goal is to get three so we have enough to cover everything. The first shop, Mark’s Paint and Supply, is known for being the cheapest in town. Mark, the owner, has a really good reputation in our area, and I’m delighted to meet him. I park in the nearly empty lot; only a classic-style car painted candy-apple red and a minivan are parked in the entire lot. The building is old, made out of wooden planks and unstable drywall. The sign is crooked, the M barely legible. When I open the wooden door, it creaks and a bell sounds. A cat jumps down from a cardboard box and lands on its feet in front of me. I pet the fur ball for a moment before making my way to the register. The inside of the shop is just as untidy as the outside, and what with all the clutter, I can’t see the boy behind the register when I first approach. His presence there shocks me a little. He’s tall and broad-shouldered; he looks like the kind of boy who’s played sports for years. “Mark . . .” I say, stumbling to remember his last name. Everyone just calls him Mark. “I’m Mark,” a voice behind the athletic- looking boy says. Bending to the side a little, I notice another boy, sitting in a chair behind the desk, dressed in all black. His frame is much leaner than the first, and yet the presence he exudes is somehow larger than the other boy’s. His hair is dark, grown down the sides, leaving a swoop of hair across his forehead. His arms have tattoos on them, randomly scattered black ink patches in a sea of tan skin. It’s not really my thing, but instead of being critical of him, all I can think is how everyone has a tan this summer except me. “He’s not, I am,” a third voice says. Looking to the other side of the first boy, I find a kid of average height, thin build, with a very tight buzz cut. “I’m Mark Junior, though. If you’re looking for my old man, he’s not here today.” The third boy has a few tattoos as well, though they’re more organized than the wild- haired boy’s, and he has a piercing in his eyebrow. I remember asking my family about getting my belly button pierced, and still to this day I have to laugh when I remember their horrified reactions. “He’s the better of the two Marks,” the wild-haired boy intones, his voice deep and slow. He smiles, and two deep, beautiful dimples cut through his cheeks. I laugh, suspecting this is not even close to the truth. “I somehow doubt that,” I tease. They all laugh along, and Mark Jr. steps closer, a smile on his lips. The boy in the chair stands up. He’s so tall his presence is magnified even further. He comes forward and towers over me. He’s attractive; his face is strong. A sharp jawline, dark lashes, full brows. His nose is slender and his lips are a light pink. I stare at him and he stares at me. “Are you looking for my dad for a reason?” Mark asks. When I don’t immediately respond, Mark and the athlete both look back and forth between me and their friend. Snapping back to the moment, and a little embarrassed to be caught staring, I begin my spiel. “I’m here from Hempstead Baptist and was wondering if you would like to donate paint or supplies to us. We’re remodeling our church and are in need of donations . . .” I stop because the charming one with the pink lips is deep in discussion, whispering with his friends in a voice that is too low for me to hear. Then they stop, and the boys stare at me all at once, three smiles in a row. Mark speaks first. “We can absolutely do that for you,” he says. His smile reminds me of a feline of sorts. I can’t quite put my finger on why. I smile back and begin to thank him. He turns to his friend with the giant ship tattooed on his biceps. “Hardin, how many cans are over there?” Hardin? What a very strange name; I’ve never heard it before. This Hardin’s black shirtsleeves barely cover the bottom half of the wooden ship. It’s nicely done; the detail and shading are attractively rendered. When I look up at his face, stopping for a beat on his lips, I can feel my cheeks get hot. He’s staring right at me, noticing my intense scrutiny of his face. I see Mark and Hardin make eye contact but miss what Mark mouths to him. “How about a proposition?” Mark says, nodding toward Hardin. I’m interested in hearing this. This Hardin seems funny—a little off, but I like him so far. “And what’s that?” I wrap my finger into the ends of my hair and wait. Hardin is still staring back at me. There’s something about him that’s guarded. I can sense it from across the small shop. I find myself very curious about this boy who’s trying awfully hard to look so tough. I cringe imagining what my parents would think, how they would react to me bringing him to our home. My mum thinks tattoos are evil, but I don’t know. They’re not entirely my thing, but I feel like they can be a form of self-expression, and there’s undoubtedly always beauty in that. Mark scratches his smooth jaw. “If you go out on two dates with my friend Hardin here, I’ll give you ten gallons of paint.” I look over to Hardin, who’s eyeing me with a smirk playing at the corners of his lips. Lips that are so pretty. His slightly feminine features make him more attractive than his black clothing or messy hair. I wonder if this is what they’re whispering about. Hardin liking me? While I consider the idea, Mark ups the ante: “Any color. Any finish of your choice. On the house. Ten gallons.” He’s a good salesman. I click my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “One date,” I counter. Hardin laughs; the lump in his throat moves with his laugh, and his dimples crease in his cheeks. Okay, he’s very, very hot. I can’t believe I didn’t notice just how hot he was when I first arrived. I was so focused on getting the paint that I barely noticed how green his eyes are under the fluorescent lights of the paint shop. “One date works.” Hardin shoves his hand into his pocket, and Mark looks at the buzz-cut gentleman. Feeling quite victorious at the success of my little haggling, I smile and list the colors I need for the pews, the walls, the stairs, all the while pretending that I’m not already anticipating my date with Hardin, the guarded, messy-haired boy who’s so innocent and shy that he’s willing to trade ten gallons of paint for one date. To be continued.

Hope Hardin is not who am thinking

hope he is not up to something

Sorry Is This A Gay Story? ,i'm Not Understanding

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Keep ur ass well o if wat am thinkin is true.

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Are u guy or a girl

next please!

