I do end up going with Grace for a coffee date after school. Iced coffee may not solve all of life’s problems, but to be honest, after handling Carter so effectively in the hallway after history class, I’m feeling a little better about mine. I can’t stand being bested by someone just because they have more money or more power than me. I hate being silenced by something like fear. But competing on even ground, that’s fair. As long as I stand a chance of winning the game, I don’t mind playing.

The problem, of course, is even if Carter pretends to play by the rules, he could stop at any time. He probably didn’t even mean what he said in the hall, he was just running his mouth. Cheaters don’t have to play by the rules, and he doesn’t mind being a cheater.

Still, I’m feeling less like a victim and more like someone with a little control over her life, so I take advantage and try to be a normal teenager for the rest of the day.

Thursday doesn’t feel as daunting. I’m not as afraid of seeing Carter (or any of the other guys) at school. In fact, I’m wondering if I’m the one giving them all their power. If I let them make me afraid, then yeah, their intimidation works. If I refuse to betray awkwardness or discomfort in their presence, I’m taking away the only power they have over me without committing a crime.

It was different when they had me cornered in a classroom on Monday, but now the halls are swimming with students and faculty. Honestly, it feels like another world. I don’t like having a secret with those three assholes, but no one else knows about it. Maybe if no one else knows, it doesn’t have to be real.

I made it real with Jake when I told on him, and boy, did that not go well. Since telling on Carter is off the table anyway, I’m going to control this as long as I possibly can.

Carter and I don’t talk at all Thursday. After class he heads out without looking at me, and I tell myself I’ve probably already lost his interest, just by implying he might stand a chance if he actually tried.

Well, good. I didn’t mean it anyway. Out of my league or not, Carter Mahoney is a predatory ass, and I don’t want anything to do with him and his dark, messed up games.

After school, I head straight to work. Money is tight at my house, always has been, so I don’t have anything like a college fund. My mom opened a savings account for me when I was 8, and it has $100 in it. Or, whatever $100 plus 10 years of interest on $100 is, which still isn’t much. Saving for college became entirely my problem, so I took a part-time cashier job at a discount bookstore. I enjoy reading, so I’m tempted to spend all my paychecks there. To compromise, I allow myself two books per biweekly paycheck, then I give myself a small allowance, but I save most of my money for tuition and books next year.

Unless I’m able to get a free ride at one of the schools I’m looking at, my first stop will likely be community college. Since I’m paying for everything myself, I have to make my dollar stretch as far as it can, and that means forgoing the typical college experience and commuting to a nearby school for the first two years. Definitely not what I want, but I have to be realistic.

Whatever I end up doing, I eventually want to get out of this town. I love my family, I’m sure I’ll miss them once I’m gone, but I’ve never lived outside of Texas, and I want to see what else is out there. When my mom and Hank first got married, we took annual vacations to Missouri for a week during the summer, but once they had my little brother, money got tighter. The vacations stopped since they had to buy things like diapers and formula, and we haven’t had one since.

Someday I’m going to live somewhere with burnt orange foliage every fall, with snow every Christmas, and I’m going to be able to afford to go on vacation somewhere different every single summer.

“What’s that dreamy look on your face for?”

My eyes widen and snap to the roguish smile of Carter Mahoney. “Seriously?” I ask. “What are you doing here?”

“There are three bookstores in the area. I’m almost disappointed by how easy it was to find you.”

“Stalking is illegal, you know?” I tell him.

“But shopping isn’t,” he states, slapping a book down on the counter.

Before I look, I guess at what it will be. Maybe a well-worn copy of Tales of Ordinary Madness. Carter seems like a Bukowoski kind of guy. Not the kind who buys it just to put on their bookshelf so they’ll seem edgy and interesting, but the kind who would actually consume every page and appreciate the madness, relate to the filth.

The first time I tried to read Bukowski, I ended up red-faced and grimy with such a thick coat of shame, I felt like people could see it on me. Carter doesn’t know shame, though. He would be able to enjoy Bukowski the first time through.

I realize my own thoughts sound a lot like admiration. Like there’s some part of me that revels in his brazen depravity. Come to think of it, my first bout with Bukowski made me feel a little like I did when I read the “notes” Carter wrote for me in class. They were more explicit, less openly twisted than Bukowski, but that’s because we live in a more casually vulgar time than Bukowski wrote in, and Carter couldn’t reference his actual crime. Besides, it wasn’t the dirty words so much as the mind they came from that made Carter’s note so depraved. Even though I knew it was sick and twisted, I felt that same faint stirring of curiosity, just like when I read Bukowski that first time.

Forcing myself to focus on the book he’s actually buying instead of trying to guess at his literary tastes, or how his degree of madness relates to a controversial poet’s, I take in the cover and immediately realize he must be fucking with me.

