at Kindle Obsessed, Kat from the Aussie Zombie, AimeeKay from Reviews from My First Reads Shelf (who also reviews at Books and Things), Brie from Confessions of the Reading Housewife, Elizabeth from Fishmuffins of Doom, Angie at Books 4 Tomorrow, Diayll at Mother/Gamer/Writer, Tara from Basically Books, Katie and Krisha at Inkk Reviews, Laura at Roses and Vellum, Shelleyrae at Book’d Out, Liliana at Lili Lost in a Book, Mary Grace from The Solitary Bookworm, Jennifer from Book Den, Lauren from Lose Time Reading, Kelsey from Kelsey’s Cluttered Bookshelf, Kristilyn from Reading in Winter, and Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings, and to all the other book bloggers who took time to read and let people know about these books!
For Christina
Prologue
Ward Kilpatrick and his friends stalked the prissy glam boy as he left the broken sidewalk to squeeze through a ruptured chain-link fence into the abandoned railyard. The boy’s name was Joey Barrons, but Ward and his friends called him “JoJo” because he looked so girly. It bothered Ward just how girly JoJo sometimes looked. It made him want to grab the kid and just pound him. They’d been messing with him since sixth grade, and nothing had changed now that they’d started high school.
Ward watched through the rupture in the fence as JoJo cut across the abandoned rail yard, stepping around and through rusty old boxcars parked on the ruins of old tracks. It was a shortcut for JoJo to get home fast from the high school and off the garbage-filled streets of East St. Louis...but it wasn’t the safest path, as the glittery little hairsprayed freak was about to learn.
Ward nodded at his friend Lars, who was fifteen, Ward’s own age. Lars scurried to peel up the broken chain-link as if he were Ward’s personal butler. Ward walked under, followed by his other friend, Carl. Carl was a second-year freshman, sixteen years old.
JoJo was fourteen but looked twelve, what Ward’s father would have called a “faggy little pinko.” A huge fan of the newly elected President Reagan, Ward’s father, who had repeatedly referred to the recently ousted Jimmy Carter as a “lily-wristed pinko Commie.”
Ward and his friends were not faggy or pink. When the kids at school were listening to Roxy Music and David Bowie, Ward and pals slammed to hardcore bands that played parties in the city’s countless empty factories and warehouses. You didn’t need an ID to get in, because the shows weren’t legal in the first place. If there wasn’t a party, they usually played bootleg Black Flag cassettes on Carl’s ghetto blaster
The glam boy looked back over his shoulder, and his mouth popped open in an “O” shape that was almost cartoony. He wore glitter on his face—glitter, for God’s sake—trying to look like one of those weird English rock stars.
JoJo turned to run, but he had to cross a lot of gravel slag and two more dead rail lines littered with boxcar corpses before he could reach the fence on the far side of the yard.
“Don’t run!” Ward shouted, as he and his friends took off after JoJo. “Don’t run, little JoJo! You run like a girl!”
JoJo picked up speed, but his dark purple platform boots failed him. He staggered and fell, his wavy blond hair flaring out into a fluffy mane as his face hit the gravel. Ward and his two friends burst into laughter as they caught up with him.
“What do you want?” JoJo looked up at Ward. His lower lip was split open and bleeding, and it trembled. He was almost pouting like a baby.
“Why are you crying already?” Ward asked, folding his arms. “You don’t cry until I tell you to.”
“Yeah, nobody told you to cry yet,” Lars quickly agreed.
JoJo looked too scared to even try standing up. Ward’s heart pulsed a little faster. He was eager to get working on the kid.
JoJo was in their class at school. They were all freshmen, though Ward’s friend JoJo was.
Ward and his friends had a certain look, keeping their hair shaved close, with black denim jackets adorned with patches—skulls, flags, guns. Nobody fucked with his crew, not for long.
“Okay, cough it up.” Ward kicked JoJo in the ribs. “Cash.”
“I don’t have any,” JoJo said. It was believable enough, considering the shitty half-boarded-up house where JoJo lived with his grandmother. It was just beyond the fence, in a neighborhood where half the houses were empty and collapsing, like all the neighborhoods in this part of East St. Louis.