It a Gay story

I don't get.. Is dis a gay story

episode 3 Molly's side of the story His mum told him stories about dangerous girls when he was a boy. The meaner a girl is to you, the farther she runs from you, the more she likes you. You should pursue her, young boys are taught. What those pushy boys grow up to find is that most of the time, when a girl doesn’t like you, she simply just doesn’t like you. The girl grew up without a woman to show her how to be. Her mum dreamed of a fast life, bigger than she herself could offer, and the girl learned how men were supposed to behave by observing the actions of those around her. As the girl grew up, she quickly caught on to the game and became a master player. I pull my dress down as I turn the dark corner to enter the alleyway. I hear the mesh fabric rip as I tug it, and I curse at myself for doing this again. I’d taken the train to downtown hoping to accomplish . . . something. What, I’m not entirely sure, but I’m so, so tired of feeling like this. Emptiness can make you behave in ways you could never imagine, and this is the only way to satisfy the giant fucking hole inside of me. The satisfaction comes and goes as the men ogle me. They feel entitled to my body since I dress in a way that purposely entices them. They are disgusting and entirely wrong, but I play into their lust, encouraging their behavior with a wink of my eye. A shy smile at a lonely man goes a long way. Needing this attention makes me sick to my stomach. It’s more than an ache; it’s a scalding white-hot burn inside of me. As I turn another corner, a black car approaches, and I glance away as the man behind the wheel slows down to look at me. The streets are dark, and this zigzag alley is located behind one of the richest parts of Philadelphia. Shops line the streets, each of them having their own back dock here. There’s too much money and not enough pleasantness in the Main Line. “You want to go for a ride?” the man asks as his automatic window rolls down with a smooth whir. His face is slightly wrinkled, and his sandy-brown-and-gray hair is neatly parted and combed down on the sides. His smile is charming, and he looks good for his age, but there’s a warning that sounds in my mind each and every weekend that I take this walk, follow this zombie routine for some unknowable reason. The faux kindness in his smile is just that, as fake as my “Chanel” bag. His smile comes from money; I know this by now. Men with black cars that are so clean they shine under the moonlight have money but no conscience. Their wives haven’t fucked them in weeks—months, even— and they search the streets for the attention they’ve been deprived of. But I don’t want his money. My parents have that, too much of it. “I’m not a prostitute, you sick fuck!” I kick my platform boot at his stupid shiny car and notice the gleam of a band on one finger. His eyes follow mine, and he tucks his hand under the steering wheel. Douchebag. “Nice try. Go home to your wife—I’m sure whatever excuse you’ve given her is set to expire.” I begin to walk away, and he says something else to me. The distance catches the sound, carrying it away into the night, no doubt to some dark corner. I don’t bother looking back at him. The road is nearly empty since it’s after nine on a Monday night. The lights on the backs of the buildings are dim, the air calm and quiet. I pass behind a restaurant where steam billows from the roof, and the smell of charcoal fills my senses. It smells amazing and reminds me of backyard barbecues we’d have with Curtis’s family when I was younger. Back when they felt like a second family. I blink the thoughts away and return the smile of a middle-aged woman wearing an apron and a chef’s hat walking out of the back entrance of a restaurant. The flame from her lighter is bright in the night. She takes a drag from the cigarette in her hand, and I smile again. “Be careful out here, girl,” her raspy voice warns. “Always am,” I reply with a smile and a wave of my hand. She shakes her head and puts the cigarette back to her lips. The smoke fills the cold air, and the red fire at the end of the cigarette makes a crackling noise in the night’s silence before she tosses it to the concrete and loudly stomps on it. I continue walking, and the air grows colder. Another car passes, and I move to the side of the alley. The car is black . . . I look again and realize it’s the same shiny black as the last one. A chill runs cold down my back as it slows, tires crunching on the trash covering the alley. I walk faster, choosing to step behind a Dumpster to gain as much distance from the stranger as possible. My feet pick up the pace and I walk a little farther. I don’t know why I’m so paranoid tonight; I do this nearly every weekend. I dress in a hideous smock, kiss my dad on the cheek, and ask him for train fare. He frowns and tells me that I spend too much time alone and that I have to move on in the world before life passes me by. If moving on were so simple, I wouldn’t be doing this quick change into this dress or shoving the smock into my purse to put back on during the ride home. Move on. As if it were so simple. “Molly, you’re only seventeen; you have to get back to real life before you’ve missed too much of the best years of your life,” he tells me each time. If these are the best years of my life, I don’t see much point in living any longer than this. I always nod, agreeing with him with a smile while silently wishing he would stop comparing his loss to mine. The difference is, my mom wanted to leave. Tonight feels different somehow, maybe because the same man is now stopping next to me for the second time in twenty minutes. I break into a run, letting my fear carry me down the pothole-filled street to the busier road up ahead. A cab honks at me when I stumble into the street and jump back to the sidewalk, trying to catch my breath. I need to go home. Now. My chest catches fire, and I struggle to breathe in the cold air. I step back onto the sidewalk and look in every direction. “Molly? Molly Samuels, is that you?” a woman’s voice shouts from behind me. I turn around and see the familiar face of the last person I want to run into. I fight the need to bolt in the other direction when my eyes meet hers. She has a brown grocery bag in each hand as she walks toward me. “What are you doing out here, and this late?” Mrs. Garrett asks as a chunk of hair falls down over her cheek. “Just walking.” I try to push my dress down my thighs before she looks again. “Alone?” “You’re alone, too,” I say, my tone more than defensive. She sighs and shuffles the grocery bags to one arm. “Come on, get in the car.” She starts toward the brown van parked on the corner. With the click of a button, the passenger- side door unlocks, and I step inside hesitantly. I would rather be inside this car with her and her judgment than out on the street with the guy in the black car who doesn’t seem to take no for an answer. My temporary savior gets into the driver’s side and looks straight ahead for a minute before turning to me. “You know you can’t act out like this for the rest of your life.” Her statement ends in a strong tone, but her hands are shaking on the wheel. “I’m not—” “Don’t act like nothing has happened.” Her response lets me know that she isn’t in the mood to dance around social niceties. “You’re dressed completely different than you used to, certainly different than your father would probably approve of. Your hair is pink—nowhere near its natural blond. You’re out here at night, walking alone. I’m not the only one who noticed you, you know. John, who goes to my church, saw you the other night. He told us in front of everyone.” “I—” She waves her hand at my protest. “I’m not finished. Your dad told me you aren’t even going to Ohio State now, in spite of all those years of you and Curtis preparing to go together.” The name coming from her lips slices through me, breaking away at some hard shell I’ve gotten used to inhabiting. The thick nothingness I’ve been guarding myself with. Her son’s face covers my mind, and his voice fills my ears. “Stop,” I manage to say through my pain. “No, Molly,” Mrs. Garrett says. When I look over at her, she’s flustered, like she has bottles upon bottles of emotions inside of her that have been shaken over the last six months and now are within an inch of exploding. “He was my son,” she says. “So don’t you sit here and act like you have more of a reason to be hurt than me. I lost a child—my only child— and now I’m sitting here watching you, sweet Molly, who I’ve watched grow up, get lost, too— and I’m not going to be quiet anymore. You need to get your butt into college, get out of this town just like you and Curtis planned on. Get on with life. It’s what we all have to do. And if I can do it, hard as it is, you sure as hell can, too.” When Mrs. Garrett stops talking, I feel like she’s spent the last two minutes tying my stomach into knots. She has always been a quiet woman—her husband has always done most of the talking—but in the span of five minutes she’s become less fragile somehow. Her usually soft voice has taken on a new tone of determination, and she impresses me. Makes me feel heartbroken, too, at the fact that I’ve let my life turn into this ghoulish existence. To be continued.

To be continued

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Is nt dat easy to forget someone u lov jst like dat.

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So etz bcos of an heartbreak

