Curvy Girls Can't Date Best Friends - Kelsie Stelting Page 0,3

on the gravel, I looked over to see the boy at the same distance as me.

“Tie,” he said.

I grinned. “I’ll win next time.”

A woman’s voice yelled in the distance, “Carson!”

His expression soured. “That’s me.”

That tight feeling was back in my chest. “See you later?”

He nodded. “Race?”

“You’re on.”

We sprinted back toward our houses, neck and neck the entire way. When we reached the back gate, one of his sisters was standing there with her arms folded across her ample chest. “Looks like you’re fitting right in,” she said drily, extending her arm for him.

He ducked under it and started inside.

As I walked toward my house, I couldn’t get the boy and his hidden tears out of my mind. Not during supper when Joe told Dad what happened. Not when our parents sent us upstairs and I could hear my parents whispering downstairs through the bathroom vents, and not at bedtime as I sat at my desk, carefully braiding my hair so it would be crimped the next morning.

Not when I heard something tapping at my second-story window.

With my eyebrows furrowed together, I went to the window, pushed it open, and looked down and around. There were bright little pieces of something on the ground. And then one pegged my head.

Across the gap between our houses, I could see the boy, Carson, leaning out his window, holding on to a handful of Legos.

Before I had a chance to speak, he said, “I didn’t hear your name.”

“Callie,” I answered.

“Same place, same time tomorrow, Callie?” he asked.

I nodded, a smile growing on my face. “You’re on.”

Two

Eleven Years Old

CARSON

Mom’s promise only lasted three months before the fighting started again.

My parents yelled back and forth downstairs, just like they had at the old house. Even worse. They’d been at this for at least an hour, and there was no hope of slowing down anytime soon. The words they flung at each other made me sick to my stomach. Usually Dad was the one who got physical, but Mom could be just as hateful with her words, calling him a deadbeat and a waste of skin.

My chest was tight, and I had trouble breathing, much less sleeping, even though my alarm clock said it 2:53.

Clary’s window had slid open for her to sneak out half an hour earlier.

Gemma’s music was loud—but not loud enough.

I had no idea what Sierra was doing. Was she okay? Should I check on her?

Something heavy slammed against the floor downstairs, and I cringed, stuck somewhere between leaping out of bed to protect whoever it was that had been hurt and running away as far as I could get.

My door cracked open, and I scrambled back on my bed.

“Shh, shh,” Gemma soothed. She came into my room, fully dressed in day clothes. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Where?” I asked. Not that it mattered. Anywhere would have been fine.

“I have an idea.” She quietly opened my dresser drawers, then flung clothes at me.

I threw them on over the underwear I’d gone to bed in and followed her down the hallway. She paused before the staircase, making sure the yelling was farther away, toward the garage, before continuing to Sierra’s room.

“Won’t Sierra be mad we’re going in her room?” I whispered.

Ignoring me, Gemma pushed through the door where I saw Sierra waiting for us, looking down at her phone. At the sound of the door opening, she jerked away, but seemed to relax when she realized it was us. She walked straight to the open window and began climbing down the lattice on the side of the house.

Gemma easily followed out the window, and I looked back toward the stairs. The yelling had stopped. Maybe it was over? But then other sounds came from downstairs, just as disturbing, and I hurried toward the window.

Sierra sprinted across the grass toward the green belt, and Gemma and I followed. They went past the first, smaller park next to our house, past Callie’s house, and stopped at the bigger park.

“I’m so sick of them,” Sierra gritted out as she climbed the stairs meant for much younger children.

Gemma followed after her. “They should have just left us with Grandma and Gramps. Mom and Dad clearly don’t want kids anyway, and Clary’s gonna wind up pregnant before she even graduates.”

My chest ached at their words about our sister. About our grandparents. I missed them too. Gramps was the only guy in my life who actually cared to have me around. Dad would order me around to get tools when he