Total pages in book: 192
Estimated words: 182641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 913(@200wpm)___ 731(@250wpm)___ 609(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 182641 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 913(@200wpm)___ 731(@250wpm)___ 609(@300wpm)
Together, we girls hit the brick steps, our strides the same width, paces mirrored, and pastel pleaded uniforms pressed to perfection.
We’re the picture of poise: calm and collected, intriguing and intuitive.
Outright unattainable yet utterly approachable.
A brilliant example for all to aspire to.
Just before we pass the threshold into the exquisite, Roman-inspired building with its high arches and hand-carved woodwork, we pause beside the gold-infused beams, a dozen more stretching along the walls ahead. I meet my girls’ eyes, and a flicker of humor grins back from each. With hidden smirks and stimulated minds, we glide into the school, prepared to assume our roles for the day, secretly desperate to own the night.
And we will.
We always do.
Chapter 4
Bass
The heavy beating in the background has my body jolting upright, palms slick with sweat as I clench the bat in my hand, ready to swing at a moment’s notice, but then the pounding sounds again and I recognize it for what it is, heavy knuckles coming down on the cheap wooden door.
“Up, Bishop. Now.” Keffer’s voice comes through right as the room shifts into focus, and I spot the morning light streaming past the cracks of the broken blinds.
My shoulders ease and I pop my neck, tossing the wooden weapon—the only fucking “weapon” I’m allowed to keep in this house—on the bed.
“Yeah,” I call back, running my hands down my face.
I’ve lived in this group home for almost four years now. Came here after I put a bullet in my old man … two seconds before he pulled a trigger himself, the barrel of his gun pointed at my baby sister.
She’s all right.
He’s dead.
Too kind of an ending for a heavy-handed motherfucker like him, if you ask me. I’d have liked to drag it out a bit, maybe tie him up, put him through half the shit he put us through, but that would have given my mom time to try and save him, and turning a gun on her wasn’t necessary … at least not in front of my sister. That, and a bullet, is too merciful anyway.
She didn’t deserve the air she was left to breathe. She was everything a mother shouldn’t be, a real piece of shit who loved her husband more than her kids, went along with all he did because he was more important. He never hit her, and she never did raise her own hand to us … just helped him ice his own after he would. She is a weak, worthless woman who will get what’s coming to her, wherever the fuck she is.
My sister Brielle and I, we’re nothing like them.
Nah, that’s a lie.
My dad was an angry piece of shit, and so am I, but it ain’t the same. I get pissed, annoyed, vindictive when I feel the need, and yeah, I’m pretty fucking violent, but when you grow up in shit you can’t control, controlling the shit you willingly put yourself into is a whole lot different.
I made a deal when I moved to this group home, and that deal meant the scrappy motherfucker inside me gets to come out to play when the situation calls for it. Lucky me, it just so happens the situation always seems to call for it.
Rich pricks mixing with poor punks will do that.
Thankfully, what I said about my sister is true. She might share our blood, but she’s different. Better. Brielle is gentle, kind, and quiet. She’s thoughtful and selfless, and I miss the hell out of her, but after the life we were born into, the last thing I wanted was her living in a group home full of teenage girls angry at the world, so when I was offered a job in exchange for a room in this twisted town, I countered the offer, asking Brielle be shielded from any more bullshit.
How she isn’t as jaded or as screwed up as the girls in the home across the yard from this one, I don’t know, but she ain’t, and I’ll die trying to keep it that way.
She’s staying with our aunt a state over, still has a couple years of school left, which should be enough time for me to set us up someplace new. Somewhere that will be ours, where the only rules I’ll have to follow are the ones I set for myself.
I don’t hate it here. The house might be old and worn down, full of teenage punks with more problems than sense, but the hot water works, and the food’s free. Money ain’t much, but at least they pay me, and the job feels like shit I was born and bred for. But the biggest fuckin’ bonus? I’m here because I choose to be, not ’cause some jackass judge, who knows nothing about the streets or the kids who come from it, says I have to be.