Molly, she is right

************* episode 4**************** . . . .continuation of Molly's side of the story. But I was driving that car. I agreed to drive Curtis’s small truck the night before I got my license. We were excited, and his smile was persuasive. I loved him with every thread of my body, and when he died, I came unstitched. He was my calmness, my reassurance that I wouldn’t end up like my mother, a woman who lived and breathed to be more than someone’s wife in a big house, in a rich neighborhood. She spent her days painting and dancing in our big house, singing songs and promising me that we would make it out of the cookie-cutter town. “We won’t die here—I’ll convince your father someday,” she always said. She only held up half of the deal and left in the middle of the night two years ago. She couldn’t cope with the shame that apparently came from being a mother and a wife. Most women would have trouble finding shame in that, but not my mom. She wanted all the attention on her—she needed people to know her name. She blamed me when they didn’t, even though she tried to deny the fact. She was always ashamed of me; she constantly reminded me of what I did to her body. She told me—many times—how her body looked so good before I came around. She acted as if I chose to be placed there, inside this selfish woman’s womb. One time she showed me the marks I made on her stomach, and I cringed right alongside her at the sight of her shredded skin. Despite me hindering her lifestyle, she promised me the world. She told me about bigger, brighter cities with giant billboards that she wished she was pretty enough to be on. And early one morning, having listened to her tell me about the world she wanted the night before, I watched her through the staircase’s thick metal banister as she dragged her suitcase across the carpet toward the front door. She cursed and flipped her hair off her shoulders. Dressed like she was going to a job interview, she had full makeup, blow-dried hair—she must have used half a can of hairspray to get it to look that way. She was excited and confident as she touched her hair to adjust it slightly. Just before she walked out the door, she looked around her beautifully decorated living room, and her face filled with the biggest smile I had ever seen on her. Then she closed the door, and I could imagine her happily leaning against it outside, still smiling like she was going to paradise. I didn’t cry as I tiptoed down the stairs, trying to memorize how she looked and acted. I wanted to remember every interaction, every talk, every hug we shared. I realized even then that my life was changing again. I watched through the living room window as she got into a cab. I just stared at the driveway. I guess I always knew she wasn’t reliable. My father might be afraid to leave the town he grew up in, where he has an amazing job, but he’s fucking reliable. Mrs. Garrett touches the tips of my pink hair with a cautious finger. “Dipping your head in pink food coloring won’t change anything that happened.” I smile at her choice of words and say the first thing that comes to mind. “I didn’t dye my hair because I watched your son bleed out in front of me,” I snap, remembering the way the deep pink dye resembled blood as I rinsed it down the drain. I push her hand away, and, yeah, my words are harsh, but who the fuck is she to judge me? As she takes in what I said, I’m sure she’s picturing Curtis’s mangled body, the one I sat with for two hours before anyone came to help us. I tried to rip his seat belt from the driver’s seat, to no avail. The way the metal bent when we hit the rail made it impossible to move my arms. I tried, though, and I screamed as the jagged metal tore into my skin. My love wasn’t moving, he wasn’t making a sound, and I screamed at him, at the car, at the entire universe as I struggled to save us. A universe that betrayed me and went dark as his face paled and his arms went slack. I thank it now, grateful that my body shut off just after he died and I wasn’t forced to sit and watch the thing that was no longer him, watch and hope that he would somehow come back to life. With a soft sigh, Mrs. Garrett starts the car and pulls out. “I understand your pain, Molly . . . if anyone understands, it’s me. I’ve been trying to find a way to continue with my life, too, but you’re ruining yours over something you had no control over.” I’m baffled and try to focus by running one hand over the plastic of the car door. “No control? I was driving the car.” The sound of twisted metal colliding with a tree and then a metal barrier floods my ears, and I feel my hands shaking on my lap. “I was in control of his life, and I killed him.” He was life, the very definition of it. He was bright and warm and loved everything. Curtis could find joy in the most stupid, most simple things. I wasn’t like him. I was more cynical, especially after my mom left. But he listened to me every time my anger fueled a mistake. On his birthday he helped my dad clean up my mom’s painting room after I’d trashed it by splattering black paint across the precious paintings she’d left for us. He didn’t ask me why I wished her dead on more than one occasion. He never judged me, and he held me together in a way that I couldn’t do myself. I always thought he would be the reason I made it through college or made any friends in a new city. I was never good at hiding what I thought of people, so it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world for me to make friends. He always told me it was fine, I was fine the way I was, that I was just too painfully honest and he would have to be the one who took the role of liar in our relationship. He would pretend to like the pretentious, sweater-tied-around-their-waists rich kids at our school. He was always the nice one, the one who everyone loved. I was his plus-one. We were together so much that everyone began to accept me and my attitude. He made up for it, I suppose, with his charm. He was my excuse to the world, because apparently he saw something in me. He was the only person who would ever accept me and love me, but then he left me, too. It was my fault, just like I’m sure my mom left because she was tired of that town, of my dad’s normalcy, and of her blond daughter with the bow in her hair. The last ounce of my need to pretend to be normal was gone as the sink turned pink and my blond disappeared. “I have a friend with some clout out west in Washington.” I had almost forgotten where I was, my mind reliving every shitty experience in my life in less than ten minutes. “I could ask him if he could pull some strings and get you into a good school there. It’s pretty out there. Refreshing, green. It’s late in the year now, but I will try it if you’re willing,” she offers. Washington? What the hell is in Washington? I consider her offer, mulling over whether or not I even want to go to college anymore. And as that question spins through me, I realize that I do want to get out of this God-awful town, so maybe I should agree. I used to think about other cities when I was younger. My mom talked about Los Angeles and how the weather made for a perfect day every single day. She talked of New York and the way the streets are full of people. She told me about the glamorous cities she wanted to live in. If she could handle those cities, I have to be able to handle Washington. But it’s far, across the entire country. My dad would be alone here . . . though maybe that would be good for him. He barely has any friends anymore because he’s always so worried about me, trying to get me to be happy. He’s given up even attempting to worry about his own life. Maybe me going away to college would help him. Maybe it would restore some sense of normalcy. It’s possible that I could make friends, too. My pink hair might not be so intimidating to people in a town with some sophistication. My revealing clothing might not be so threatening to the girls my age in another city. I could start over and make Mrs. Garrett proud. I could give Curtis something to be proud of, too. Washington could be just what the witch doctor ordered. And so sitting in this woman’s car, this kind mother to the boy I loved and lost, I vow, right now, that I’m going to do better. I won’t take trains to shady parts of town in Washington. I won’t wallow in the past. I won’t give up on myself. I’ll only do things that will help my future—and I won’t give a shit what anyone says along the way. . .. to be continued.

Next pls

Thank God u are willing to move on Go Get It GIRL

That's d spirit

Thank God you are willing to move on

Oh thats good

That's d spirit baby, thank goodness dat now u kn ur worth.

******** Episode 5******* Melissa's side of the story He underestimated the girl when he first met her. He didn’t know anything about her then, and still to this day he doesn’t really know much. He met her brother first and spent nights getting drunk with him, getting to know him and learning just what a terrible person the guy was. Her brother was a snake, slithering through the campus like it was his personal hunting ground, picking and choosing his prey. But through constant observation he saw that this snake had one weakness: his sister, who was a force, tall with jet-black hair and tan skin. As he grew to hate the snake, he noticed just how tender this weakness was, how he would hover over the girl like there was nothing else on earth of importance—other than his own devious desires, of course. And convincing himself that the snake was getting out of hand, that he was spreading his filth like a proud pestilence that had to be stopped, the boy formed a plan. This filth had to be knocked down, and his sister was nothing but a causality of war. The house is so empty for a Friday night. My dad is at a banquet for his promotion at the hospital, and all of my friends are at another party. Neither option sounds appealing. The party would be okay if it weren’t at the fraternity house my brother always hangs out at. I can’t even enjoy myself there because he’s so protective of me. It’s so frustrating. The banquet may be a better option, but only marginally. My dad, the most prestigious doctor in this town, is a better doctor than parent . . . but he tries. His time is precious and expensive, and I can’t compete with sick people whose medical bills bought this massive house I’m currently sitting around complaining in. Feeling a little guilty, I grab my phone to text my dad that I’m coming after all. Then, noticing it’s past nine, with the banquet having started at eight, I realize I’ll just be an interruption and give my dad’s young girlfriend more of a reason to complain about me. Tasha is only three years older than me and has been seeing my dad for over a year now. I would be a little more understanding if I hadn’t gone to high school with her and didn’t remember how bitchy she was. Or if she didn’t act like she doesn’t remember me even though I know damn well she does. No matter how rude she is to me, I don’t complain to my dad about her. She makes him happy. She smiles when he looks at her. She laughs at his corny jokes. I know she doesn’t care about him the way she should, but I’ve seen my dad transform into a better version of himself since she came into his office with a broken finger and perky boobs. My dad took the divorce much harder than did my mom, who quickly revealed that she was moving back to Mexico to live with my grandparents until she got on her own feet. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling. She was awarded enough money in the settlement to afford a lifetime’s worth of glass slippers. Instead of bothering Tasha and my dad, I text Dan. He’s been dating a girl I went to high school with. She, unlike me, is still in high school. My brother is protective and loyal to a fault, but he’s a total pig. Let me repeat: a total pig. I try my best to stay out of his dating games. His friends are pigs too, usually younger and even worse than him. He likes to surround himself with people who are just as shitty as him, so he can feel better about himself. He wants to be the king of the rats, I suppose. Dan responds rapidly, I’ll pick you up in twenty. I send back a smiley face and jump out of my bed to get ready. My bare face and gray WCU T- shirt won’t do. I should look better than that. Still, I have to be somewhat careful with my outfit choice if I don’t want to hear my brother bitch all night. I rummage through my closet, searching through the sea of black and sequins. I have too many dresses. My mom always gave me her dresses after she wore them once. My dad liked to try to make her happy with shiny dresses and a red sports car, but somehow her happiness never arrived. When she was leaving, she gave me the option of moving back to Mexico with her. But, funny as it might sound, I just couldn’t give up swimming or my swim team. It’s more important to me than anything else here in Washington. It was the only thing—outside of my dad and Dan—that I would miss. Dan considered moving back, but he didn’t want to leave me here. Or couldn’t, given the constant eye he keeps on me. After trying on two dresses and then throwing them back into my closet, I pull out a jumpsuit I haven’t worn yet. It’s all black except for some small print on the thick shoulder straps. It’s tight enough to show off my butt, casual enough to wear to the party, and covers enough of my body for my brother to keep his mouth closed. Just as I finish getting ready, Dan’s obnoxious horn blows outside, and I grab my purse and rush down the stairs. If I don’t hurry, the neighbors will complain about the noise again. I quickly set the security code and bolt out the door, and when I reach Dan’s Audi, I realize he’s brought a couple of his dudebro friends along. “Logan, let her in the front,” Dan says. I’ve been around Logan a handful of times, and he’s always been nice to me. He hit on me once at some party. When I stood up from the couch I was on, and he realized that I’m at least four inches taller than him, he said we would make great friends. I laughed in agreement, impressed by his gentle teasing. Since then, he’s become my favorite of my brother’s band of idiots. “It’s fine. I’ll just get in the back,” I say when Logan unbuckles his seat belt. I climb into the backseat to find a guy with dark, wavy hair hiding his face. It’s swept to the side in a weird emo way, but it matches perfectly with the piercings in his eyebrow and lip. He doesn’t look up from his phone when I sit down or when I say hi. “Ignore him,” Dan says, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. Rolling my eyes, I pull out my own phone. Might as well entertain myself during the drive. At the frat house, there’s nowhere to park. Dan offers to drop me at the house so I don’t have to walk. I pop out, but after I close my door, I hear the other door close too. Looking up, I see the guy from the backseat walking toward the house. “Fucker!” Dan yells to him. The stranger lifts his hand into the air, middle finger raised. “I’m pretty sure he’d rather you walk with them,” I tell him, following him up the lawn. A group of girls stare at him as we walk by; one of them whispers something to another and they all look at me. “You got a problem?” I ask them, meeting their dolled-up, desperate faces. All three of them shake their heads in a way that says they didn’t expect me to call them out. Well, they were wrong. I don’t react kindly to prissy blonds who talk about other people to make themselves feel important. “They probably just pissed their pants,” the wavy-haired guy says to me. His voice is deep, so deep, and I swear I heard an English accent. He slows down his pace but doesn’t turn around to look at me. His arms are covered in tattoos. I can’t make out what any of them are, but I can see that they’re all black ink, no color at all. It fits him, with his black jeans and matching T-shirt. His boots make a muffled stomp against the soft grass. I try to keep up with him, but his strides are too wide. He’s tall, a few inches on me. “I hope they did,” I tell him, and look at the girls one more time. They’ve moved on now, staring and pointing at a drunken girl in a small dress who’s stumbling by them. He doesn’t say another word to me as we walk inside the house. He doesn’t look back at me when he walks into the kitchen or when he screws the top off of a bottle of whiskey and takes a swig. I’m curious about him now, so when Dan and Logan walk into the living room, I decide to get the dirt on the tattooed stranger. I grab a wine cooler from a bucket on the counter and walk over to my brother. He’s sitting on the couch, beer in hand. He smells like weed already, and his eyes are bloodshot when they meet mine. “Who was the guy in the backseat?” I ask him. His expression changes. “Who, Hardin?” He’s not happy that I asked. And Hardin? What kind of name is that? “Stay away from him, Mel,” Dan warns me. “I mean it.” I roll my eyes and decide this is not something worth fighting my brother over. He never approves of any of my boyfriends, and yet he tried to set me up with his best friend, Jace—by far the most disgusting of his friends. Clearly my brother’s standards are as inconstant as the highs and lows of his weed and alcohol intake. When my brother pats an empty cushion next to him, I sit quietly and people-watch for a bit. The music gets louder, the crowd more and more into their drinks, their moods, the vibe. A few minutes later, when Logan asks my brother if he wants to smoke again, I look around the house for Hardin. I don’t think I’ll get used to that name. But there he is in the kitchen, standing alone against the counter. The bottle of whiskey is significantly less full than it was when I last saw him—say, fifteen minutes ago. So he’s a party boy, then. Good. I get up from the couch quickly, too quickly, and as Dan grabs for my arm, I realize I better come up with a reason for leaving the room. If I tell him that I’m going to find Hardin, I know he’ll follow me. “Where’re you going?” he asks. “To pee,” I lie. I hate that he always invites me to these parties but acts like he’s my dad when it comes to me leaving his side. He stares at me, studying my eyes as if he can tell that I’m lying, but I turn away. I feel his eyes on me as I cross the living room, so I walk toward the staircase. The only bathrooms in this massive house are all upstairs, which of course makes no sense, but that’s frat houses for you. I take the stairs slowly, and when I reach the top, I look back at my brother, then turn around and run smack into a black wall. Only it’s not a wall—it’s Hardin’s chest. “Shit, sorry!” I exclaim, wiping at the splatter of wetness on his shirt from my wine cooler. “At least it won’t stain,” I tease. His eyes are bright green and so intense that I have to look away. . . . . To Be Continued.

