No idea what this means, if it means anything. Do I have a thing for blonds?
Gah, no. No, I don’t, okay?
“You’re talking to yourself again,” Dena mutters, giving me the side-eye.
“Am I?” I sigh, shake my head at myself. “It happens when I’m trying to convince me about something.”
“Are you going for it?”
“Going for what?”
“Jenner.”
It takes me a moment to decipher her words. Me, go for a boy. What a brand-new concept.
“Yeah. Like, talk to him, check him out from up close. Ask him out. Or let him ask you out.”
“D’you think I should?” I ask cautiously, testing the waters.
“Sure.”
The next question hovers on the tip of my tongue and spills out before I can stop it. “Do you think I have a chance?”
New confident me is so fragile it’s already cracking. Bullying does that to you. Being told your extra pounds are ugly will do that to you. Hearing that day after day, year after year, damages you. No matter how hard you try to rise above it, it always sucks you back down.
But Dena answers right away, not giving me much time to stew. “Why not? You got curves, girl.” She slopes her hands over her boobs, pretending they’re huge. “You got some serious curves.”
“So your idea is that Jenner might ask my boobs out on a date, is that it?”
“You’re funny,” she says with a small laugh.
Really.
I mean, sure. Funny, confident, cool. That’s me. This brand new me. Not letting Ross under my skin. Not letting anyone get me down.
... yeah okay, who am I kidding? Maybe my confidence still needs some more work after all...
Chapter Four
Ross
I drag the last of the smoke from my cigarette, then chuck it to the street and look up at the sign of my dad’s garage. It’s rusty, creaking in the warm summer breeze. The entrance is padlocked, but through the gate I can see husks of cars and smell the familiar smell of car oil and gasoline.
I basically grew up in here, much more than I did at the house down Oak Alley, twenty minutes away on foot. The house was never ours. Dad rented it. I don’t have the heart to even pass outside these days, and it’s been cordoned off by the police. I snuck in and slept a couple of times, but I felt so fucking creeped out.
Knowing my mom was buried not far from here, in the woods by the river.
Believing it was my dad who killed her.
Even if no evidence has been found—so far.
Yeah, the house doesn’t feel like home anymore, but the garage...? Padlocked since Dad went to prison, empty, it calls to me.
Gripping the steel bars of the gate, I press my forehead to them and close my eyes. In my mind’s eye, I see Dad sitting in his small, stuffy office, I hear him yelling at me, yelling at the mechanics. At Evan who used to be his right-hand man. Matt Hansen who called him out on his bullshit.
Called me out, too.
What a stupid little shit I was. Always have been. Stupid and angry, always so fucking angry at the world. Mocking it. Mocking everyone.