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Chapter 1
Kat
If my cousin Sara Lynn fell into a vat of boiling Pepsi, I’d stand back and watch her drown.
I wouldn’t even feel bad about it.
While she begged for my help, I’d remind her about the time she pulled my chair out from under me and I fell straight onto concrete and broke my tailbone, or the time she recorded me sleeping and sent the video to all her friends with the caption ‘Neanderthal Snoring,’ or the time she broke into my room and stole my pillows and refused to give them back until I admitted that I was the ugliest girl in the whole family. I gave in and said it, and she still wouldn’t return them and I slept on an old stuffed bear for a week before Grandpa made her hand them over.
Which is why I never should’ve gone with her to this homecoming football game.
But the offer was too tempting. She’s a senior and I’m barely in eighth grade and I’d never been to a high school football game before. She said she’d take me in front of the whole family at dinner, which meant it was really happening, and I was tooexcited to really think through what it meant. That I’d be at her mercy there with no adults to help. At the time I figured her mom and dad made her do it out of pity.
Now I’m pretty sure it was another in a long line of torturous practical jokes that aren’t funny and only prove that she’s an actual monster.
Sara Lynn’s smirk is vicious. Light and shadows play across her face as people above us on the concrete bleachers move around between plays. “Stop staring at me like that, Kit-Kat. If you wanna get out from under here then you’re gonna have to eat the whole thing, start to finish, and you’d better do it in under ten seconds.” She shoves the mustard-drenched hot dog at me and wiggles it up and down. “Come on, Kit-Kat. Get to it. We all know you love to scarf down food.”
She cackles and her friends join in. My jaw works but I don’t answer. Saying anything right now will only make it worse. Sara Lynn knows I hate hot dogs ever since Grandfather loudly informed me that they will made meeven chubbier and nobody likes a chubby girland now the sight of a hot dog repulses me. But Sara Lynn shoves it in my face with a wicked grin while her friends, Laurie and Bronwyn, watch and laugh.
Sara Lynn says, “Come on, it’s just food. It’s not like I’m asking you to eat bugs. Although—” She bends down and scoops up some bleacher dirt and sprinkles it on top. A little piece of discarded, ancient popcorn adheres to the mustard. “There we go, now it’s got a little seasoning. Get chewing, Kit-Kat.”
I hate that nickname. It’s a dig against my weight, which isn’t my fault, I’m only thirteen and it’s not like I eat too much junk or whatever. Grandfather won’t let me. Tears well up in my eyes, and I blink rapidly to try to stop them from rolling down becausecrying right now will only make this worse but I’m trapped and cornered and hurt, and I don’t know what to do. Sara Lynn’s not going to let me leave until I eat all that gross food. Even if I do it, she’ll just call me fat and her friends will cackle, and I’ll hate myself just as much as I hate them.
Except a voice cuts over the crowd. A guy’s voice, low and loud. “What are you doing?”
Everyone looks over as he walks toward us.
Bradford Arc. Or justFordnow. He’s big, pushing six feet, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. He’s a star on the lacrosse team or else he’d be out there on the football field right now playing quarterback or something. Ford’s one of the most popular boys at school, and I’ve never been this close to him before, let alone ever heard him talk, but Sara Lynn and her two little witch cronies know him. They hang out in the same social circles, and I used to be so jealous that she’s popular but if this is how the popular kids act then it’s better that I’m a loser.
With Ford here, suddenly I’m mortified. Now I can’t stop the tears even if I despise myself for crying in front of him, but at least Sara Lynn isn’t paying attention to me anymore.
“We’re just having some fun with my little cousin,” Sara Lynn says and strokes her hair with her free hand. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Seriously, Sar? You’re bullying a little kid?”
Sara Lynn rolls her eyes. “Whatever, it’s not bullying. She’s just my stupid little cousin. And she’s thirteen, so relax, she’s not, like, a baby anymore.” She looks at me and her lips curl in distaste. “Wow, seriously, Kat? You’re fake crying right now to get attention? That’s so pathetic.”
Sara Lynn’s friends laugh nervously but Ford’s staring at them like he wants to break both their perfect little noses and force their parents to let them get even more plastic surgery.
“Leave the girl alone,” he says and his voice is almost lost in the roar of the crowd above. “This is pretty sad, Sar. Even for you.”
“You’resucha dork, Ford.” Sara Lynn tosses the hot dog on the ground and walks over to him. “What are you doing after this? Are you going to Tommy’s house? I hear his parents aren’t home and Dean got a keg.”
“I might.”
Sara Lynn puts a finger on his chest. She smiles seductively, or at least I think that’s what she’s doing. I’ve never actuallyseensomeone try to be seductive before and it grosses me out that Sara Lynn’s acting this way.
Ford stares at her for a long moment and I think he’s going to do something like kiss her or touch her hips or something like that, like what boys do to girls in movies. Sara Lynn’s pretty in a way I’ll never be: tall, skinny, long blonde hair, big blue eyes. She looks like a member of our family, like an illustrious Stockton, while I look likethe mistaken bastard mix of a junkie daughter and some gutter-rutting stranger,according to my grandfather.
Instead, Ford grabs her wrist tightly and twists it sharply to the left.
Sara Lynn yelps with pain and surprise. Nobody moves—her friends are too horrified to say anything, and a sudden pulse of excitement runs down into my core as my hands fly to my mouth. My tears are all forgotten as I stare at Ford bending Sara Lynn’s wrist to the side, her teeth clenched down in a terrified and pained grimace. She tries to struggle, tries to hit him, buthe’s twice her size and not smiling at all, only staring at her with a grim expression, as he wrenches her wrist up behind her back and holds her there like she’s a child.
“How does it feel to be pushed around by someone bigger?” he says and leans closer, his lips practically kissing her throat. “I can tell you that it feels good to do the pushing. Should I break your wrist? I wonder if I’d like that. I think I’d reallyloveto hear you fuckingscream, Sar. God, that’d be hot.”
“Ford,” Sara Lynn groans. “Get the fuck off me, please. Don’t do this.”
“Would you stop if your cousin begged? Would you let her go?”