The book he placed on the counter is a kid’s book with a glittery unicorn on the front cover.

My eyebrows rise and I pick up the book to show him, as if he somehow confused it for Kerouac. “In the mood for a little light reading tonight?”

Before he has a chance to answer, an adorable little girl with hair as dark as his comes running up and puts a mermaid plush with pink yarn hair on the counter. Her dark eyes match his, too, and she has his air of tacit authority as she turns to look up at him. “And this, too.”

My eyes widen as I take in the mini-Carter. “There’s a tiny, adorable version of you?”

“Baby sister,” he explains, cracking a smile as he looks down at her.

“Wow. Big age gap,” I remark. Leaning across the counter so I’m closer to her, I ask, “How old are you, cutie pie?”

“I’m five,” she announces with pride, holding up five fingers to show me.

I pick up her mermaid and walk her along the edge of the counter. “What’s her name? Did you pick one yet?”

“Not yet. What do you think I should name her?” she inquires, eyeing up the pink-haired mermaid.

“What about Ariel?” I suggest.

Wrinkling up her nose adorably, she shakes her head. “No, she doesn’t have red hair.”

Dramatically smacking my palm against my forehead, I tell her, “You’re right, what was I thinking? You’ll have to pick a name for her. I bet you’re better at it than I am.”

She eyes up the mermaid for two seconds, then brightens. “What about Seashell?”

“That’s a great name for a mermaid. You must be so smart to think of such a good name. What’s your name?”

“Chloe,” she answers.

Carter must be tired of sharing the spotlight, because he hip bumps her out of the way. “All right, move it, squirt. I need to pay for your stuff.”

She turns and makes her merry way to a display of coloring books set up near the register. She grabs one, sits down on the floor, and starts flipping through it.

“Your little sister is adorable,” I inform him.

“She knows it, too,” he tells me, pulling out his wallet.

I shake my head, grabbing my scan gun and ringing up his items. “Bringing a cute kid in was pretty low. I can’t be mean to you in front of your baby sister.”

“I mean, you could be,” he reasons. “But yeah, I kinda figured you wouldn’t. You’re a sweetheart underneath it all, aren’t you, princess?”

Sliding an unamused look his way, I remind him, “I told you not to call me that.”

“And I told you to say please,” he returns easily.

Flicking a glance at his sister to make sure she’s still out of earshot, I murmur, “That only works when you have me half-naked and a little afraid.”

“And you wonder why I like having you half-naked and a little afraid,” he shoots back.

Depraved. Carter Mahoney is absolutely depraved.

I ignore his attempt to revisit that day and place his items into a bag. “Your total is $12.72.”

His dark eyebrows rise. “Damn, really? This place is cheap.”

“Correct. That’s sort of the appeal,” I tell him.

Glancing at the impulse buy Dr. Seuss pencils and the rack of assorted gift cards on the counter, he asks, “You like to read?”

“I do.”

“What do you like to read?” he asks.

Sighing heavily, I glance behind him. I’m looking for an excuse to kick him out, but there are no waiting customers, so I don’t really have a viable reason I could get by my manager.

As if he understands my mission, he grabs a Cat in the Hat pencil and puts it down on the counter. “Here, I’m buying this too. I’m not done shopping yet. This might take a while.”

“Uh huh. You can’t just stand here and harass me, you know? This is my place of work. I can tell my manager and he’ll make you leave.”

I’m bluffing. My manager is easily overwrought and would probably be too afraid of a lost sale, but Carter doesn’t know that.

“You can tell your manager that I’m thinking too hard about my Cat in the Hat pencil purchase and get me kicked out?” he questions. “Wow, you’re a real hardass.”

I roll my eyes, but scan his pencil and drop it in the bag. “Anything else today, sir?” I ask with mocking sweetness.

“You can call me that again,” he tells me, suggestive amusement flickering in his dark eyes.

“If there’s nothing else, your total—”

“I’m not done,” he insists, fingering the stacks of plastic gift cards. “In your professional opinion, if I wanted to buy a gift card, which design is best?”

“Literally any of them,” I reply dryly, since he’s just wasting my time. “They all serve the same purpose.”

“I expect more guidance from a professional such as yourself,” he states, shaking his head in mock disappointment.

I look over at his sister again, since he is clearly a terrible babysitter. She hasn’t moved from her spot on the floor. She appears to be tempted to rip the crayons out of the front of the book and start coloring, though. Clearly she has more self-control than her brother, because she hasn’t done it yet.

“How old is your other sister?” I ask him.

“My other sister? What makes you think I have two?”

“Well, you told my mom your sister is married and owns a restaurant in Dallas. Assumin’ the tiny one over there isn’t a major overachiever, you must have at least one more.”

