Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
See, with as much as I was hiding about my life, being the new kid in school was going to be hell. Questions. Everyone was going to have questions.
Where’d you move from?
How old are you?
What’s your family like?
And if I didn’t answer or didn’t answer convincingly enough, their curiosity would only grow. Hiding wasn’t an option when dealing with nosy kids who literally had nothing better to do than figure out my life story.
That was where Thea came in. In the weeks after I’d broken her leg, no fewer than ten kids rode their bikes down our road, slowing down as they passed her house. I felt bad for her, always sitting in the window, staring at a bunch of fools who went out of their way to gawk at her pain. But if I wanted to fly under the radar, beating them senseless wasn’t an option.
A few of them stopped to introduce themselves while Nora and I were outside playing. And you know what happened? Each and every one of them told me about Thea’s mom. It was always a different story. Sometimes cancer. Sometimes pneumonia. Heck, one of them even told me it was a snake bite. Whatever they’d overheard or made up based on the town’s rumblings, it was always told quietly and with morbid fascination.
That was when I decided that, along with my smile, Thea Hull was going to become the star of my defensive line.
With the poor, pitiful, motherless girl at my side, everyone was going to be too busy whispering about her to pay me any attention. Just the way I liked it.
For almost two months, it worked. Thea was rotten company in the beginning, but with nosy girls purring around me like alley cats in heat, having her at my side worked in my favor. By the time the curiosity about her had worn off, she’d been a viper to virtually everyone in our class. This included me more often than not, but I was slightly more inclined to forgive given that I needed her for security and all.
Yes, there was a part of me that felt bad using her like that. But she was going to be miserable whether I was hiding behind her or not. It wasn’t like I was being mean to her. I stood up for her and put people in their place when I heard them talking trash behind her back. She wasn’t a bad person or anything. She’d just…been through a lot. Something I more than understood. She didn’t know the smile trick. I’d teach her though.
Around the six-week mark, things changed between Thea and me. Or maybe it didn’t change between us; she was still awful, but it changed inside me. Every wildfire begins with a spark, and for me, that spark was when she left her bike on our front porch for Nora. I had nothing. I was fine with having nothing. But Nora was different. She’d been close to my mom and was taking it hard now that she was gone. Her smile had dimmed a little more each day until it finally vanished. I’d have done anything to make her happy again.
That bike was more than just entertainment. It was a temporary escape so she could get out of the house and do something on the days my dad was too drunk to find work as a day laborer. I couldn’t fix the chain on her bike after it’d broken, and there was no way I could come up with the money to buy her a new one any time soon. I’d figure it out though; I always did. That time, Thea figured it out first. And because she’d done it for Nora, it meant more than anything she ever could have done for me.
After that, I started looking at Thea differently, and you know what? She wasn’t that bad. Sure, she was a smartass, but I kind of liked that about her. Her sniper-quick comebacks made me laugh. She did call me an idiot and it got under my skin like a bag of fleas, but she didn’t mean it. She was just so pissed off and bitter all the time. I couldn’t blame her; deep down, I was raging too.
Thea and I were two of a kind. Lost. Broken. Forgotten. Stuck.
But it didn’t feel like I was stuck when I was with her. She was a code I couldn’t crack, but the challenge alone made me obsessed.
I wasn’t positive she listened when I talked. She gave no reaction and offered me no advice. Sometimes her only acknowledgement was to hum or nod while staring off into space. But something extraordinary happened on that bus when the two of us were alone in the confines of our ugly brown bench seat cocoon.
I forgot.