Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142664 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 713(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
In fact, we’d bonded over how much we both hated her, each of us for our own reasons. In the midst of my high, I can easily admit that I was jealous of my stepsister, that she had made my life a living hell because I could never measure up, not even in my mother’s eyes, a woman who hated her more than anything.
And Lacey, I knew, hated her because her own sister preferred Alyssa’s company to hers. That was a stupid ass reason to hate someone, but who was I to judge? Lacey is probably the only one in this town willing to associate with me at this point.
She was a few years younger than me, but not much. And I knew she liked these parties almost as much as I did, so when I called and she answered, I felt a little less alone.
As soon as the high wore off, I was back to feeling sullen and depressed, so I kept going, chasing that feeling of euphoria, and the highs and lows carried me through the day. When I wasn’t having sex and popping another pill or lighting up a joint that had been laced with embalming fluid, of all things, I was thinking about my life and how fucked up it was.
There was so much I had wanted to do, things that did not involve my mother’s one-sided feud with Alyssa and her mother. Once I was old enough to realize what she’d been doing all my life, pitting me against someone I barely knew and only saw a few times a month, I tried to pull away from that mess, but there was no pulling back.
Helen had been at it for years, and I admit that there was a time when I was right there with her. I hated that everyone loved Alyssa, that our shared grandparents, well, my step-grandparents anyway, wanted nothing to do with me while they were always bending over backward to spoil her.
It didn’t help that Helen was always in my ear, pushing me to be better than her. It didn’t matter that Alyssa was smarter, prettier and more well-loved than I was, all things I had no way of changing. Mom would get increasingly volatile each time Alyssa achieved something that I didn’t. So, of course I hated her, and still do. It’s because of her that my childhood was so fucked up.
“Yo, your phone’s been going off for the last ten minutes; you gonna get that?” I hadn’t even heard it because I was so lost in my own head. I left the bed naked as the day I was born and went to get it, only to wish I hadn’t.
There was a whole thread in the group chat I had with my friends where someone had posted personal conversations I’d had about some of my friends. Oh shit! I didn’t know it was possible to sober up this quickly, but the more I read, the more the fear overrode the high.
Some of those conversations went back years, but that’s not what was bothering me. Somehow, this person knew about the fact that I had slept with most of my friends’ boyfriends, the latest being not that long ago.
I didn’t have to read to the end to know that there were going to be threats made against me. My knees gave out and I sat back down on the bed with my mind blank. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear someone was out to get me.
First, the arrest and having to spend all that time in jail, and now this. Why am I always the one getting the short end of the stick? I didn’t even know about Alyssa’s marriage until yesterday when I heard people talking about it.
I guess the night she came to the house and lost her mind, she had caught Denny in bed with Lacey, which had set her off. Since I wasn’t part of her friend group, I’d had to piece the story together, but I’d learned enough to know that she’d married some extremely wealthy man who had bought her that old mansion we’d both always been in love with.
Truth be known, it was because of her more than my own situation that I needed to get high. Now the fucking comparisons were going to start again, and once again, I’ll get the shitty end of the stick because heaven forbid I be better than her at something.
How the fuck am I supposed to compete with this shit? Even my friends, in between cussing me out, were dragging up old hurts. People I once trusted were not calling me jealous, subpar, or not good enough.
It's like they had been waiting for the day to tell me how much I didn’t fit in. But who had told them about my personal life? How did they know about Mom’s affairs and the fact that she’d cheated with Corbin and taken him from his wife and kids?