Fingering through a row of gift cards, he says, “I do. She’s twenty seven. Why do you ask?”

“I’m just wildly confused about how your parents decide to have kids. Did they have her young or something?”

He nods his head, giving up his pretense of looking at gift cards and shoving his hands into his pockets. “Yeah. My mom was a freshman in college. Dad was a senior. She was definitely not planned.”

I do the math in my head. “So… she had your sister in college, then you 9 years later, then decided not to have another child until she was 41? Another surprise baby?”

“You have a lot of questions about my life,” he remarks.

His little sister gives up the good fight and rips open the crayons on the front cover so she can start coloring a picture. “There it is. Now you have to buy that coloring book,” I inform him.

“Oh no, how will I ever afford the expense?” he jokes, without even bothering to look.

“How old were you the first time you had sex?” I ask.

He seems to knows exactly where my mind is wandering. He doesn’t answer me, but he does assure me, “She’s not my kid, Zoey.”

“I mean, I would hope not, because you would have been way too young to even have sex—”

“It’s not too young. I was thirteen the first time I had sex.”

That stuns me a little. “You were having sex when you were 13?”

His enlightening response is a shrug. “We don’t all wait until we’re growing gray hair, Ellis. That’s just you.”

I shake my head. “That honestly makes me sad for you. That had to have been truly terrible sex.”

“All you have to compare it to is what happened in that classroom between us. You want to feel sad for someone, save your tears for yourself.”

I frown because he sounds defensive, and people generally only become defensive when they’re feeling attacked. He aims what happened in the classroom at me like it’s a loaded weapon, like he wants to hurt me with the memory. I know it’s absurd to worry that he feels judged, but a pinch of guilt bites me. I do judge Carter for what he did to me, but not for having sex at a young age. It’s just unfathomable to me. I was still such a kid at 13, sex wasn’t even on my radar yet.

“I wasn’t—I just meant—”

Cutting me off, he looks over his shoulder at his little sister. “Squirt, bring that over here.”

“Coming!” She closes the book and pops up off the ground, bringing her coloring book and opened crayons over to the counter.

“You’re not supposed to open stuff when we’re still at the store,” he tells her.

“Sorry,” she says, sounding not at all sorry.

I crack a smile and scan her coloring book, carefully putting the crayons back in their packaging and putting it all in the bag. “Wow, you sure cleaned up today, didn’t you?”

Chloe looks back at the spot she was sitting in, confused, then back at me. “I didn’t make a mess.”

“Oh, no, that’s not—I meant, you sure got a lot of stuff. Carter must be a pretty nice big brother to buy all this stuff for you.”

She nods her agreement and hugs his leg. “Yeah, I love him, he’s my favorite.”

She’s so adorable. Even though he’s the devil, seeing her hug his leg like that tugs on my heartstrings.

Carter grabs one of the gift cards he was playing with and tosses it on the counter. “Load 50 bucks on that, too.”

I scan the card, load it with $50, and read him his new total. He pulls out a credit card and pays the bill like it’s nothing, but it’s more than I will make working here this week. He doesn’t even have a job; he just plays football and goes to school. His parents will undoubtedly foot the bill for whatever he wants now, and then they’ll pay for him to go off to some fancy four year college. I can’t imagine what that must be like.

The printer spits out a receipt and I slip it in the bag, gathering the handles and holding it over the counter. “There you go.”

Carter takes the plastic bag, holding my gaze. “You should come to the game tomorrow night. We’re all going out for food after—a whole group, so you won’t be alone with me,” he adds, as if anticipating that’s a dealbreaker.

“Yeah, I wasn’t alone with you the other day, either,” I remind him. “An audience doesn’t seem to put you off.”

Instead of looking remotely ashamed, he cracks a faint smile. “That’s fair. This is different, though. My ex-girlfriend will be there, and I assure you she would not be down to watch. I’ll behave myself, I promise.”

I shake my head. “No. Thanks for asking this time, I guess, but… no.”

“You’re making this harder than it has to be, Ellis,” he tells me, lowering the bag to his side.

Chloe wastes no time, spreading the bag open so she can reach in and grab her mermaid doll out of it.

I’d like to tell him I don’t like him and I don’t like his friends, so it’s unreasonable to expect I would want to go out with any of them after a football game I frankly don’t care about, but I can’t, because he brought a tiny, adorable, raven-haired buffer.

He doesn’t seem to expect a reply. “Think about it,” he tells me, before turning and heading toward the door with the little girl.

Just as he’s opening the door to leave, I notice he left his gift card on the counter. “Carter, wait! You forgot your gift card.”

“No, I didn’t,” he calls back, just before the door closes.

I frown at the door, then hesitantly pick up the gift card. It takes a few seconds before I take his meaning.

He bought the gift card for me?