I cringe as the handful of students walking around glance in my direction.

Awesome. What a great way to start my first day at a new school. Then again, if Dixie May has her way, it’ll be a shitty day for me anyway. And now I have the walk home to look forward to. It’s my own damn fault for riling my aunt up. I just get so sick of her shit sometimes.

Letting out a slow exhale, I continue toward the school with people eyeballing me, eyeballing my outfit, eyeballing my crazy hair. Then the whispering begins. Finally, I can’t take it anymore, so I stick my hand into my pocket and dig out my phone. Then I grab my earbuds, pop them in, and crank up some classic rock, the same music my dad used to listen to.

I’ve been entering school this way for as long as I can remember. Music helps block out everything, including my own annoying thoughts. Though I made a promise to myself not to do that today, to try a fresh start, I guess old habits die hard.

I don’t want to listen to the whispering. Don’t want to listen to the name calling. Don’t want to listen to everyone talk about all the made-up stories Dixie May has spread about me.

“She’s a slut.”

“She’s a satanic freak.”

“I once saw her kill a puppy just for fun.”

“She slept with a teacher.”

“Slut.”

“Freak.”

“Murderer.”

I yank myself away from the memories, telling myself that I don’t need to rehash the lies she told about me.

Well, almost all of them were lies.

One carries a drop of truth to it.

Murderer.

Because, in a way, their deaths were my fault.

3

HUNTER

I’m having the shittiest morning ever, mostly because one of the first people I see is my stepmother from hell. I despise the woman. Hate her. Just seeing her makes my skin crawl, which is why I try to avoid her at all costs.

I don’t live with her or my father, having rented a house with my two best friends, Jax and Zay, the day I turned eighteen. We made a pact to do so when we were twelve, to move away from the shitholes that were supposed to be our homes but, really, were just houses, with roofs and walls that offered shelter. Nothing more. And yeah, I know that’s more than what some people have.

The houses are huge, too, since all our parents are pretty wealthy. So, most everyone who doesn’t really know us, which is honestly everyone outside our group, thinks of us as spoiled brats. They don’t know all the ugliness that’s gone on in our homes. Of how we were broken. Of how our parents—if you can even call them that—got that wealth that they flash around for the entire town to see.

Money and power. That’s all our families care about. And that kind of mentality makes people do messed-up stuff, makes them cold and uncaring.