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**********Episode 5********* "Melissa's side of the story" He underestimated the girl when he first met her. He didn’t know anything about her then, and still to this day he doesn’t really know much. He met her brother first and spent nights getting drunk with him, getting to know him and learning just what a terrible person the guy was. Her brother was a snake, slithering through the campus like it was his personal hunting ground, picking and choosing his prey. But through constant observation he saw that this snake had one weakness: his sister, who was a force, tall with jet-black hair and tan skin. As he grew to hate the snake, he noticed just how tender this weakness was, how he would hover over the girl like there was nothing else on earth of importance—other than his own devious desires, of course. And convincing himself that the snake was getting out of hand, that he was spreading his filth like a proud pestilence that had to be stopped, the boy formed a plan. This filth had to be knocked down, and his sister was nothing but a causality of war. The house is so empty for a Friday night. My dad is at a banquet for his promotion at the hospital, and all of my friends are at another party. Neither option sounds appealing. The party would be okay if it weren’t at the fraternity house my brother always hangs out at. I can’t even enjoy myself there because he’s so protective of me. It’s so frustrating. The banquet may be a better option, but only marginally. My dad, the most prestigious doctor in this town, is a better doctor than parent . . . but he tries. His time is precious and expensive, and I can’t compete with sick people whose medical bills bought this massive house I’m currently sitting around complaining in. Feeling a little guilty, I grab my phone to text my dad that I’m coming after all. Then, noticing it’s past nine, with the banquet having started at eight, I realize I’ll just be an interruption and give my dad’s young girlfriend more of a reason to complain about me. Tasha is only three years older than me and has been seeing my dad for over a year now. I would be a little more understanding if I hadn’t gone to high school with her and didn’t remember how bitchy she was. Or if she didn’t act like she doesn’t remember me even though I know damn well she does. No matter how rude she is to me, I don’t complain to my dad about her. She makes him happy. She smiles when he looks at her. She laughs at his corny jokes. I know she doesn’t care about him the way she should, but I’ve seen my dad transform into a better version of himself since she came into his office with a broken finger and perky boobs. My dad took the divorce much harder than did my mom, who quickly revealed that she was moving back to Mexico to live with my grandparents until she got on her own feet. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling. She was awarded enough money in the settlement to afford a lifetime’s worth of glass slippers. Instead of bothering Tasha and my dad, I text Dan. He’s been dating a girl I went to high school with. She, unlike me, is still in high school. My brother is protective and loyal to a fault, but he’s a total pig. Let me repeat: a total pig. I try my best to stay out of his dating games. His friends are pigs too, usually younger and even worse than him. He likes to surround himself with people who are just as shitty as him, so he can feel better about himself. He wants to be the king of the rats, I suppose. Dan responds rapidly, I’ll pick you up in twenty. I send back a smiley face and jump out of my bed to get ready. My bare face and gray WCU T- shirt won’t do. I should look better than that. Still, I have to be somewhat careful with my outfit choice if I don’t want to hear my brother bitch all night. I rummage through my closet, searching through the sea of black and sequins. I have too many dresses. My mom always gave me her dresses after she wore them once. My dad liked to try to make her happy with shiny dresses and a red sports car, but somehow her happiness never arrived. When she was leaving, she gave me the option of moving back to Mexico with her. But, funny as it might sound, I just couldn’t give up swimming or my swim team. It’s more important to me than anything else here in Washington. It was the only thing—outside of my dad and Dan—that I would miss. Dan considered moving back, but he didn’t want to leave me here. Or couldn’t, given the constant eye he keeps on me. After trying on two dresses and then throwing them back into my closet, I pull out a jumpsuit I haven’t worn yet. It’s all black except for some small print on the thick shoulder straps. It’s tight enough to show off my butt, casual enough to wear to the party, and covers enough of my body for my brother to keep his mouth closed. Just as I finish getting ready, Dan’s obnoxious horn blows outside, and I grab my purse and rush down the stairs. If I don’t hurry, the neighbors will complain about the noise again. I quickly set the security code and bolt out the door, and when I reach Dan’s Audi, I realize he’s brought a couple of his dudebro friends along. “Logan, let her in the front,” Dan says. I’ve been around Logan a handful of times, and he’s always been nice to me. He hit on me once at some party. When I stood up from the couch I was on, and he realized that I’m at least four inches taller than him, he said we would make great friends. I laughed in agreement, impressed by his gentle teasing. Since then, he’s become my favorite of my brother’s band of idiots. “It’s fine. I’ll just get in the back,” I say when Logan unbuckles his seat belt. I climb into the backseat to find a guy with dark, wavy hair hiding his face. It’s swept to the side in a weird emo way, but it matches perfectly with the piercings in his eyebrow and lip. He doesn’t look up from his phone when I sit down or when I say hi. “Ignore him,” Dan says, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. Rolling my eyes, I pull out my own phone. Might as well entertain myself during the drive. At the frat house, there’s nowhere to park. Dan offers to drop me at the house so I don’t have to walk. I pop out, but after I close my door, I hear the other door close too. Looking up, I see the guy from the backseat walking toward the house. “Fucker!” Dan yells to him. The stranger lifts his hand into the air, middle finger raised. “I’m pretty sure he’d rather you walk with them,” I tell him, following him up the lawn. A group of girls stare at him as we walk by; one of them whispers something to another and they all look at me. “You got a problem?” I ask them, meeting their dolled-up, desperate faces. All three of them shake their heads in a way that says they didn’t expect me to call them out. Well, they were wrong. I don’t react kindly to prissy blonds who talk about other people to make themselves feel important. “They probably just pissed their pants,” the wavy-haired guy says to me. His voice is deep, so deep, and I swear I heard an English accent. He slows down his pace but doesn’t turn around to look at me. His arms are covered in tattoos. I can’t make out what any of them are, but I can see that they’re all black ink, no color at all. It fits him, with his black jeans and matching T-shirt. His boots make a muffled stomp against the soft grass. I try to keep up with him, but his strides are too wide. He’s tall, a few inches on me. “I hope they did,” I tell him, and look at the girls one more time. They’ve moved on now, staring and pointing at a drunken girl in a small dress who’s stumbling by them. He doesn’t say another word to me as we walk inside the house. He doesn’t look back at me when he walks into the kitchen or when he screws the top off of a bottle of whiskey and takes a swig. I’m curious about him now, so when Dan and Logan walk into the living room, I decide to get the dirt on the tattooed stranger. I grab a wine cooler from a bucket on the counter and walk over to my brother. He’s sitting on the couch, beer in hand. He smells like weed already, and his eyes are bloodshot when they meet mine. “Who was the guy in the backseat?” I ask him. His expression changes. “Who, Hardin?” He’s not happy that I asked. And Hardin? What kind of name is that? “Stay away from him, Mel,” Dan warns me. “I mean it.” I roll my eyes and decide this is not something worth fighting my brother over. He never approves of any of my boyfriends, and yet he tried to set me up with his best friend, Jace—by far the most disgusting of his friends. Clearly my brother’s standards are as inconstant as the highs and lows of his weed and alcohol intake. When my brother pats an empty cushion next to him, I sit quietly and people-watch for a bit. The music gets louder, the crowd more and more into their drinks, their moods, the vibe. A few minutes later, when Logan asks my brother if he wants to smoke again, I look around the house for Hardin. I don’t think I’ll get used to that name. But there he is in the kitchen, standing alone against the counter. The bottle of whiskey is significantly less full than it was when I last saw him—say, fifteen minutes ago. So he’s a party boy, then. Good. I get up from the couch quickly, too quickly, and as Dan grabs for my arm, I realize I better come up with a reason for leaving the room. If I tell him that I’m going to find Hardin, I know he’ll follow me. “Where’re you going?” he asks. “To pee,” I lie. I hate that he always invites me to these parties but acts like he’s my dad when it comes to me leaving his side. He stares at me, studying my eyes as if he can tell that I’m lying, but I turn away. I feel his eyes on me as I cross the living room, so I walk toward the staircase. The only bathrooms in this massive house are all upstairs, which of course makes no sense, but that’s frat houses for you. I take the stairs slowly, and when I reach the top, I look back at my brother, then turn around and run smack into a black wall. Only it’s not a wall—it’s Hardin’s chest. “Shit, sorry!” I exclaim, wiping at the splatter of wetness on his shirt from my wine cooler. “At least it won’t stain,” I tease. His eyes are bright green and so intense that I have to look away. . . . . . . . To Be Continued.

