Chapter 2
I walked back from the exam to the worst lot in the worst trailer park in town.
"Where the hell have you been? Get in here and make dinner."
My father, John, was sunk into the couch with a horse race blaring on the TV. He didn't turn around.
My mother, Susan, came out of the kitchen with a plate of fried chicken and carried it straight past me to my brother, Ryan, who was sprawled on the other couch with a game controller.
"Eat up, baby, while it's hot." Her voice went syrupy for him. Then she turned to me, and it dropped flat. "Don't just stand there. Ryan's turning eighteen — he wants that used Mustang. Where's all the diner money you've been hoarding? Hand it over."
Something cold turned over in my stomach.
Last time, they'd pulled the exact same thing. Rent, they'd called it, while they took every cent I'd saved for college applications and a bus ticket out. When I fought back, John put me in bed for two weeks with his belt.
This time I knew better than to expect anything from them.
So I kept my head down and made myself look small. Before I'd even decided to, my thumb found the phone in my pocket and tapped record.
"Mom, that money's for my applications," I said, and let my voice shake. "Without it I can't even cover the fees."
"College?" John shoved off the couch and grabbed the belt off the back of a chair. "A girl like you is money down the drain. Your brother wants a car, you pay for it. What's all that reading gonna get you? You'll end up married or knocked up like every other girl around here."
"Dad, I washed dishes for that, every night —"
The belt came down across my shoulder.
The sting tore through me. I let my legs fold and went down with a cry.
"I'll beat it out of you! Where is it?" His face was red, the belt falling again and again, across my back, my arms.
Susan watched from the doorway. "Not the face," she said. "She's got a shift tomorrow."
Ryan laughed around a mouthful of chicken. "Just give 'em the money, sis. You're too dumb to get in anywhere good anyway."
I bit down until I tasted blood. It hurt. Of course it hurt. But I'd already died once. A belt didn't scare me anymore.
In the end I "gave in" and handed over the fifty dollars in my pocket — all they were ever going to find. The rest, everything I'd actually saved, was rolled into the lining of an old jacket in my room.
John spat on the floor and shoved the fifty into his pocket. "Cheap little thing. Go borrow more tomorrow."
I pulled myself up and limped back to the windowless storage room they called my bedroom. I shut the door, wiped the blood off my lip, and pulled out my phone. Still recording.
By Monday, Mia was everywhere.
I'd barely walked through the doors before I heard her name in every cluster down the hall.
"Did you see Mia's clip? Three million likes."
"'Too easy, I'd rather be surfing' — it's a whole meme now."
It turned out the thing that made me famous last time worked just as well for her.
I crossed the hall with my AP History book against my chest and kept my face blank.
Then Mia came toward me, a knot of girls trailing behind her. Full makeup, a brand-new Chanel coat, chin up like the floor belonged to her.
She stopped when she saw me. Something pleased and mean flickered across her face.
"Well, if it isn't our little honor student." She pitched her voice loud enough for the whole hall. "Still got your nose in a book? The SAT's over, Chloe. You don't actually think you're getting in anywhere good, do you?"
"I don't owe you a thing," I said.
That threw her for half a second. Then the sweet, fake smile slid back on. She dug a bottle of cheap perfume out of her bag and held it out to me like charity.
"I know your family's broke, so here." She let it carry. "I just signed with the biggest agency in the country — I can spare it. Spray some on so you stop smelling like the trailer park."
The girls behind her cracked up.
"God, the nerve. Thinking she's in Mia's league."
"I heard she slept with a teacher for her grades. So gross."
The laughter kept going, and I felt it land.
Last time, that exact rumor was what nailed me to the wall. No proof, no source — just a sentence that followed me down every hallway until the whole school looked at me like I was something stuck to their shoe. And the girl who'd started it was standing right in front of me, smiling like she'd never had an unkind thought in her life.
I didn't have a clean answer. There wasn't one. A teacher slowed as he passed, his eyes lingering on me a beat too long, and I knew it was already spreading.
So I let the perfume drop. It shattered on the floor, and the cheap, chemical sweetness flooded the hall.
"You think you're better than me?" Mia's voice climbed, shrill now. "You'll rot in that trailer park, Chloe. I'm going to have ten million followers and an Ivy League acceptance, and you'll still be right where you started."
I walked away with the laughter at my back. I didn't trust my face to hold if I stayed.
But by the time I reached the stairs, the heat in my chest had cooled.
I knew that agency. Mia called it the biggest in the country, and she was right — it was the same one that signed me last time. Everyone in the business knew what it really was: a bloodsucker that roped in new kids with big promises, then locked them into contracts and penalty fees they could never pay off.
