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She’d asked if I thought it was possible to be perfect, and I’d amended that I didn’t need to be perfect, per se, as long as I was the best.
In the ten years since I’d graduated, I’d worked tirelessly to recover: to be beautiful, successful, fascinating.
I let her hug me, ruffle my hair, but I never forgot it. I never forgave her. Most of all, I never absolved myself of the sin of being so utterly forgettable.
She was a girl who did things I’d never known were an option.
And inside me was a feeling I barely recognized, one I didn’t have words for. The closest might have been Look what I can do or Oh, what have I done.
“The law is nuanced and complicated, and I like nuanced and complicated. Plus, knowing the law helps me break it better.
In the days after the crash, he seemed lucid more often, but that only made me terrified to be in the same room with him. What if he looked up from his cereal bowl and noticed me—really took me in for the first time in years—and hated what he found?
“I’m telling you upfront. I need more. I need you over and over. So this is your out. Take it. Otherwise you’re mine, the way it should have been.”
But the day it leaked, my first thought—I couldn’t help it—was that sometimes, you really didn’t have to lift a finger to get exactly what you wanted. Sometimes, all you had to do was sit back and do nothing, and it was just that easy.
“I’m going to tell them everything. His parents love me, and they’re so religious they’ll never forgive him. He’s always cared what they think, no matter how much he denies it. We’ll see how he likes having his life ruined.”
Courtney was kind of a bitch for this.
And the only way I could get out of bed was to think…well, she would have been killed anyway. Someone wanted to stab her. It was only a coincidence both things happened the same night. I told myself it didn’t matter and made myself forget.”
“Not about her drugging Heather,” Mint said hurriedly. “Just about the diet pills. She’s a fitness influencer. It would ruin her career.”
The tree had grown to twenty feet now. Looking at it was like looking at the passage of time, made solid and tangible. The branches reached toward East House like imploring arms. It looked uncannily like a person, as if Heather herself was frozen and trapped, begging for help.
“Of course college felt extreme,” Coop said. “You had infinite freedom and almost no responsibility. Nothing was fixed—you had your whole life ahead of you, and it could go anywhere. You had best friends you spent every minute with, so you were never alone. And you were in love. Real love.”
She thought I was a homophobe. She died thinking I was a homophobe.”
I'm not sure why this made me laugh
Somehow, Frankie had found a way to get even more naked atop a Homecoming float.
My mother took two steps forward and slapped my grandmother hard across the cheek. She staggered back, mouth open, and my mother strode from the burial plot, out of the cemetery, never looking back.
It was the girl the rest of us had killed slowly, over the course of years.
He’d treated her like he should have, like a student, using his power and authority to help, not hurt. The world had worked the way it was supposed to for Heather Shelby. Why her and not me?
The silver pair, nearly large as my forearm, twin points as sharp as blades. For scrapbooking, of course, because it was Caro, who did that sort of thing.
Maybe it was because now I knew she hadn’t stolen my dream right out of my hands. In reality, it had never been within reach.
I was the villain; I always had been. It explained everything—why I’d never gotten what I wanted, no matter how hard I’d tried. It wasn’t because life was unfair, or not working the way it should. I’d had it backwards my whole life: I wasn’t the princess, set upon by misfortune; I was the witch. And life had unfolded the way it was supposed to, giving me what I deserved.
I’d tried so hard to be good, to use the love I had for her to stifle the hate I sometimes felt.
I drew my hand back. “What?” His eyes, so serious. “I’m memorizing your face in this light.”
He could have slipped any name in place of Jessica Miller and gotten the same result. This was what I’d bought with my soul?
A woman who wanted was an ugly thing.
She was the kind of pretty that was safe, that wasn’t supposed to give you any trouble, that was grateful. And she always had been, had adored him, practically worshipped him ever since they met freshman year.
this girl who should have been grateful he’d chosen her.
And I was going straight to hell, because the first thought that crossed my mind when Mint unraveled was, I won.
Perfect Mint, campus big shot, heir to a real estate empire, king of the East House Seven. A killer.
Even crazed, even in disarray, he was still so beautiful. The best mask in the world. The boy who had everything, who no one would suspect.
“I don’t know. I just want to be free with you in this city. I used to dream about it.” We walked to the bike, and I fit myself on the seat behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist. “I like your dreams better than mine.”
The girl who always stole first place, taken off the playing field.
Trying to balance the scales.