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***********Episode 6********** Continuation of Melissa's side of the story from last episode. “Haha,” he says, monotone. Rude. “My brother told me to stay away from you,” I blurt out without thinking. His stare is so intense it’s driving me crazy to keep eye contact, but I don’t want to back down from him. I get the feeling he’s used to that. I get the feeling that’s how you lose with this one. He raises the brow that has a ring in it. “Did he, now?” Yep, definitely an English accent. I want to comment on it, but I know how annoying it is when people point out how you talk. I get it all the time. I nod, and the Brit opens his mouth to speak again. “And why is that?” I don’t know . . . but I want to. “You must be pretty bad if Dan doesn’t like you,” I joke. He doesn’t laugh. My shoulders are tense now; Hardin’s energy has captured me already. “If we’re taking character judgments from him, we’re all fucked,” he says. My instinct is to fight him, to tell him that my brother isn’t that bad, just misunderstood. I should defend him against this insult. But then I remember the day when the entire family of Dan’s last girlfriend showed up to the house, the poor pregnant girl hiding behind her angry father. My dad wrote a check, and the lot of them disappeared with my niece or nephew, never to be heard from again. Something inside me knows there’s something darker inside my brother, but I refuse to acknowledge it. With my mom so far away and my dad so far up Tasha’s butt, he’s all I have. I laugh. “I’m sure you’re so much better.” Hardin lifts his tattooed hand up and pushes his hair off his forehead. “Nope, I’m worse.” Looking directly into my brown eyes, I somehow know he’s serious. I can feel the warning behind his words, but when he offers me the half- empty bottle of whiskey, I take a swig. The whiskey burns as bright as his eyes . . . And I have the feeling that Hardin is made of gasoline. *Stephen's side of the story* When he first met the flame-haired girl whose arms were covered in tattoos, he saw something dark in her. He felt something competitive in the way she stared at her friend with hair lighter than her own. She compared everything they did, and he saw that desperation for attention that she held inside of her. She reminded him of a maiden named Roussette from a fairy tale he’d read when he was a child. The red-haired princess was jealous of her younger sisters when they married princes, even though she’d wed an admiral herself. It wasn’t good enough, though; he wasn’t good enough unless he made her better than her sisters. The girl hated the idea of losing anything, even things she claimed were not hers. She couldn’t stand being second- best, and she hungered to be the one people paid attention to. She couldn’t stand the idea of someone else getting what she felt she deserved, and she believed that what she deserved was nothing less than everything under the sun. My dad is home late from work again. He’s been late every night, and I was supposed to be able to use his car to pick up my prom dress this week. All of my friends got their dresses a month ago, and I’m starting to panic. If I don’t have a dress for prom, I will lose my fucking mind. I’m so frustrated, and it’s complete bullshit that my dad is late again and my mom is too busy watching my niece to listen to my justified complaints. Everything revolves around my sister and her baby. People always talk that bullshit about the youngest being the baby of the family. It sounds nice, but I grew up with nothing but hand-me-downs and last-minute birthday parties where no one showed up except my immediate family. I’m the reject of the family, the weird one who’s become a ghost in her own home. And I’m not even sure why. The last time my mom said more than two words to me was when I stained the sink upstairs red with cheap hair dye. She was frantic because my timing was perfect: the night before my sister Olivia’s baby shower. I may have accidently spilled a little on the bath mat, and it’s possible that I used my parents’ embroidered towels to cover my shoulders while I let the fire-engine-red dye soak into my strands. But I hadn’t dared ruin Olivia’s shirt from when she was my age, you see. That’s another thing I hate to hear: “When Olivia was seventeen, she was the student council president,” or “When Olivia was seventeen, she had straight A’s and a popular boyfriend who she married right after high school.” I’m so tired of being compared to my sister— she was the golden child, and there’s nothing I can do to even win silver, it feels like. I can’t wait to leave for college. Due to my parents’ constant pressure, I’m going to Washington Central, where Olivia graduated with honors. They never cared about that college until my sister went there, and I’ll never live up to the comparisons to her, but I’m done trying and it’s easier just to say yes to going there and blow this place. As soon as my dad’s Jeep pulls into the driveway, I grab my purse, check the mirror one last time, and rush down the stairs, where I nearly run into my mom—not that she even notices my fishnet tights or red leather top. She just mumbles something while looking at her e-reader. That’s all she ever does. The front door opens, and my sister walks into the living room with my dad. Sierra, my baby niece, is asleep in my sister’s arms. “I’m so tired,” Olivia announces to the room as she strolls through it. Quickly, my mom appears, closing the case of her tablet and setting it absentmindedly on the mantel of the fireplace. Of course, for Olivia she can take a break from her precious screen. “Stephanie can drive you home, honey,” my dad offers on my behalf. “Dad, I have to get my prom dress, and they close in thirty minutes!” I toss my bag across my shoulder and reach for his keys. “Olivia and Sierra can ride with you.” My sister interrupts. “I won’t mind. Just let me use the bathroom for a second.” Her soft brown hair moves when she talks. She’s wearing khakis and a short-sleeve shirt with bright flowers printed on it. My dad smiles like his eldest daughter is the most thoughtful and considerate girl alive. It’s super annoying. “Fine,” I huff. “But this is the last day they’ll hold it for me, so if I can’t go to prom, it’s your fault.” I glare at my sister. Olivia nods, and I push past my dad to get outside. “I’ll be in the car.” I start the car and wait for Olivia. Five minutes pass. Ten minutes pass. I send two texts and she doesn’t respond. I know she read them from the little indicator on my phone. Yet she’s still inside the house. I’m guessing her and my mom are on their fourth goodbye hug. My mom does that when we go to my grandma’s house, too, requiring multiple hugs to satisfy her need for affection. Twelve minutes go by, and I finally leave the car to return to the house. Just as I begin to close the car door, my sister walks outside with a languid pace and an oblivious smile on her face. She still has to buckle Sierra into her car seat. “Olivia, we have to go,” I say, to rush her along. She sighs and mutters a half-hearted apology. IT’S 8:03 WHEN I PARK in front of the dark shop. The sign on the door is turned around to CLOSED and the lights are off. And now I can’t get my dress. Today was the last day, and this was after my second extension. I begged for extra time, but I was told repeatedly that this was my last day. This sucks so bad. “I’m sorry, Stephanie,” Olivia says as I lay my head on the steering wheel. I turn my head to the side and scowl at her. “This is your fault.” “It’s not my fault,” she says, with the nerve to look surprised. “Dad wanted to take me shopping to get some new shoes for Sierra. She outgrows them so fast—” New baby shoes? Are you freaking serious? I missed my prom dress because her baby needed new shoes—the child doesn’t even walk! “Why couldn’t Dad just take you home directly? You would have been back way sooner,” I say, raising my head, and my voice. “I wasn’t tired then . . . I don’t know.” She shrugs her shoulders like my time means nothing to her. Like this isn’t a big deal. “This is such bullshit!” I shake my head and put my hands over my face. “Don’t talk like that in front of the baby!” my sister whisper-yells. I groan and back out of the parking space. We’re both silent the entire way home. Olivia doesn’t feel as if she’s done anything wrong, and I’m too mad to talk to her right now. I’m so tired of her stealing everything from me—and on top of that, Sierra keeps crying as if she’s trying to split my brain in half. I hate my life. When we get to Olivia’s house, she thanks me for dropping her off. I don’t want to step foot into her new house, so I’m glad she doesn’t ask me in. A house that I’m pretty sure my parents helped her and Roger buy. Her husband is quiet; he doesn’t say much around my family. Olivia probably tells him not to. I’m sure everyone gets the warning label read to them before they have to have any exposure to me. To Be Continued.

