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Beckey ignored the whine She looped her headphones around her neck She was shocked to find her iPod shuffle exactly where it was supposed to be Kayleigh was the dorreater good She’d only slept with Markus because Vanessa had broken his heart The only reason she’d copied from Deneshia’s test was because her mother would be devastated if she failed another class She’d eaten Beckey’s mac-n-cheese because her father orried that she was too thin

“Beck” Kayleigh moved onto deflection “Why won’t you talk to me? What’s this really about?”

Beckey was about to tell her exactly what this was about when she happened to notice that her hair clip wasn’t on the nightstand where she always left it

The oxygen left her lungs

Kayleigh’s hands flew up in innocence “I didn’t take it”

Beckey was momentarily transfixed by the perfectly round areoles of her breasts, which stared up like a second set of eyes

Kayleigh said, “Dude, okay, I ate your shit froe, but I would never touch your hair clip You know that”

Beckey felt a black hole opening up in her chest The hair clip was cheap plastic, the kind of thing you could buy at the drug store, but itin the world because it was the last thing her otten into her car, left for work and been killed by a drunk driver as going the wrong way on the interstate

“Yo, Blair and Dorota, keep the sche down” Vanessa’s bedroom door was open Her eyes were two slits in her sleep-swollen face She skipped over Kayleigh’s nakedness and went straight to Beckey “Girl, you can’t go jogging at damn rape o’clock”

Beckey started running Past the two bitches Up the hall Back into the kitchen Through the living roohts of stairs The lass front door that needed a key card to get back in but screw that because she had to get away from these monsters Away froues and pointy breasts and cutting looks

Dew tapped at her legs as she ran across the grassy campus quad Beckey skirted a concrete barrier and hit the main road There was still a chill in the air One by one, the streetlights blinkered off in the dawn light Shadows hugged the trees She heard soh with a sudden shiver

Rape o’clock

Like they cared if Beckey got raped Like they cared if she barely had money for food, that she had to work harder than them, study harder, try harder, run harder, but always, always, no matter how much she pushed herself, she ended up two steps back froot to start

Blair and Dorota

The popular girl and the sycophantic, chubby uesses as to who played which part in everybody’s mind

Beckey slipped on her headphones She clicked play on the iPod shuffle clipped to the tail of her shirt Flo Rida started up

Can you blohistle baby, whistle baby …

Her feet h the front gates that separated the campus from the sad little don strip There were no bars or student hang-outs because the university was in a dry county Her dad said it was like Mayberry, but so The hardware store The children’s clinic The police station The dress shop The old guy ned the diner was hosing down the sidewalk as the sun rose over the treetops The light gave everything an eerie, orangey-red fire glow The old guy tipped his baseball hat at Beckey She stuht ahead, pretending like she hadn’t seen him drop the hose and move to help because she wanted to keep at the forefront of her mind the truth that every person on earth was an asshole and her life sucked

“Beckey,” herthe plastic hair clip out of her purse, “I mean it this time I want it back”

The hair clip Two hinged combs with one of the teeth broken Tortoiseshell, like a cat Julia Stiles wore one in 10 Things I Hate About You, which Beckey had watched with her mom a quadrillion times because it was one of the few movies that they both loved

Kayleigh would not have stolen the clip off of her nightstand She was a soulless bitch, but she knehat the hair clip ht and Beckey had spilled the entire story That she was in English class when the principal ca in the hall and she had freaked out because she had never been in trouble before, but she wasn’t in trouble So was horribly wrong, because when the cop started talking, her hearing had gone in and out like a bad cell connection, stray words cutting through the static—

Mother … interstate … drunk driver …