by Ashley Love
BULLY
Copyright © 2016 by Ashley Rose
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
1
This town is nice. It's different, smaller than the towns I'm used to moving to with my family, but nice. Maybe this place won't be so bad, I think. The last place we'd lived was all concrete and dirty alleyways and the bantering of drunken night owls out my bedroom window every night.
Here, it's quiet. I can hear myself breathe. I can hear the wind. It's eerie, but it's nice. And for once, everything—all the mismatched Victorian style houses, the lush East Coast forest, the sturdy railroad—is beautiful to look at.
It's hard to see any of it at the moment though, given that Sophia's hair is practically eating my face from where she's perched on the handlebars of my bike. We just moved into our new house last night and there are still boxes piled in the family room of the tiny place.
But I need a job. And I promised to take Sophia into the heart of the town today. I always keep my promises.
"Faster!" she screams, whooping as my bike hits a pothole in the road. It's an old town—the roads are all torn up and in shit condition. I have a white-knuckled grip on the handlebars in an attempt to keep the bike steady, but Sophia keeps swinging dangerously from one side to the other.
On second thought, this wasn't a very good idea.
"Do you have a death wish or something?" I mutter in her ear, trying to see over her bony little shoulder. "If I go any faster, you'll fall." I spit a clump of her fiery red hair out of my mouth from where the wind blew it back.
"I don't care!" she shouts in reply, even as she grabs my arm to catch herself from falling again.
I shake my head. "You're a horrible influence, you know that?"
She snorts. "I'm only eleven. You're seventeen. You're supposed to be the bad influence."
"Yeah, well you're bad enough for the both of us," I say, steering my bike around the last block and heading for Main Street.
She tries to punch me and fails when she loses balance again. "You're an asshole," she grumbles.
I flick her on the arm. "No cussing. Mom and Dad would be pissed if they heard that."
She huffs. "Well it's not like they're going to hear it."
I ignore that, wrapping one arm around her to keep her steady as I maneuver my bike to the side of the road near a streetlamp, the brakes screeching to a halt. Sophia hops down from the handlebars, combing her fingers through her knotted hair as I dismount and lock my bike to the lamp post.
Main Street is quiet. A few cars, a few pedestrians. It's mid-morning on a Sunday though, and this is a small town. Most of the older residents who have retired here are probably in church.
I don't believe in church anymore.
"Can we get ice cream?" Sophia asks, grabbing my thumb as she walks. I have no idea where that habit came from, but Sophia will only ever hold my thumb, and nothing more, as if holding just my thumb is less childish than holding my whole hand. She's eleven after all. Not a child anymore.
"I'll tell you what. You help me find a job, and we can get ice cream, okay?"
She nods determinedly, following after me as I pull her down Main Street. Most of the shops are closed, it being a Sunday, but there are a few cafes, book stores, and craft places open. I wander into a couple book stores, and once into a coffee shop, but none of them are hiring.
It's not like I need a job. Our parents leave enough money for us to buy groceries and necessities. But I want one. It makes me feel independent. Responsible. Lord knows someone in my family needs to be responsible for Sophia.
It takes almost two hours before me and Sophia give up on Main Street and move to 2nd Avenue, where there are a few hole-in-the-wall shops that aren't quite popular enough to be placed on Main.
And that's where I find it.
It's a tiny shop with a tiny sign hanging over the tiny door, simply labeled Singer Antiques and Crafts. It's not a particularly remarkable place, wedged between a real estate office and an alleyway, but the windows are what catches my eye. They're thick like wine bottles, and textured. They speak of the town's history, unlike all the modern shops on Main Street. I can tell that this building has been here for a while, that it has a past, and that draws me in.
That, and the Help Wanted sign taped to the inside of the glass.
Sophia snorts. "Really? There? It looks like a haunted house."
I tear my eyes away from the shop to look down at her. "That's what I like about it," I smile, tugging her along. "Come on."
She grumbles but obeys, following as I pull her inside. There's a bell above the creaking door that lets out a dusty hollow jingle as we enter, and inside it's actually fairly well-lit considering how stuffy it is. The store isn't small necessarily, but it's so cluttered with shelves and tables and crafts and things hanging from the ceiling and stacked in the corners, that the walls seem to close in around us.
But I like it. This is the kind of place my mom would like, full of all sorts of antiques and a few artifacts. My mother is an anthropologist, currently somewhere in Central America working on some sort of extended study that will keep her there for the next several months. But that's nothing new. She's gone more than she's at home. All part of the glamour of having a cool job, or so I tell myself anyway.
