Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Eleven years old
We were being moved again.
This time because Amon, my brother, had decided that it would be a great idea to try to sneak into our foster sister’s room and try to scare her.
By scaring her, he’d found pictures of her mother’s death, printed them out at school, and pasted them to the wall.
They’d been photos of the dead body covered by a sheet that’d been in the newspaper.
You couldn’t ‘see’ anything, but you could see something very specific in her hand, which was tattooed.
Needless to say, our foster sister knew who it was, and we did, too.
That had been flashed on every single news station in the lower states as they’d tried to find her serial killer.
And my brother thought it would be a great idea to scare her by pasting those photos on her wall. Then, a few nights later, drawing the tattoo on her hand in permanent marker.
Needless to say, after about two months of him torturing her, we were being moved.
Not just him.
We.
Because they thought brothers and sisters needed to stay together.
Well, let me admit something atrocious.
If I never saw my brother again, it would be too soon.
“Just you and me, eh, sis?” Amon asked cheerfully.
I nearly threw up when he put his arm around my neck and started to squeeze.
Then I was near passing out because he knew exactly where to restrict blood flow to my brain with his hold.
But I didn’t dare say a word, because I knew tattling got me nowhere.
Well, it did get me somewhere.
In a world of hurt.
• • •
Fifteen years old
I should’ve known that my birthday wouldn’t go well.
I was fifteen years old, and I’d learned the truth years ago—nothing good ever happened to me.
Nothing.
I should’ve remembered that.
Except, I’d had a dream that this day would be different.
Now that we were separated, and he was no longer a child in the eyes of the law, I would be able to live a life again.
I was wrong.
Amon may not live with me, but he found a way to make his presence known.
And, for shits and giggles, he made sure to always show me that he could reach me, no matter what.
Like today.
Today, I’d gone to school happy, clean, and for once, optimistic.
I’d gotten home to find my foster parents had been murdered.
When my bus dropped me off, the first thing to catch my eye was the yellow crime scene tape.
Then it was the cops that were all mingling around in the front yard, looking upset.
But even though I knew that I shouldn’t, I got off the bus anyway and walked up to them.
“W-what happened?” I asked quietly.
The first cop that got to me stilled me with a hand on my shoulder.
Then he told me the news.
My foster parents, the best that I’d ever had, had been murdered in their beds.
And I knew.
I knew.
Closing my eyes, I whispered. “My brother…”
The words stilled in my mouth as I looked up to find two men walking toward me.
Both in suits and looking important.
“Looks like you have a big brother that’s willing to take you in,” the man in the suit standing next to my brother said. “You don’t need a foster home.”
I swallowed hard, knowing that, no matter what, this wouldn’t end how I wanted it to end.
I would be going to my brother’s.
I would have to either agree or run away.
And only one of those options was going to get me finished with school.
“Umm.” I licked my lips, wondering why in the hell my brother was dressed like that. “Uhh…”
“She’s in shock.” My brother’s eyes, a wild blue just like my own, looked at me with a soullessness that turned my blood cold. “I’ll get her home. Thank you for all the help, gentlemen.”
And he did.
To our old, broken-down trailer sans parents—since he’d killed them, too.
“You almost had a brain fart there, didn’t you, sis?” Amon asked, looking amused, even though I knew that to be untrue. “Glad I got there when I did.”
My brother didn’t have emotions.
He was a true psychopath.
Oh, he could fake them.
He could fake a lot of things—like being sane, being a good brother, being rich—but he couldn’t hide the truth from me.
Not any longer.
“I didn’t say anything,” I whispered.
And I didn’t.
Because, if there was one thing that I knew, it was that the punishment for tattling was always bad.
So, so bad.
CHAPTER 1
No matter how stupid you feel, remember that Little Red Riding Hood couldn’t flush out that a wolf was dressing in drag and acting like her grandmother.
-Dory’s secret thoughts
DORY
“What’s the one way you’d never like to die?” Lulu asked. “Like mine? I’ve had a fear of log trucks. After watching Final Destination, I am terrified to drive past one because all I can see is the log’s chain breaking, and them falling on me.”
“Suffocation,” I whispered, so desperately wanting to fit in, to be a normal nineteen-year-old. “I’m terrified that someone will hold me under the water and drown me.”