“I am not my brother. I am not my father, and I sure as hell am nothing like my mother. I was on the path toward all that, yes. I was numb to what was right and didn’t give a damn. Looked for the prettiest, smartest girl I could find, one I could groom, just like my mother had instructed. Payton was exactly the type of girl my mother wanted me to pull in. Except she wasn’t. She was so much more. As fucked up in the head as I was, we fought all eighth-grade year. Then, when she was pulled and moved schools, after you moved, I convinced my mother I needed to switch, too, to keep her. Took me two
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