Page 56 of The Endowment Effect

“Your so-called friends had propped you up on a stump and painted your face with the acrylic paint the cheerleaders use to make posters.”

“Innocent fun.”

“They wrote ‘Fuck Me In The Ass’ on your face, Maisie.”

“Fuck you.”

Despite her sister’s protests, Birdie had her shoulder under Maisie’s arm, doing her best to coax her to the car she’d bought by working part time at the Wayward Mart, the small town’s grocery store.

“I really, really hate you, Birdie,” Maisie said, stumbling over a garden gnome.

Birdie sighed. When did the two sisters who played dolls together become such mortal enemies?

“So you’ve told me.” This wasn’t the first time she heard those words from a drunken Maisie.

“No, I really mean it. You dress like shit. Your makeup looks like a kindergartener applied it, and you think you’re better than me.”

“Haven’t you been listening to Mom, Maisie? You’re the good one. I’m the bad one.”

“You are. I’m so much better than you, but you don’t know it. Not really. And I’m going to prove it.”

“You do that,” Birdie said, leaning to the side and balancing her with one arm while opening the passenger door to her Volkswagen Jetta with the other. “Right now, I’m going to get you showered and in bed before Mom and Dad get home from that Baptist revival in Griffin.”

Birdie looked for Lucas’s truck but it was nowhere to be found. Maybe he had already coaxed Grant into going home.

She supposed it didn’t matter.

If he didn’t despise her before. He did now.

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