“Oh, sorry! My bad!”
She narrows her eyes at me, crosses her arms in front of her chest. Thinks she’s wounding me with her look.
“Just so ya know,” I say under my breath, “Luke’s really intome. He may be with you, like, officially, but he tookmeout the other night.” A feeling of righteousness seeps over me. I know I’m not supposed to tell anyone about our little date, but I can’t stand to sit by and not try to mess them up.
He’smine.
Jane huffs, bites the bottom of her lip. Looks up at me like she feels sorry for me.
“What? Why are you staring at me like that? It’s true, he took me out. Everyone pities you, ya know. He just pities you and your freaky farm family. But he’sintome.”
Jane cackles in my face. “As if he’d be caught dead with you! God, you’resodelusional, Nellie. Like he’d ever be intoyou. Get a life.”
Rage bubbles up inside me. “He’s going out with the patheticfarmer’s daughter. You havenothing. Why would you think you could even compete with me and all I have to offer?”
“Go fuck yourself, Nellie Andersen. Because seriously? No one else would ever.”
“Oh, Luke would. And will. We kissed the other night, can you believe it?”
Jane freezes; I’ve got her. I shouldn’t have blurted that out, but fuck it and fuck her. Her face gets red, then redder, and she shakes her head again. But this time, she’s not laughing. She’s seething.
“Well, you’re right,” she says, her voice almost a whisper. “You do have more than me. More money. So much so that your mommy had to pay him to go out with you.”
This nasty little bitch. Filthy slut.
“You’re fucking lying and you know it.” But even as I say the words, my mind reels. Did Mom actually do this? Oh, fuck, did she set the date up? Doubt creeps in, blotting my vision.
“You thinkI’mthe one everyone pities? Everybodyhatesyou, Nellie. Always have. We may have nothing, but you have everything, and your mommy still had to beg Luke to take you out. She had to bribe him.”
Blood whooshes in my ears, pounds through my brain. I’m seeing red. I want to yank Jane down to the ground by her hair, beat her with my fists. This lying little whore bag.
But the truth settles over me like a fifty-pound bag of sand.
And everything clicks.
Luke and Mr. Swift were at the house the other day while Iwas at the shooting range with Dad. Luke wasunattendedat the house with Mom.
And then he magically called, asked me out on a date.
How fucking stupid am I that I fell for it? But even knowing this, I also know that what we have is real. Not something Mom would have to pay for.
I’m shaking, standing here in front of Jane like a fucking loser as she smirks at me. As much as I want to beat the shit out of her, first I’m going to fuck up Mom.
Mom, the hideous bitch who is right now at the Boat House, drinking with Jackson.
It’s five minutes down the road.
I’m hoping, for Mom’s sake, that she’ll convincingly tell me Jane’s a liar, disprove all this. She fucking better.
85
Nellie
My tires squeal as I peel out of the parking lot and screech onto the highway, punching the gas as hard as I can.
The top is down, and the wind has knocked the cherry off my cigarette, but I’m too consumed with hunting down Mom to care if it’s burning a giant hole in the leather seats.
I flick it out the window, my breathing too shallow to smoke anyway.
