Chapters (47)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- 2 Months Later
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Books by Kasie West
- Back Ad
- About the Publisher
The rope tied between the two trucks snapped taut and vibrated with the new tension. My brother’s truck moved forward ever so slowly. At first my whole body relaxed with the motion until a sound so loud I could hear it over the scream of the music—a groaning, a screeching of metal—pierced the air. The underside of the truck was being dragged along the edge of the platform. My first instinct was to slam on the brakes, not wanting to damage the truck. Cooper either didn’t hear the sound or didn’t have the same instinct because he kept moving forward. That’s when two other sounds happened almost simultaneously: first a loud creak, then a bang as the entire platform bent to one side, then collapsed. I bounced in the seat as the truck slammed onto the ground, all four tires finally level. The second sound was a ripping of metal as the front bumper of my brother’s truck was ripped free, flying through the air, and hitting the back of Cooper’s truck, then falling to the ground. That’s when his brake lights flashed and he finally stopped moving forward.
Pressure pushed against my ears, muffling the sound of the music as I stared at that unassuming piece of metal on the ground in front of me. A piece of metal that was sure to ruin my life. This was not supposed to happen. I was supposed to fix this, not shock my parents. And definitely not break my brother’s priceless truck.
Nobody moved. It felt like time had slowed down. The hope of hiding all of this vanished. What had I done?
Images of my parents’ reactions flew through my mind in still frames, each one worse than the last. The final image, the one that stayed as if trying to burn its likeness into my vision was my mom, her arms folded, wearing the face I had seen so often lately: disappointment. No matter what I did, how hard I worked, I could never escape that face. Now it would follow me for the rest of my life.
Something snapped in me. Despite what I’d been saying about how I had changed and I wanted things to be different, until that moment, I had hoped they could at least be close to how they were before. But nothing could be the same after this. Anger coursed through me, anger that had been resting just beneath the surface for a long time.