Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“All right.”
“I’ve never told anyone. Jesse knows a lot. My therapist knows even more. What I’m about to tell you? No one knows, Diana.”
Her eyes are wide, her lips trembling slightly.
I’ve frightened her.
Good.
She should be frightened.
Because she’s about to learn what I’m capable of.
“All right,” she finally says. “Tell me whatever you need to tell me, Dragon. But I promise you it won’t change how I feel about you. Nothing could.”
She’s wrong about that.
As much as I want to believe her impassioned words, she’s wrong.
And she’s about to find out why.
Seventeen years earlier…
After a few months, I’m good as new. At least physically. I’d been violated in the worst way by boys bigger and stronger than I am.
Zach and Mike never asked me about it. Other than Leon, no one did.
But they knew. They had to know.
I never even thought about telling anyone the truth. Tully and his gang would torture me again—probably worse, if possible—if I turned them in, and like the first time, no one would stop them.
I found out that it was common knowledge at the home that you made your way up the totem pole. That when I had my growth spurt or hit sixteen or seventeen and began to look more like a man than a boy, I’d be expected to take part in this initiation for the new meat.
No fucking way.
I’ll stop it before then. I’ll think of something.
Zach and Mike and the others seem to take it with a grain of salt. “It’s just the way things are,” Zach says to me one night at dinner. “Nothing we can do about it.”
I remember Zach’s words that night.
Oh, Dragon. You just made things so much harder on yourself.
I see what he meant.
“You shouldn’t have fought back, Dragon,” Zach continues. “It’s not so bad when you don’t fight.”
I don’t answer.
I wasn’t raised like that.
I was raised to fight back. That’s what my father taught me. Before he abandoned me, of course.
But my father at least looked me in the eye that day in court. More than I can say for my mother.
I’ve been hatching a plan to get Tully back. We all know that he’s turning eighteen in a couple of months. That means he’ll leave the home.
When I was a little kid, I always thought about how great it would be to be an adult. After nearly six years in group homes, I don’t think that way anymore. Glorious freedom isn’t so glorious without any family and without any money.
Where is Tully going to go?
I don’t know. He doesn’t either.
And I don’t give one single shit.
I’m thirteen. Five more years here. Five years to kick ass in school and get myself a scholarship or something. Or at least learn a trade. Or get better at my drums. The music director at school thinks I have real potential.
I’ll make sure I have a place to go when I get sprung from this hellhole.
Tully though?
He doesn’t have a place.
I see it in his eyes. His birthday is around the corner, and I see the opposite of what I saw in his eyes that night he took out his aggressions on me.
That night I saw anger, sick delight.
Now?
I see fear. Uncertainty. Maybe even dread.
And I know fear and dread, because it’s what I felt that night he and his friends attacked me.
He’s letting his guard down, and I plan to take full advantage of that.
He’s still nearly a head taller than I am, and though I’ve started to grow, I’m still gangly with very few muscles.
But I’m working on it. I’ll use my brains to take out his brawn.
I don’t dare tell Zach or Mike or anyone else of my plans. They’d try to stop me, or they’d blab to Leon or someone else.
I can’t take that chance.
My idea stems from what happened to Griffin that horrible night. Someone took a knife from our own kitchen and cut her.
That’s all I need.
A knife from the kitchen.
We don’t get sharp knives in the dining area during meals, of course, and the staff members count every utensil when we turn in our trays.
But there are sharper knives in the kitchen. The kind of knife used to harm Griffin was a simple steak knife with a serrated edge.
Child’s play.
I’m going for a chef’s knife.
A few weeks ago, I woke up in a cold sweat from a dream. It was far from the first dream I’d had about beating the hell out of Tully. Strange that I didn’t dream about beating the other five. But Tully was their leader, and he was the one who hurt me the worst.
I dreamed that I got a job in the kitchen. And that’s how I got the knife.
Some of the older boys worked at the home. They were paid minimum wage, and I decided that’s how I could kill two birds with one stone. Tully hadn’t had the foresight to do it.