Suffer Love by Ashley Herring Blake

it.”
    She sighs. “Are you still going to go?”
    I pause, thinking. I hear my dad’s study door close downstairs, hear the clink of a glass against a bottle in the kitchen. I ball a hand into my comforter. I roll my shoulders back. “Yes. I am.”
    Kat groans. “Please don’t tell me you’re actually going to—”
    â€œThere’s no way I’m going to let some asshole assume crap about me after reading what a bitter bitch wrote on my locker.” I snap open my vocab book and flip.
    Kat’s eyes widen, but she shuts up.
    Galvanize. Hubris. Inexpedient.

Chapter Six
Sam
    I click my phone off and throw it on my bed. My breath is going in and out way too fast. I can’t believe I invited Hadley to my house just to piss off my mother. What the hell is wrong with me? I rub my eyes and walk myself back through the last ten minutes. I scrolled through my iPod. I tapped on Sea Wolf. I opened my calculus book, picked up a tooth-gnawed pencil, and scanned number 11, where I’d left off an hour earlier. Then my fingers were flying over my phone and I was talking to
her.
Inviting
her
to my house.
    The entire day was one shitstorm after another. After English, the rest of school went by in a blur. I honestly can’t even remember what class I had for seventh period. Mom picked Livy and me up after school and sped like a bat out of hell to the shop to pick up my car, yammering about her
amazing
new job and how
amazing
her students are and what an
amazing
commitment the school has to the arts.
    After she paid for my two new tires that had finally rubbed bald on the trip from Atlanta, she went back to her job. Seriously. It’s our first day of school, our house looks like a warehouse, and the woman goes back to work—again—to finish tacking posters that say shit like
Imagine
and
Believe to Achieve
on the walls in her classroom. Livy nearly bit a hole through her lip, but neither of us said anything. As usual.
    When Livy and I got home, I started dinner. After digging the pots and pans out of a box, I put on some music and took out stuff to make pasta primavera. Easy. Livy set up at the kitchen table and started her homework. As I cut up vegetables and set the water to boil, I kept flicking my eyes to her. I wondered if she had heard the name
St. Clair
drifting through the hallways. She didn’t look angsty or anything, but I should probably warn her, just in case. It’s been nearly six months since everything happened, but Livy’s a little unpredictable these days. The morning we left Atlanta, she came downstairs in a neon blue wig—this sleek bob that actually looked pretty freaking cool, but still. It was a wig. It was blue. Mom spluttered her coffee back into her mug and I’m positive Livy cracked a grin.
    â€œSo, Livy,” I said, adding oil to a skillet. “How was your day?”
    She shrugged. “Fine, I guess.” Her pencil scritched across her paper, her geometry book open in front of her. Her voice sounded like an automated recording.
    â€œDo you like your teachers?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œDid you meet any cool people?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
Scritch, scritch.
    I added the pasta to the boiling water, set the timer, and went over to my sister. “Livy.”
    She lifted her vacant eyes.
    â€œMom’s not here.” I tugged on the ends of her blond hair. No wig today, but there is a light purple streak in the front. “It’s me, remember? Thammy.”
    Her mouth twitched at my use of her kid name for me, back when she had a lisp. And then her eyes cleared and her shoulders let go of her neck.
    â€œNow tell me about your day,” I said. “I really want to know. No more vague crap, okay?”
    She smiled and nodded. I went back to the stove. For the next hour, she told me everything about school. She and a girl named Annalise bonded over