Riot Rules (Crooked Sinners)

by Callie Hart

I do not talk about my family. Not to anyone. The boys know my father’s a cunt. They’ve met him in person, and it’s pretty easy to deduce that little detail in the flesh. Actually, it’s impossible to ignore. They know he emails me constantly about my grades, or a million other things that he’s pissed off about, and they know that I get worked up over his bullshit. They don’t know anything about my dead aunt, or the fact that both my mother and my father not-so-secretly hate each other. Hate me. Hate everything about the world, now that Penny’s not in it. I overheard my old man telling my mother that he likes to daydream sometimes that it was her who died, and he was still married to Penny. He’d followed that doozy up with the revelation that it was easy to make believe that I was Penny’s son because I had her eyes, and her face-shape, and the same nose, but that I always ruined the illusion when I opened my mouth to speak because my personality was weak, like hers. The boys don’t know any of that. I’m furious that Carina knows now, but when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t force it closed again. After successfully avoiding Pax and Wren all night, I get so high, I pass out face-down on the sofa in my room and wake up hours later with a ballpoint pen digging into my cheek. I cranked the thermostat right down when I came in earlier and now my bedroom’s as cold as the grave. I’m in my boxers, shivering uncontrollably, still fucking high as shit, it’s one in the morning and I’m so...