“FUCKING RETARD,” Clint sneered at me the second day of school. Because that was his thing.
I ignored him, as I always did, shoving books into my locker. It was easier.
Apparently not for Carter, though. He grabbed Clint by the back of the head and threw him against the row of lockers, pressing his face against the cold metal. “You talk like that to him again and I’ll rip your fucking heart out,” he hissed. “Tell everyone that Ox is under Bennett protection and if anyone so much as looks at him funny, I’ll break their arms. Don’t fuck with Ox.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said quietly as Carter and Kelly pulled me away. Carter had his arm around my shoulders and Kelly held my elbow. “They go away eventually.”
“Fuck that,” Carter snarled.
“They don’t touch you,” Kelly growled. “Ever.”
THEY CAME into the school with their fancy clothes and their perfect faces and their secrets and everyone talked about them. The Bennett boys.
High school is the same wherever you go.
It’s rumors and clichés and innuendo.
They’re in a gang, people whispered.
They’re drug dealers.
They had to leave their other school because they killed a teacher.
They take turns fucking Ox.
Ox fucks them both.
I laughed and laughed.
We sat in the lunchroom and I had friends. Sometimes, I wanted to talk. Sometimes, I had nothing to say and opened my book. They always stayed.
They always sat on the same side of the table as me, crowding in close.
THEY WERE physical. The whole family.
A hand in my hair.
A hug.
Elizabeth’s kiss on my cheek.
Joe on the dirt road as I walked in the sun. His hand would go into mine and he would lean up against me as we headed home.
Kelly bumped my shoulders as we passed each other in the hallway.
The weight of Carter’s arm on me as we walked to class.
Thomas’s hand shaking mine, the grip strong and callused.
Mark’s thumb against my ear.
At first it was just me.
But as winter approached, they started to include my mother.
GORDO TOLD me about Joe. Part of it, anyway.
And I hated him for it.