That's not fair

that's very bad. to love one child more than the other

That's unfair

Maybe you are not there child just maybe

hmmmm

Following

Hmmmm I No Fet Talk

mmmmm

**********episode 7************* .. . . . . . Continuation of Steph's side of the story from previous episode. . . don’t really want to go inside, but I have to pee and it’s another fifteen minutes back to my parents’. Walking into Olivia’s house, I immediately notice that it smells heavily of cinnamon. Olivia burns those candle-oil things in every room. Roger is sitting on the couch with a remote in one hand and a computer on his lap. When he notices us entering the room, he smiles up at his wife and then politely asks me how I’ve been. I say I’m the same as before, though I can’t remember the last time I actually saw him. After a few minutes of awkward small talk, Olivia tells us that she’s going to put the baby to bed. She walks upstairs with a stuffed teddy bear in one hand and a bottle in the other. Roger barely glances at me as I walk by, looking at all of their stupid family pictures on the mantel above the fake fireplace. Roger stands up and walks into the kitchen—trying to avoid further conversation with me, no doubt. In the last picture, their perfect little family poses in all matching white and black in a small wooden frame. Heading toward the kitchen, I find, hanging on the hallway wall in a big metal frame, a picture of Olivia and Roger on their wedding day. She’s so perfect in the picture: perfect hair, perfect makeup, and her dress is beautiful. A soft, silky white dress that touches the floor in a regal way. She looks like a princess, like she was made for that dress. Her dress is the exact opposite of my would-be prom dress. The dress I was supposed to pick up tonight is made from black cotton and tulle. The bodice is tight, lined with lacy tulle along the edges of the star-shaped skirt. It’s a dress that, thanks to Olivia, I’ll never have. I find myself wishing I had a bucket of black paint to ruin her stupid, perfect dress. I look to the next photo on the wall and stop at a picture of Roger, his arms wrapped around Olivia’s pregnant stomach. She ruined my prom dress. I’ll ruin her wedding dress. When I walk into the kitchen, Roger is standing in front of the fridge, his face buried inside and hidden by the doors. I tap my hand against the stone counter to get his attention. The moment he turns around, I tug on the hem of my shirt, exposing a nice amount of my cleavage to him. He inhales and then lets out a little cough. I smile. I bet my sister hasn’t fucked her husband since she popped out his baby. “Sorry.” I wrap my hair around my finger as Roger’s eyes try not to run down my legs, taking in my fishnet hose. “Hi,” I say, and keep walking toward him. My heart is racing and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I’m pissed off at my sister and I’m fucking tired of her getting everything and I’m thinking of how everything is always about perfect Olivia and nothing is ever mine and so she shouldn’t have anything that’s hers either. Especially not a cute and loyal puppy of a husband. “W-what are you doing, Stephanie?” Roger asks me, his face much paler than it was just seconds ago. “Nothing. Just talking.” I grab the waistline of my skirt and pull it up further, to the middle of my stomach, showing my lace panties to him, and when Roger backs away, his back hits the wooden cabinets, slamming one of the doors shut. “What’s wrong?” I ask with a laugh. My stomach is in a knot and I feel like I’m going to pass out any freaking second, but I feel amazing and powerful at the same time. Adrenaline, it must be. I love it. I want more of it. I step even closer and reach for the zipper on the front of my shirt. Roger covers his face. “Stop it, Stephanie.” Fuck this, he’s actually a loyal puppy like I thought. Knowing this adds to the burn of my jealousy. “Come on, Roger, don’t be such a—” “Stephanie! What the hell are you doing?” Olivia’s voice fills the kitchen. I look over to the doorway to see her leaning there. She changed into pajamas, flannel ones with blue lining. She’s pissed. After a few seconds, she turns to her husband. “Roger?” “I don’t know, babe, she just came in here and started trying to take her clothes off.” He tosses his hands up in the air in a frantic plea for his wife to see how crazy her slutty sister is. She turns in my direction, glaring a hole through me. “Get out, Stephanie.” “You didn’t even ask me if it wasn’t true,” I tell her, getting pretty pissed off about that fact. I toss my purse over my shoulder and pull my skirt back down to cover my body. “I know you,” she says matter-of-factly. She knows me? She doesn’t know me at all, actually. If she did, she would know better than to be such a selfish cunt. “And . . . ?” I look at Roger, and he inches back like I’m a snake. Like he can judge me? If he wasn’t afraid to get caught, I guarantee he would have me bent over their shiny granite counter. “Well, did you try to come on to my husband or not?” Olivia’s mouth is trembling; she’s holding back tears. I should deny it, flip the script on both of them and blame him. He’s pathetic enough that she would believe me. I can cry on demand, too, and if I wanted to, I could convince her of anything. Oh, please. “You’re such a spoiled bitch!” she yells at me, and Roger crosses the kitchen and wraps his arm around her shoulders. I’m a spoiled bitch? Is she serious? She gets everything she fucking wants, and it’s bullshit. I’m sick of being the runner-up to her. She’s lucky I didn’t do something worse. I could have hurt him, or her, in a far more serious way. Even some of the thoughts I’m having now are surprising me . . . and I like it. “Get out, Stephanie.” Olivia shakes her head as her husband rubs her trembling hands. I do just that. I won’t have to put up with any more of this shit soon. I’m going to college soon. And once I’m there, I’m going to run that fucking campus.

