Page 56 of Shaped to Be Yours

“Yes. That is the word.” Kai kept his eyes—well, one eye—on the floor, only able to stand straight because his parents were supporting him. “He seemed so nice. Then he started askingquestions. Then… his friends came. I tried to leave. They tried to stop me. I… fought to get away. They did not like that I resisted and started to beat me. I finally hit one of them hard enough to escape, but they followed me here.”

Thosefuckers.

All I could see while he recounted all that was red.

“Then they are really fucking stupid,” I growled.

“Jason!” Ricky tried to hold onto me. “You can’t—”

“They want to spout a bunch of bullshit about monsters on street corners, they can go right ahead. But pulling shit likethis?” I heard the real growl enter my voice and didn’t care. “I am done!” I tore away from Ricky and launched into a sprint for the front.

“Jason!”

Red. Nothing but red.

Kai was a nineteen-year-old looking for love. If they wanted to target monsters, they should look in the fucking mirror!

Ricky called after me the entire way, but I didn’t stop. I pushed past the guards at the door.

“Sir, please wait—”

“Make sure the police get here soon,” I told them and stormed outside, looking for Ronald McDickhole.

To my surprise, he wasn’t among the dozen or so people raising a fuss, but I recognized several of those who had been there when McDickhole was trying to gather flunkies outside Beastly Brewhouse. They were just like him.Worse.

“It is bad enough that app gives them access to easily manipulative humans they can brainwash to their cause!” some random ringleader was shouting, while others chanted the usual BS I used to hear on campus in Edgewind.

“Monsters are mayhem!”

“Now look what that one did to me!” The man pointed at his swelling cheek with one hand and through the glass of the main doors with the other.

I looked to the doors too. Ricky was exiting to join me, but although Zinnia and Beck had followed us most of the way, still helping to support Kai, they remained safely inside behind the guards.

“Is he the one?” I shouted through the closed doors, pointing at the ringleader, who was grossly too old to be catfishing teenagers.

Kai shook his head and pointed at another.

This kid was at least age appropriate, and he wasn’t yelling with the others. He looked like he’d been dragged along for the ride, and once I realized how similar in features he looked to the ringleader, I figured the catfishing jackass must have been forced into it by his father.

Still an accessory.

“Hey!” I screamed over their continued chanting. “Come up with something new already! Monsters are members of this community now, not mayhem, and you all better get real comfy with the idea of jail time and a huge fucking fine for assault!”

That caught a few of the protesters up short. They couldn’t all have been part of the beating, or I doubted Kai would have been able to escape them, but guilt by association, assholes.

“Bosco.” The ringleader said my name like it was a bug he’d swallowed. I recognized him now. He worked construction in town. His son did too, during the summer.

“Colt, right?” I ignored his ringleader father. “You graduated two years after me? I don’t remember you being a dick.”

“Y-yeah?” Colt tried to act tough now that I’d called him out. “Well, I don’t remember you being a monster. Were you lying, hiding like the paper said, or did they turn you into one of them?”

“Is that what they’re planning?” someone else shouted.

“Are they trying to turn all of us?” another joined in.

The din rose, and the chanting started again too.

“Monsters are mayhem!”

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