Page 209 of Pretty Little Lies

FIFTY-SEVEN

bay

It’s funny.

Getting your ass kicked by three girls in the parking lot of a hospital, but no one is around to help.

I always knew I’d have to answer to Layla again one day for beating her head into a locker in high school, and then knocking her brother out a few weeks back, but I didn’t think it’d be today.

Really didn’t think it’d be today.

As a solid punch is delivered to my cheek, I get a good view of cars that are parked and another reminder that I haven’t been watching my fucking back lately.

This is South Shore. Not the fucking Hamptons.

Girls around here do this shit all the time and maybe with the boys hanging around me so much, they fucked off.

But they’re not with me anymore.

The reality of that hurts more than the kick to the gut that’s delivered by Layla herself as I cower over, one of my palms hitting the cold cement while the other protects my stomach.

Fucking bitch.

“Couldn’t just fight me yourself, huh, Lay? You needed to bring your bitches, too?” My hair is gripped and yanked back for me to meet my nemesis’s glower and shitty attitude.

“You deserve three girls beatin’ your ass, Astor. You think because you’re fucking the Forsaken Crew that you can get away with everything?”

So, that news hasn’t reached her ears yet. Good to know, I guess.

“Nah, I think we’re even,” I reply evenly. “You wanted to bully, and I stopped it.”

“You weren’t the queen of the school, and you should’ve minded your own business.”

“Says who?” I’m answered with a backhand and the taste of blood finally on my tongue.

“Saysme.”

I’m not able to respond to that before they rain everything on me. Kicks, punches, I swear I think one of them body slams me, are delivered and plummeted on my body.

It’s almost to the point where the pain is the only thing I can register and not the fact that I need to get out of this.

I’m the only thing that’s going to keep my sisters from the streets and my dad from having a home to come back to. I’m the link.

And it’s breaking right now.

I hear Layla holler something, but I can’t make out the words. The punches don’t stop. The sharp blows are still coming down and it’s not until I hear a blood-curdling scream that my brain registers that I’m still fucking half-conscious and breathing.

I notice that I’m curled into a ball.

That I can’t move and don’t want to because I’m afraid of what’ll be the aftermath of injuries to follow.

My eyes clench shut, trying to shove away the uncomfortable throbbing racks throughout my whole body.

A gunshot rings out, causing me to flinch, and then gasp from the sharpness in my ribs. The smell of cloves and bay rum fills my nostrils, and I attempt to persuade my eyes to open.

I have to leave.

There’s a fuckinggunout here.

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