**********episode 7************* .. . . . . . Continuation of Steph's side of the story from previous episode. . . don’t really want to go inside, but I have to pee and it’s another fifteen minutes back to my parents’. Walking into Olivia’s house, I immediately notice that it smells heavily of cinnamon. Olivia burns those candle-oil things in every room. Roger is sitting on the couch with a remote in one hand and a computer on his lap. When he notices us entering the room, he smiles up at his wife and then politely asks me how I’ve been. I say I’m the same as before, though I can’t remember the last time I actually saw him. After a few minutes of awkward small talk, Olivia tells us that she’s going to put the baby to bed. She walks upstairs with a stuffed teddy bear in one hand and a bottle in the other. Roger barely glances at me as I walk by, looking at all of their stupid family pictures on the mantel above the fake fireplace. Roger stands up and walks into the kitchen—trying to avoid further conversation with me, no doubt. In the last picture, their perfect little family poses in all matching white and black in a small wooden frame. Heading toward the kitchen, I find, hanging on the hallway wall in a big metal frame, a picture of Olivia and Roger on their wedding day. She’s so perfect in the picture: perfect hair, perfect makeup, and her dress is beautiful. A soft, silky white dress that touches the floor in a regal way. She looks like a princess, like she was made for that dress. Her dress is the exact opposite of my would-be prom dress. The dress I was supposed to pick up tonight is made from black cotton and tulle. The bodice is tight, lined with lacy tulle along the edges of the star-shaped skirt. It’s a dress that, thanks to Olivia, I’ll never have. I find myself wishing I had a bucket of black paint to ruin her stupid, perfect dress. I look to the next photo on the wall and stop at a picture of Roger, his arms wrapped around Olivia’s pregnant stomach. She ruined my prom dress. I’ll ruin her wedding dress. When I walk into the kitchen, Roger is standing in front of the fridge, his face buried inside and hidden by the doors. I tap my hand against the stone counter to get his attention. The moment he turns around, I tug on the hem of my shirt, exposing a nice amount of my cleavage to him. He inhales and then lets out a little cough. I smile. I bet my sister hasn’t fucked her husband since she popped out his baby. “Sorry.” I wrap my hair around my finger as Roger’s eyes try not to run down my legs, taking in my fishnet hose. “Hi,” I say, and keep walking toward him. My heart is racing and I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I’m pissed off at my sister and I’m fucking tired of her getting everything and I’m thinking of how everything is always about perfect Olivia and nothing is ever mine and so she shouldn’t have anything that’s hers either. Especially not a cute and loyal puppy of a husband. “W-what are you doing, Stephanie?” Roger asks me, his face much paler than it was just seconds ago. “Nothing. Just talking.” I grab the waistline of my skirt and pull it up further, to the middle of my stomach, showing my lace panties to him, and when Roger backs away, his back hits the wooden cabinets, slamming one of the doors shut. “What’s wrong?” I ask with a laugh. My stomach is in a knot and I feel like I’m going to pass out any freaking second, but I feel amazing and powerful at the same time. Adrenaline, it must be. I love it. I want more of it. I step even closer and reach for the zipper on the front of my shirt. Roger covers his face. “Stop it, Stephanie.” Fuck this, he’s actually a loyal puppy like I thought. Knowing this adds to the burn of my jealousy. “Come on, Roger, don’t be such a—” “Stephanie! What the hell are you doing?” Olivia’s voice fills the kitchen. I look over to the doorway to see her leaning there. She changed into pajamas, flannel ones with blue lining. She’s pissed. After a few seconds, she turns to her husband. “Roger?” “I don’t know, babe, she just came in here and started trying to take her clothes off.” He tosses his hands up in the air in a frantic plea for his wife to see how crazy her slutty sister is. She turns in my direction, glaring a hole through me. “Get out, Stephanie.” “You didn’t even ask me if it wasn’t true,” I tell her, getting pretty pissed off about that fact. I toss my purse over my shoulder and pull my skirt back down to cover my body. “I know you,” she says matter-of-factly. She knows me? She doesn’t know me at all, actually. If she did, she would know better than to be such a selfish cunt. “And . . . ?” I look at Roger, and he inches back like I’m a snake. Like he can judge me? If he wasn’t afraid to get caught, I guarantee he would have me bent over their shiny granite counter. “Well, did you try to come on to my husband or not?” Olivia’s mouth is trembling; she’s holding back tears. I should deny it, flip the script on both of them and blame him. He’s pathetic enough that she would believe me. I can cry on demand, too, and if I wanted to, I could convince her of anything. Oh, please. “You’re such a spoiled bitch!” she yells at me, and Roger crosses the kitchen and wraps his arm around her shoulders. I’m a spoiled bitch? Is she serious? She gets everything she fucking wants, and it’s bullshit. I’m sick of being the runner-up to her. She’s lucky I didn’t do something worse. I could have hurt him, or her, in a far more serious way. Even some of the thoughts I’m having now are surprising me . . . and I like it. “Get out, Stephanie.” Olivia shakes her head as her husband rubs her trembling hands. I do just that. I won’t have to put up with any more of this shit soon. I’m going to college soon. And once I’m there, I’m going to run that fucking campus. TBC.

