in prison.
As if he senses that he’s being watched, the guy slowly opens his eyes, lowering his hand from his face. I suck in a startled breath, kicking myself for lingering so long when I should have slipped away three minutes ago. He doesn’t turn to look at me, though; he only turns his head a little, slightly angling it in my direction. His eyes remain glued to the floor, but I can feel him notice me. The ghost of a smile plays over his mouth, which I can now see is full and perfectly fucking formed.
Great.
Just…great.
Before I can turn and flee for my life, the social worker reemerges from Darhower’s office and stands in front of the guy with one hand on her hip. She looks down at him with clear and obvious frustration. “All right, Alex. I’m not gonna bother with the talk. We both know there’s no point. You need to be here Monday morning, eight a.m. You need to register for your classes, and then you need to show up for them. Understand?”
The guy’s still frozen in place, his head slightly tilted in my direction. His smile forms properly now, a little lopsided, a little off-center, more than a little sardonic. He slowly turns his face up to look her in the eye. “You got it, Maeve. Monday morning. Loud and clear. Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
He has an accent, but nothing so evident as the deputy’s southern twang. The subtle, faint lilt to his words makes his voice sound almost musical, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
We haven’t had a new kid at Raleigh for well over three years. My existence here is a living hell, and has been for some time, but it’s a predictable hell. I’m not safe within the walls of this building, but at least I know what to expect. I know who I need to avoid, and I know which corridors I just can’t walk down. Come Monday morning, a new element will have been introduced to my already complicated, fragile ecosystem of hate, and I already know this Alex person is going to make things harder for me.
The entire football team is going to be on canvasing hard for him. He’s tall, he’s broad, and he looks like he doesn’t take any shit. Jacob will want him on the team, no matter what. Whoever he is, this new guy looks like he could pose a threat to Jacob, and he will not like that. He won’t like that one bit. He’ll want to control him, the way he controls everyone else. Jacob will want this Alex guy inducted into the Raleigh Roughnecks crew quickly, which can mean only one thing: one more person to despise me. Another mindless member, added to their ranks, charged with the task of making my life as unbearable as physically possible.
I pull back, turn, and finally head for the exit, a cold, oily dread settling in my veins. This isn’t good. I can feel it in my bones. I really shouldn’t be all that surprised, though. Just when I thought things can’t get worse…they do.
They always do. That’s just how things at Raleigh go.
2
SILVER
For the most hated girl at school, my home life is surprisingly normal. My parents are still together—increasingly rare—and I have a younger brother, who interferes in my shit twenty-four seven, as little brothers like to do. Mom works at a local accounting firm, and Dad is an architectural engineer. We have some money. Not a lot, but enough. We live in a good neighborhood. Our house is a beautiful old Colonial with a wraparound porch and painted blue shutters. Every Sunday, we visit my grandmother at the Regency Park Retirement Community, and she feeds me baked ziti and tells me stories about ‘The Old Country,’ otherwise known as Italy.
Between the hours of eight in the morning and two thirty in the afternoon, I might be a social pariah, scorned, laughed at, shoved and tripped. But at home, I’m just Sil: much-loved daughter, goofy older sister, and doted on granddaughter. One more year and I’ll be able to get the hell out of Raleigh and start at a college where no one knows my name. I don’t even care which college I end up going to, so long as I don’t know a single fucking soul there.
Saturday morning brings an early acceptance letter that has my mom dancing around the kitchen, singing my praises before