Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 178117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 891(@200wpm)___ 712(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 178117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 891(@200wpm)___ 712(@250wpm)___ 594(@300wpm)
But we both know that’s a lie.
Underneath her unabashed veneer hides a scared little girl, looking for something to hold on to.
Safety.
I notice it all.
I don’t need to feel her anger when she catches me stealing to know she’s afraid.
Afraid of what she might discover if she digs any deeper.
I draw her wavy hair drifting in the wind, her pink cheeks, her brazen lip color. Painstakingly, I make a portrait of a girl who’s captured my imagination as well as those of my friends.
Everything about her is ours.
Shared.
Consumed.
But this drawing … it’s mine and mine alone.
Penelope
I try my best to focus on my group of friends. I really needed a calm-down period after getting so wound up in the library.
But my mind constantly veers off track to what happened in the library. Those fucking boys. I can’t ever get away from them, can I?
I made a deal with them, but something tells me they’re not gonna keep their end of our bargain.
Fuckers.
I should’ve known better than to trust them to help me find the one responsible for my sister’s misery. I should just go and find Nathan myself.
In fact, they’re probably hiding him somewhere in that goddamn frat house themselves, just so they can use me for a few days longer. I mean, I haven’t seen a sign of Nathan’s face anywhere, not since that note was shoved under my door, so where the fuck else could he be?
Unless he’s part of a different frat house than the Skull & Serpent Society.
“Pen? What do you think?” Kayla asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Huh, what?” I mutter, confused.
She frowns. “Do you prefer Italian or Chinese?”
“Uh, Italian?” I reply. “Sorry, what’s this about?”
“We were discussing where we were going out to dinner tonight. You know. A little get-together.”
Oh man, I really missed a lot of the conversation.
“Are you okay?” Crystal asks. “You seem a little distracted.”
Calvin rolls his eyes and rubs his lips together. “I know what she’s thinking about.”
Jeremy quickly jabs him in the side with his elbow.
“Is it those boys again?” Kayla asks, side-eyeing Calvin and Jeremy. “I swear to God, if y’all are hiding something—”
“Don’t make us the bad guys,” Jeremy quips, adjusting his glasses.
“I’m fine, guys, honestly,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Kayla asks. “You ran off so quickly after you told me about that ‘thing’ that happened in the woods.” She makes air quotes with her fingers. “But I never got the chance to ask you all about it.”
“It was my choice …” I rub my lips together. “I don’t do regrets.”
She frowns. “Well, they’d better not hurt you. I’ve seen them with girls. They don’t treat anyone right, but especially girls.”
“Yeah, like goddamn throwaway fuck dolls,” Calvin says.
“I don’t care what they do to me,” I say. “I know what I want from them, and I’m not going to stop until I get it.”
Crystal looks at me intently, trying to decipher what the words really mean. But I don’t want them to get too close to the danger … too close to me.
Suddenly, someone walks past us carrying a piece of paper, and from the corner of my eyes, I spot a picture I recognize.
I immediately stand and run toward the person, snatching the paper from their hands.
“Hey!”
But I’m not paying attention to her.
All I can look at is Nathan’s photo enlarged across the paper, the one that was also in my sister’s diary … Along with a note.
Chills run up and down my spine.
“I was trying to read that,” the girl in front of me says, annoyed.
“Sorry, I just need to see,” I say, quickly scanning the rest.
There’s a request for contact at the bottom, along with a phone number.
Fuck.
“Where’d you get this?” I ask.
She points at the biggest building in the university. “They’re all over the bulletin boards. So can I have mine back now?” She snatches the sheet from my hands. “Thanks.”
She walks off, but my eyes are already set on the building up ahead.
“Pen? What happened?” Kayla asks, but I’m far too focused to even stop walking.
Everywhere I look, people are walking around with these posters, but not all of them show Nathan’s face. But they are all pictures I recognize … pictures taken from my sister’s private diary.
The worst of them all is a poster with my sister’s face on it with a radiant smile. A smile I miss so very much today.
And now it’s right here in front of me, being degraded, used, disgraced.
I pull the picture off the first bulletin board I find, staring at it with tears staining my eyes. There’s a note underneath her face. The note my sister wrote the night she died.
Fuck.
Why? Why would they do this?
Every step I take inside the building feels like I’m sinking deeper into the fires of hell.
People walk past me and even look at me when I pass them.