PROLOGUE
Twenty Years Earlier
“We know you’re in there!”
Kristen considered pointing out that’s because they’d chased her in here, but since that hadn’t worked out well for her yesterday, she decided to keep her mouth shut and give up any hope that she might have had of playing on the monkey bars.
Besides, this was better than the monkey bars, Kristen told herself with a firm nod as she reached inside the small brown paper bag that Aunt Jackie packed for her only to bite back a sigh and move deeper into the play tube when Kelly, the girl that hadn’t been happy when the teacher made her share her mat with Kristen during reading time, threw a banana peel at her. At least it wasn’t another yogurt cup, Kristen thought, shifting a few more inches to the right when she heard Amanda, Kelly’s best friend and the girl who poured glue on her during lunch yesterday, mention seeing a pudding pack by the swings.
“I really hate it here,” Kristen mumbled sadly, wishing that she was back at her old school right now.
At least at her old school, the kids left her alone, Kristen thought, sighing heavily as she shifted her attention back to her brown paper bag only to find herself frowning as she watched the boy that had been staring at her all day climb into the tunnel with a satisfied sigh. That was followed by him murmuring to himself, “What do we have here?” as he grabbed her snack bag and helped himself to one of the large chocolate chip cookies with extra chocolate chips that she’d been looking forward to all morning.
“What are you doing?” Kristen found herself asking.
“I’m invisible,” came the absently murmured response.
Blinking slowly, she said, “Okay,” not really sure how to respond to that. That was followed by watching him devour one of the large chocolate chip cookies that would have made this day better and finishing off her juice box. When he helped himself to another cookie, Kristen sighed heavily as she reached over to grab the last cookie only to decide that she wasn’t really hungry after all when the move was met with a somewhat terrifying glare.
Pulling her hand back and, for some reason, feeling the need to make sure that she still had all of her fingers, Kristen cleared her throat and asked, “Who are you?”
“Besides wondering how you’re able to see me?” he asked, looking thoughtful.
“Besides that,” Kristen said, waving it off as though that was a given.
“I’m your neighbor,” he said, shrugging it off while she sat there, unable to help but frown because she was pretty sure that he wasn’t an eighty-year-old man who enjoyed yelling at squirrels.
“Your other neighbor,” he said, correctly reading her mind, only…
“You live across the street?” Kristen asked, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she thought about last week when the social worker that hadn’t said more than two words to her dropped her off at her aunt’s house and the terrifying scene that met her when she eventually climbed out of the car and-
“Were you the boy who was forced to eat mud?”
“First off,” he said, pausing to finish off the last cookie, “that mud was delicious. Secondly, I wasn’t forced to do anything. I was luring my brothers into a false sense of security by making them believe that they’d won.”
“By eating mud?” Kristen asked, frowning in confusion as she watched a pair of intense green eyes narrow on her.
“Exactly,” he bit out with a firm nod as he held out his hand in silent demand.
When she could only stare, he said, “Your backup snack.”
“They dumped it in the toilet during story time,” Kristen said as a thought occurred to her. “How long have you been watching me?”
“Long enough to know that you need to establish dominance,” he said, dropping his hand away with a disappointed sigh as he looked pointedly to her right.
“What does that mean?” Kristen asked, following his gaze only to feel her shoulders slump in defeat as she watched Kelly and the rest of the girls that made her life miserable as they dumped a pudding pack, a bottle of water, and what looked like a bottle of paste into one of the buckets from the sandbox that she’d quickly learned was off-limits on her first day of school when Kelly dumped a bucket of sand on her head.
“I’m not exactly sure, but my cousin Jason told me that I needed to do it after my brothers tied me to a tree,” the boy who still hadn’t told her his name said as they watched Kelly grab a stick and started mixing what would most likely end withKristen waiting in the nurse’s office for her aunt to pick her up early from school again.
“I really hate this school,” Kristen mumbled sadly when she saw Kelly pull a small bottle of red glitter out of her pocket.
“Why are you living with the Andersons?” came the curious question that had her stomach turning.
“My mom didn’t want me anymore,” she said, trying to shrug it off like it didn’t matter.
“Why didn’t she want you anymore?”
“I got in the way,” Kristen said as she told herself that it was fine. Her mother just needed time to get used to the new baby and when she did, she’d send for her and everything would be fine. Until then, she just had to stay out of trouble, Kristen thought even as she couldn’t help but wonder where Kelly got that bottle of red paint from.
