Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 760(@200wpm)___ 608(@250wpm)___ 507(@300wpm)
She’s been offered scholarships, but I hear she has no interest in college, not even if it’s free.
She keeps her eyes forward, not acknowledging me. Her long, blonde hair is flipped over to one side, blowing across her face in the gust coming through the crack in the window. Everything from the tops of her ears down is shaved off.
I face the guy in the front passenger seat, half of his grin turned toward me. “Calvin Calderon?” I say, but then I fall quiet for a second. “I honestly don’t know much about you, except that I heard you think all dogs are boys and all cats are girls.”
Farrow shakes with a laugh.
“How good do you want to know me?” Calvin asks over his shoulder.
I cock an eyebrow. “How well…” I correct him.
And last but not least, I look to my left, to the dark-haired girl with the three roses tattooed on her hand. Aro’s told me about her. She’s the youngest of four.
“Mace, right?” I ask. “You—”
“I don’t give a shit what you think you know about me.”
Her brown eyes loom over me like a storm cloud, and I flash my gaze to the hand, the three roses flexing as she balls her fist.
I turn away. “Understood.”
“And you’re the daughter of Jared Trent,” Calvin calls out.
I stare at the back of his head. “It won’t be what you remember.”
Mace throws something in my lap, followed by a pen. “Sign it,” she says.
I pick up the sheet of paper, my handcuffs jiggling as I squint at the words inside the dark car. “I can’t read it.”
Coral brings up the flashlight on her phone, hovering it over the document. I scan the list of conditions, realizing it’s a permission slip for my enrollment at Weston High and my boarding here. “My parents are supposed to sign this.”
“Will they?”
I meet Farrow’s eyes in the rearview mirror. They probably would’ve signed it a year ago. They’re mad at me a lot more these days.
Wrists still bound, I pick up the pen and scribble my dad’s name and hand both back to Mace.
She only takes the pen. “Drop off the slip in the office tomorrow at school.”
I fold it up and work it into my pocket.
“When am I getting my clothes?” I ask Farrow.
We’re not heading in the direction of Shelburne Falls.
His phone lights up on the dash, and he swipes, then clicks out of the notification.
“I need things,” I tell him when he doesn’t reply. “My charger. My laptop and toothbrush. My pajamas.”
Another notification rolls in for him. He ignores it. “We have everything you need,” he finally says.
Calvin shoots him a look like Farrow’s veered off plan, and I study them both. What’s going on?
Farrow’s phone lights up again. He plucks it out of the stand and throws it in a cup holder.
I tense. They don’t have everything I need.
Like my underwear?
Farrow keeps going, though. Into town, up a road of broken concrete, and deep into the hills. Any remaining lights of Shelburne Falls on the other side of the river disappear.
I sigh. “So will I be able to get some sleep before the hazing starts?”
Farrow looks out his side window, flashing his Green Street tattoo in the rearview mirror—the word RIVER inked vertically, starting behind the earlobe and running down to nearly the base of his neck. A line strikes through the middle of the letters, from top to bottom.
Green Street is a gang, and I’m not sure if Farrow works for them yet, but that tattoo means he will. I don’t see one on Calvin, and I don’t want to turn my head to study Coral or Mace’s necks, because they’ll know I’m staring.
My cousin Hawke has the tattoo, but only because Aro, his girlfriend, is from here. She was Green Street property. If he wanted what was theirs, he had to get branded.
I look down at my phone again, still not seeing a response from Hunter.
The truck swerves, and I glance at Farrow, trying to type on his phone as he drives.
“Everything okay up there?” I ask him.
Someone is burning up his phone.
But he keeps typing. “Don’t worry.”
We wind through a neighborhood, left and then right, orange, red, and brown leaves kicking up under the tires and flying into the air. Abandoned storefronts and dark apartment buildings sit on both sides of the street, and I spot a small park, shrouded under a canopy of leaves. I can just make out a playset with a slide through a hole in the trees.
Farrow blows through a red light, cruising past a bar with one light outside the door and no windows, and I watch as he takes another left, not signaling.
“So, who am I staying with?” I ask them.
“I doubt any of our places will be up to your standards,” Mace says.