Our father is gone most of the time too—a traveling salesman criss-crossing the country for months at a time. But at least he's still in the continental US. He'd just left last night, hours after we'd moved in, and now it's just me and Sophia again, big sister and little sister, the way it always is.
Sophia veers off to the left the moment we enter the shop, immediately picking things up off the cluttered shelves and fiddling with them, studying them with her delicate little fingers.
"Don't break anything," I warn her, briefly shooting her a look before wandering further into the shop. It's so cluttered that it takes me a minute or two just to find the front desk. There are dishes of licorice candies and mood rings there, but no one is behind the counter. I lean over it and then glance around the shop, seeing no one else, hearing only Sophia's little footsteps and the clinking
and rattling of random objects she's picking up and putting back down.
I reach out and hit the bell at the front desk once, and instantly hear a thump and a grumble from behind a parted curtain towards the back of the shop. The curtain has Japanese writing and cherry blossoms on it, but before I can study it further, a gruff older man pushes his way through the part in the middle, a torn up baseball cap on his head, flannel shirt splayed open to reveal a plain white wifebeater over torn jeans.
Of all the people I expected to see managing this shop, this man is not it.
"What can I do for ya?" he asks, rubbing his stubble with his fingertips.
I blink at the man. I don't know why I freeze up sometimes in the presence of strangers, but frankly, I've never been very good at talking to people.
The man looks at me with serious but kind eyes. "Well? I ain't got all day, girl."
I clear my throat, shaking myself once. "Um, sorry," I say, glancing back at where Sophia is wandering somewhere in the shop still. When I look at the man again, he's waiting with raised eyebrows that disappear under the brim of his ratty hat. "I was just wondering if you're still hiring. The sign says Help Wanted."
"I know what the sign says, I put it there."
I flush a little and look down, but I try to give him a small smile. "Well, uh, I'd like to apply, if that's alright."
The man eyes me up and down pensively, his chin twitching a little like he's gritting his teeth and thinking really hard about it. I almost wish I'd worn my jacket. I feel stupid standing here in old jeans and a baggy Cincinnati t-shirt with a hole in the shoulder that my dad sent me from some duty-free store in Ohio.
"What's your name?" the shopkeeper asks.
"Ariel Riley, sir," I reply immediately, shifting my weight to the other foot. I cringe as Sophia drops something behind me and she whispers a small apology.
The shopkeeper doesn't seem to notice, just holds out his arm. "Alfred Singer," he greets, his grip firm as I shake his hand. "And you're hired. You can start in a week."
I blink at him. "What?"
Alfred releases my hand and raises his eyebrows. "You deaf?"
"Not since I last checked, no."
"Good," he replies. "Then I'll see you next Saturday at ten in the morning sharp."
I just stand there for a moment, and then blink a few more times. "Alright, uh, thank you, sir."
Mr. Singer waves me off. "Don't call me 'sir', I ain't stuffy enough. Just call me Alfred."
I nod. "Alfred then. Thank you."
"No worries," he replies. "You got any special skills, kid?"
I almost laugh at the fact that this guy is interviewing me after already hiring me. "Like what?"
Alfred gestures around at the various items in the store. "I own a craft shop. It'd be nice to have more inventory, if you have any hobbies like that."
"She makes origami all the time," Sophia calls out from the back, where she's fiddling with a music box.
Alfred smiles softly, a barely-there expression that eases his whole face. "That'll do just fine," he says. "Tell you what. Bring some of your origami in next time and I'll sell them for you, make you some more money on the side since the pay here is shit."
I snort at that. "Okay, that sounds nice. Thank you, Alfred."
He nods and I watch him reach under the counter and pull out a small bottle of cheap whiskey, not even trying to hide the fact that it's there. He takes a long swig, gritting his teeth as it goes down, and then grins a little at me before knocking twice on the counter and disappearing behind the Japanese curtains again.
I stand there for a few moments, blinking, wondering how the hell that just happened. But soon a small smile graces my lips and I turn, my eyes scouring the shop for Sophia.
She pops out from behind a shelf near the back, fiddling with some sort of mouse statue that looks like it's seen better days. "Good," she says. "Now you can buy me ice cream."
I roll my eyes. "Brat."
Windsor Falls, Vermont is a moderately-sized East Coast town of no less than twenty-thousand people. Despite this, it's thriving with an energy that makes it feel like a sitcom. It's comforting, warm even in the bite of September, and everything about it screams bake sales and community and motherly embraces.
It's not like anywhere I've ever lived before.
But maybe this is good. Things are already going well. I already have a job. Maybe it's different here.
The whole town, according to the extensive research I did before moving here, is built up against a thick forest that stretches for miles, separating it from the more metropolitan areas of the state. An old railroad with rusted spikes and well-used tracks is the only thing that connects Windsor Falls to the bigger cities, besides the highway we drove in on.
