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“Or what?” I snap at her, all hints of a whisper gone from my voice. “You’ll hold me against my will? Brick me up in a wall because you’re a fucking insane person?”

“I can always knock you out again,” she tells me. “You’ll wake up in total darkness.”

Tress lets that sit a second, then continues. “At least if you’re awake you’ve got a chance in hell of talking me out of this.”

I’m quiet while she lays the first brick but can’t help it when she reaches for another. “Two?” I ask, dropping my voice low, using the tone that I used on Ribbit earlier, when he literally ran to get me a beer. But Tress is not her cousin, and she sees right through my shit.

“That’s for kicking at the first one,” she says.

I’m dying to take a shot at Tress while she kneels in front of me. I could do some damage, too; maybe knock some of her teeth out, or at least break her nose. But I won’t, and she knows it. I won’t because I need to keep her happy. She lays an entire first row; four bricks across, like she’s testing me. I don’t say anything, as instructed.

“All right,” she finally says, rocking back on her heels and dropping the spade into the mortar bucket. “We need to talk about freshman year.”

Upstairs, a clock chimes.

Chapter 16

Tress

Freshman Year

Shit. That’s what I wake up to—actual shit.

There’s a raccoon at the foot of my bed, pawing through the clothes I had carefully laid out to wear to school today. I yelp when I see it, and it reactively shits, erasing any chance I had of maybe spot-cleaning its grubby little pawprints from the shirt I’d managed to snag from Goodwill, tags still on.

“Cecil!” I yell as the raccoon scurries out of my room, down the hallway, and out the trailer door . . . which is standing open.

“Huh?” Cecil stirs from his spot on the couch, bumping the rickety coffee table and sending a cascade of beer bottles onto the floor, not all of them empty. A flood of beer follows the raccoon toward the door, because this place isn’t exactly level.

“You left the front door open,” I tell him, to which he gives a laugh, waves his hand at it, and goes back to sleep, rolling over to show me his back. You work with animals long enough, you learn body language thoroughly. I’m dismissed.

I rifle through my laundry basket, hoping there’s something salvageable I can wear. But we haven’t had the cash for the laundromat this week, which is why I’d lifted a few things from Goodwill. It wasn’t the first time, and I never feel great about it, but Cecil says the Goodwill is a nonprofit anyway so I shouldn’t worry too much about it.

Truth is, I can’t. I’ve got bigger concerns.

Like I literally have nothing to wear to school. I’ve been washing bras and underwear in the sink and hanging them out to dry, but that’s the only clean stuff I’ve got. Everything else is . . . a touch south of smelly. I find a pair of jeans that have Rue’s hair all over them but otherwise look okay. I shake them out, sending orangutan hair across my room.

I can hear the bus coming up the ridge, gears grinding as it makes the climb. In their pens, Zee and Dee, our resident zebra and ostrich, sniff the wind, finding the diesel fumes. I grab the least-rumpled T-shirt I can find and dash into Cecil’s room, snagging an old bowling jersey from the back of his closet. I slip it on and douse myself with body spray so that I don’t smell too much like mildew. I just catch the bus, find a seat by myself in the back, and jam my earbuds in. My hair is in a dirty ponytail because the well went dry last night, but combined with this weird-ass bowling jersey and my wrinkled shirt I might be able to pull off some kind of grunge vibe. Make this look like it’s all on purpose.

I definitely get a whiff of Rue when I walk into the school, so I go to the bathroom and try to dab hand sanitizer in a few different places. There’s a bunch of upperclassmen in there I don’t know, so I just get a handful from the dispenser and duck into a stall. There’s some whispering, a muttered “What the hell?,” followed by giggles.

Great. I wander into the atrium, hoping to spot somebody—anybody—I can stand with . . . or at least, near. I scan the crowd but don’t see any friendly faces—Gretchen Astor actually looks at me and starts laughing. The only thing she doesn’t do is point. Except, I’m sure she does, once I walk away. I stick my chin out and try to find a corner, preferably somewhere dark, before the bell rings.

There’s another whisper behind me as I pass, then a snort. I turn around, headed back to the bathroom to see if I’m bleeding through my jeans or something. I mean, I know I’m not making the cover of Vogue anytime soon, but I didn’t think my clothes were that bad.

“Hey,” a guy’s voice calls out. I don’t think it’s for me. It can’t be for me. I speed up.

“Hey!” he yells again, and there’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around, and there’s a football player smiling at me. “Your shirt is ballin’.”

I search his face, scrutinizing it for any sign that he’s fucking with me. Weirdly, I don’t see any.

“Thanks,” I say cautiously.

“No, I mean, like, it’s ballin’.”

“Right, thanks,” I say again, backing away.

I duck back into the bathroom, against the crowd that’s headed into the halls. There are shouts as people reconnect after the summer break, a lot of hugging. But I’m in the bathroom, inspecting my underwear. Most girls just ask their friends to check their asses when they get up to dump their lunch tray. Me, I don’t have friends like that.