Page 459 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

“What are you...why are you...?” Harper cuts off with a strangled sound.

“Stop sniveling,” Diana snaps. “Do you really think a few tears will make us forget what a goddamn whore you are?”

“Diana.” Wayne’s voice is steel, but it’s trembling and his jaw is so tight, his neck muscles are cording.

“Dad, what’s going on?” I try for calm, and probably get closer to indifferent. Better than yelling at him. Better than charging at Diana again.

My stepmother cackles like the evil witch she is and fumbles on the kitchen island for my father’s phone. She shoves it toward him without looking. “Show them.”

My blood turns to ice. Christ,no. How did they...

Dad unlocks his phone and taps on the screen a few times before turning it in our direction.I spent hours putting that video together. All I need to hear is the first three notes of the intro soundtrack to recognize what’s playing.

Harper rips the phone out of Wayne’s hand and smashes it on the floor. “That’s not real!” she yells.

“Daddy?”

All three of us turn to stare at Rosie. What the hell is she doing down here? She knows to stay in her room when there’s fighting.

“Go upstairs,” Dad says.

“But—”

“Now, Rosie!” he yells.

Her brown eyes pop open in shock, her bottom lip trembling. Then she turns and runs out of the kitchen.

I’m torn in fucking two. I want to go after her, make sure she’s okay, but Harper’s going to need my help, maybe even my protection if her mother decides to slap her again. I tell myself that Rosie will be okay because fuck, I’m only mortal and Ican’tsplit myself in two.

“This isn’t you?” Wayne says as he picks up his shattered phone from the floor.

Harper shakes her head, her arms tightening around her chest. “No, I mean, it is, but?—”

“But what?”

“We went to a party,” I blurt out.

Dad glances at me with a heavy frown on his face, and then looks back to Harper, dismissing me. But fuck, I need to make this right. I don’t know what I expected to happen if our parents ever found out about the video. I guess I was fucking naïve to think they wouldn’t—Cinderhart is small as fuck.

I step between him and Harper, blocking her, forcing him to acknowledge what I was saying. Frustration turns his lips into a sneer, but he listens. Diana goes to pour herself another glass of wine, chuckling like she already knows the punchline to this joke.

“There was a lot of booze,” I say. “Drugs too. Things...things got out of hand.”

Wayne’s frown deepens, but he says nothing, choosing instead to sit back on his stool and fold his arms over his chest.

I resist the urge to look back at Harper, to give her some kind of signal. There’s no way to avoid this—if I don’t tell them what really happened, then they won’t believe me.I just need her to nod along.

“I was outside for a while. Kinda lost track of time. Then Alex came to tell me...some of the guys had locked themselves in a room with Harper.” I can’t help myself, I glance over my shoulder.

My stepsister has her face in her hands, but she’s not crying. It’s like she’s hiding, trying to cover the shameful glow on her cheeks.

“I got there before they could do anything, but someone had been recording and?—”

“You’re saying someone tried to rape her?” Diana chimes in.

My neck feels rusted when I turn to look at her. She gives me a rictus grin. “That,” she points at Wayne’s shattered phone “does not sound like rape.”

“Because I edited it. I wanted to make it look like...It was a stupid prank.”

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