And then there's Nathan Hartley. I don't know much about the man, just that he and his wife founded the town some ungodly number of years ago. My scrutiny didn't reveal too much about the guy, but the overall consensus is that the story of Nathan Hartley and his wife is one of great tragedy, and not one the town wishes to remember.
And so they remember the railroad. And they live for bake sales and community and motherly embraces. And they forget all about the fact that this town was founded upon misfortune.
Of all the things I learned about this place, I shouldn't be thinking about Nathan Hartley. But for some reason I can't stop thinking about the guy. I haven't been able to stop since I read about him while investigating the sleepy town of Windsor Falls. What I should be thinking about is the fact that tomorrow is the first day of my senior year.
My eyes scan the trees of the dark forest as the nerves flutter in my stomach. I know that my new high school is just through those trees, in a clearing at the edge of the town. I'd found a shortcut through the forest that would shave fifteen minutes off my walk to school every morning. For a small town, the school has a pretty impressive population of just under two-thousand students.
And I'm nervous.
I'm always nervous going into a new school, and classes have already been in session for a few weeks here. So, once again, like every other time in my life, I'll be the new girl, and tomorrow is my first day. I remind myself again that this is my senior year, that I'm almost done, and then I'll never have to go to high school again after this. It'll just be a bunch of bad memories, and college will be better. I tell myself that. I have to. Because like it or not, tomorrow is going to be the first day of my senior year, and that will be that.
And on and on it goes.
I bike a different route home this time, partially for the sake of exploring our new town, but mostly in the hopes of finding a road with less potholes in it so I don't have to keep catching Sophia on the handlebars. However, she nearly topples off anyway when I suddenly screech to a halt halfway there, wrapping one arm around her to catch her just in time. She sputters and lets out a little yelp, her hands scrambling for purchase as the bike comes to a complete stop. She whips her head around.
"What the hell!"
"No cussing," I scold distractedly, my gaze scanning over the tiny park that just caught my eye. It's a nondescript little place, with just a swing set, lonely slide, and rusted merry-go-round among patches of browning September grass. In front of the small park is an equally small sign, hanging chipped and creaking, that reads Hartley's Bend.
Sophia follows my gaze and eyes the park. "Isn't Hartley that guy you read about?" she asks, looking at the sign.
"The founder of the town, yeah," I murmur, biting my lip and then steering my bike over to the side of the road near a sad looking tree.
"What are you doing?" Sophia asks.
"Let's stop for a bit. It's better than going back to the house and unpacking, right?"
Sophia grimaces. "What's your obsession with this Hartley guy?"
My brow furrows. "I'm not obsessed with him." I dismount and lock my bike to the tree.
Sophia takes my thumb again as we walk acro
ss the dead grass to the park together. Her hands are still sticky from her ice cream. "You won't stop talking about him," she argues. "Do you really have nothing better to do with your time?"
"Maybe I don't," I shrug. "Besides spoiling you, I don't have much going for me."
She snorts but doesn't deny it, squeezing my thumb as if to thank me for the ice cream. We come to a stop right at the edge of the grass, staring at the playground together. It's completely empty, and the old equipment groans and creaks in the slight breeze like something out of a horror movie.
Sophia eyes the park skeptically. "The swings look suspect."
I huff a little. "How so?"
"They look like they're about to fall apart at any second."
"Sophia, this town is over a hundred years old, everything is about to fall apart." She stares at the swings for several long moments before I roll my eyes and tug her along. "Come on, we won't know until we try."
"What? If they'll kill me or not?"
"Exactly."
Sophia stumbles along. "You think that's why they called it Hartley's Bend, because it's cursed?"
"Shut up and swing," I chuckle, lifting her up and setting her onto one of the wooden seats. It groans ominously under her small weight. Her eyes widen and she looks up at me.
"That was Nathan Hartley's ghost crying out from the dead," she whispers.
I laugh. "And you accuse me of being obsessed with him."
She grins. "Will you push me?"
"Only if you promise to drop all Hartley talk."
"Deal."
I round the creaking wooden swing and give Sophia a small push to start off. The hinges of the swing squeal loudly with rust and age, sending chills down my spine. Sophia groans and covers her ears. "On second thought, let's just sit on them," she says. "No swinging."
I grimace. "Agreed." I take a seat on the other swing, rocking lazily and scanning the park and neighborhood with my round blue eyes.
We're quiet for several minutes, lost in thought.
"Do you think there are any people my age that live around here?" Sophia asks suddenly, noting how empty the playground is.
"Well there are enough kids that they have a middle school, so I think you'll be fine."