uno c.riuz

You are not serious Stephanie

Aww puppy

Hmmmm

***********episode 8********* Hardin's side of the story. He was misguided, moving through life with minimum expectations of himself. He was getting too used to life in that foreign place—even believing that his accent was slightly washing away with each night he spent away from home. He nailed his life down into a robotic loop of the same actions, same reactions, same consequences. The women were blending together, their names becoming an endless loop of Sarahs and Lauras and Jane Does. He wasn’t sure how his life could continue this way, day in and day out. And then the first week of the next year, he met her. She was strategically placed at Washington Central by someone or something more powerful than him—to taunt him. He—or it—knew who he was, the kind of person he was known for being, and he had an agenda. He was set to steal another innocence, to ruin another girl’s life. It won’t be so bad this time, he figured. He wouldn’t go to the same extremes as before. This was different, more juvenile. This was all just in fun. And it was, until the wind caught her hair and it whipped around her face. Until the gray of her eyes haunted his sleep and the pink of her lips drove him mad. He was falling hard for her—at first it was so fast that he wasn’t sure if he was actually feeling it or imagining it. But he felt it . . . he felt it rip through him like the roar of a lion. He began to rely on her for his every breath? every thought. ? ? ? One night in the middle of it all, the snow falling, blanketing the concrete, he sat alone in the parking lot. His hands were gripping the steering wheel of his old Ford Capri, and he could barely see straight, let alone think straight. How could he have done this? How did it go so far so fast? He wasn’t sure, but he knew, he felt it deep down inside of himself, that he shouldn’t have done it, and he knew that he would regret it. He was regretting it already. She was supposed to be an easy target. A beautiful girl with an innocent smile and odd- colored eyes that weren’t supposed to hold depth or meaning behind them. He wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her, and she wasn’t supposed to make him want to be a better person. He thought that he was fine before. He was getting by just fine before—before he made the beautiful mistake of allowing her to become his entire world. He loved her, though, he loved her so much that he was terrified of losing her—for losing her meant losing himself, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to bear such a loss after going his entire life without something to lose. As his fingers gripped harder and his knuckles turned white against the black steering wheel, his thoughts became more jumbled. He became more irrational and desperate, and he realized in that moment, with the silence of the empty lot drowning his fears, that he would do anything—absolutely anything—to keep her forever. He had her, lost her, and had her again over the months that followed. He just couldn’t quite get it. He loved her. His love for her burned brighter than any star, and he would highlight passages from ten thousand of her favorite novels to show her that. She gave him everything, and he watched her fall in love with him, hoping he would stop letting her down. Her faith in him made him want to be good for her. He wanted to prove her right and everyone else wrong. She made him feel a type of hope that he had never felt before. He didn’t even know it existed. Her presence made him feel at ease; the fire in his heart was cooled and he was becoming addicted to her. He craved her until he had her, and once he took her, neither of them could stop. Her body became his safety, her mind his home. The more he loved her, the more he was hurting her. He couldn’t stay away, and through their struggles and growth, she became the normalcy he’d craved his entire life. His relationship with his dad continued to grow slowly into something close to familiar. A few family dinners, and he had begun to chip away at the hatred he felt toward the man. He was seeing himself differently, and that helped him see the wrongs of his father in a different light. And that’s when he needed her to anchor him, as his life changed again and his family shifted. He was growing to care for a houseful of strangers in a way that he swore he never would. It wasn’t easy for him to fight against twenty years of destructive patterns and base animal reactions. He had to fight each day against the liquor calling to his blood, against the anger he was trying to let go of . . . but didn’t know how to. He vowed that he would fight for her—and he did. He lost a few battles, but never lost sight of winning the war. She taught him laughter and taught him love—and he has expressed this time after time to her, but he will never stop. one The last few days of summer break are always the best. Everyone is fucking frantic, living out their last-minute summer plans and wishes. The parties get more crowded, the girls get more wild . . . but even so, I can’t fucking wait for the semester to start. Not because I’m some idiotic freshman, excited for the wondrous world of university. No, I’m anxious because if I play my cards right, I’ll be graduating in the spring, a full year ahead of time. Not bad for a delinquent no one assumed would even attend university, much less graduate early. My mum was so terrified for my future that she sent me halfway across the damn world to the grand state of Washington to live near my father. She used the bullshit excuse that she wanted me to “reconnect” with him, but I wasn’t fooled. I knew she simply couldn’t and didn’t want to put up with my shit anymore, so off to America, like some colonial Puritan of old. “Are you almost done?” Pink hair and swollen lips look up at me from between my legs. I had nearly forgotten she was here. “Yeah.” I wrap my hands around her shoulders and close my eyes, letting the physical pleasure she’s giving me take over. A distraction, that’s what she is. They all are. The pressure in my spine builds, and I don’t bother to pretend that I enjoy her company for more than sexual pleasure as I release into her warm mouth. Seconds later, she’s wiping at her lips with the back of her hand and getting to her feet. “You know . . .” Molly reaches for her purse and pulls out a tube of dark lipstick. “You could at least pretend to be interested, asshole.” Her lips pucker, and she wipes a finger across the excess crayon painted onto her mouth. “I am.” I clear my throat. “Pretending, that is.” She rolls her eyes and raises her middle finger to me. I’m interested—sexually, at least. She’s a good enough fuck, and she’s okay company sometimes. We are a lot alike, her and I. Both rejects of our families. I don’t know too much about her past, but I know enough to know that some bad shit has happened to her to make her run all the way to Washington from some rich-bitch town in Pennsylvania. “Dick,” she mutters, pushing the cap back on her makeup. She looks better with naturally pink lips, lips that are swollen from having my cock in her mouth. Molly is an acquaintance of mine. Well, a friend with benefits, I would say. Our “friendship” isn’t exclusive, not in the least, and we both have full freedom to do whatever, or whoever, the fuck we want. She hates me half the time, but I’m okay with that. It’s mutual. The rest of our friends give us shit about it, but it works. I’m bored and she’s here. She gives good head and she doesn’t stay around long after. Perfect situation for me. Her, too, it seems. “You’ll be here tonight, for the party?” she asks. I stand, too, pulling my boxers and jeans up my legs. “I live here, don’t I?” I raise a brow at her. I hate it here, and daily I find myself wondering just how the fuck I ended up in a fraternity in the first place. My shitbag sperm donor. That’s how. Ken Scott is a grade-A fuckup, the worst type. Alcoholic fuckhead who destroyed my entire childhood, only to magically turn his life around and move in with some lady and her son, a loser only two years younger than me. His do-over, I suppose. Ken Scott gets a fucking do-over, and I get to be in a stupid-ass fraternity at the college he’s basically in charge of. On top of this, he practically begged me to move in with him, as if he thought I would actually live under his roof, under his control. When I refused, I had assumed he would get me an apartment, but of course he didn’t. So here I am, in this stupid house instead. It really pissed him off that I chose this shithole rather than his clean, pristine palace. The stupid-ass fraternity does have its perks, I guess. A massive house with parties almost every night, a constant stream of endless pussy. And the best part of all: no one fucks with me. None of the pissant frat boys seem to mind the fact that I don’t do shit to actually represent the house. I don’t wear their stupid sweatshirts or plaster their stupid bumper stickers on my car. I don’t participate in any of the volunteer shit, and I sure as hell don’t go around yelling the name of the shit. They do some okay shit for the community, but they don’t actually give a fuck about the community, and none of that matters. When I glance around the room, I realize I’m alone. Molly must have left without me even noticing. I get up and open the window to air the place out before it gets used again tonight. All of these empty rooms in the house work in my favor since I can’t stand to have people in my own. It’s too personal or something, I don’t know, but I don’t like it, and everyone has learned one way or another not to come in here. Molly and whichever other girls come around know we’re bound for these empty rooms and not mine. As I approach my door, I see Logan stumbling down the hall, a short, curly-haired girl under his arm. She isn’t quiet about what she wants to do to him, and I’m not quiet about my disgust. “Get a damn room!” I shout to them. She giggles and he flips me off and I close and dead-bolt the door. That’s the pattern around here. Everyone sort of ignores me or simply tells me in one way or another to fuck off. I’m okay with that. I’d much rather sit here, in my room, alone, waiting for the next artificial high. My fingers trace over the dusty shelves of my bookcase. I can’t decide which novel I feel like living right now . . . Hemingway, maybe? He can give me a good dose of cynical. The middle Bront? sister? I could use a dysfunctional bullshit love story right now. I grab Wuthering Heights and kick my boots off before lying down in my bed. I don’t know what it is about this novel that brings me to read and reread it so many damn times, but I always find myself skimming the pages of the dark tale. It’s fucked up, really—two people coming together, then falling part. Destroying themselves and everyone around them because they were too selfish and stubborn to get their shit together. But to me that’s the best type of fucking story. I want to feel something while I’m reading, and sappy, roses-and-sunshine novels make me want to vomit on their pages and burn away the evidence afterward. “Fuck, yes!” I hear a female voice screech through the paper-thin walls. “Shut the fuck up!” I pound my fist against the old wood, grabbing my pillow and pushing it against my ears. One more fucking year. One more year of bullshit courses and easy exams. One more year of boring parties full of people who care way too much what everyone thinks about them. One more goddamn year of keeping to myself and I can get my ass back to London, where I belong. two To this day, he can still remember the way vanilla filled the small dorm room the first time he was alone with her. Her hair was soaked, she had a towel wrapped around her curvy body, and it was the first time he paid attention to the way her chest flushed when she was mad. He would see her mad again, so damn mad, more times than he could count, but he would never, ever, forget the way she tried to be polite to him at first. He took her politeness as pride. Another stubborn girl who pretends to be a woman, he thought. The strange girl kept on being as patient as she could. For no reason at all. She didn’t owe him anything, she still doesn’t, and he can only hope to see her mad at him again and again, for the rest of his life. He grasps for the memories of those days now, as he sits alone, trapped by his own mistakes. These memories of his anger, of her anger, are a few of the only things that kept him afloat after she left him. The first day of the fall semester is always the absolute best for people-watching. So many fucking idiots running around like chickens with their heads cut off, so many girls dressed in their favorite outfits in a desperate attempt to gain attention from men.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . To be continued.

Following.

Following,good for u Hardin,just be good cus of her

continue

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Ok.... Next

nexxt

still following.