Chapter 1

When my best friend, Natalie Grey, was born, she didn't cry. Instead, she peed right in the face of her cheating father.

Later, her mother ran off, and her father dumped her on the doorstep of a children's home.

It broke my heart to see her so skinny she was nothing but skin and bones, so every day I snuck food to her.

Digging into the meat in her bowl, she looked up at me with steely resolve. "From now on, if anyone messes with you, I'll take them out for you!"

I thought she was joking. I never imagined I had actually raised a little hellion who would kill for me.

In elementary school, a classmate gave me a nasty nickname. Natalie grabbed an inspection stamp from a pig farm, stormed into the classroom, and stamped "Grade A, Inspected" all over his body.

In middle school, a local thug cornered me for protection money. Natalie charged at him, hoisted the five-foot-eleven hoodlum into the air, and swung him around like a strand of pulled taffy.

In high school, a boy tried to force himself on me. Natalie grabbed a kitchen cleaver, yanked his pants down, and came within one swing of making sure he would never bother a girl again.

Because she had already turned sixteen, she was hauled off to juvenile detention for three days.

When I went to pick her up, a staff member told me gravely that Natalie had a severe emotional deficit and a potentially antisocial personality.

If no one reined her in, she would do something terrible one day.

I looked at Natalie's pale, haggard, expressionless face and made up my mind.

From then on, I wouldn't let her show that hellion side of herself.

Whenever her temper flared, I traced the word "calm" on her back. Whenever she was about to blow up, I looked at her with a miserable, teary face until she settled down.

If she went a whole week without losing her temper, she got candy I bought with money from my part-time job. If she went a whole year, I rewarded her with the game skins and stuffed animals she loved.

After more than ten years of this, Natalie had finally become a good girl in everyone's eyes.

So by the time we got to college, the entire management department knew that the class president of Section Three was a pushover with no temper at all.

On her first day in our dorm room, Selena Morrison, the department's it-girl, pointed at me with a laugh. "You're the best friend of Section Three's doormat class president, right?

"If you two are best friends, you must be cut from the same cloth. From now on, you're running all my errands and picking up all my meals."

I was afraid Natalie would lose it, and I didn't want any conflict, so I quietly agreed.

But Selena never ordered takeout that cost less than a hundred dollars, and she never paid me a cent for any of it.

Whenever the whole room went out to eat, Selena would egg everyone on to have me cover the bill first. When it came time to split it, she led the way in rounding down, saying ten bucks each was good enough.

In just half a month, my entire allowance was gone. Starving, I went to beg her to pay me back.

She happened to be livestreaming. She shot me a cold look and shoved the camera in my face. "Look, everyone, this is my ugly roommate. She's accusing me of not paying her back for food. So gross."

Her fans immediately started screenshotting and coming after me.

Photos of my bare face spread all over the internet. I got doxxed, and harassing calls flooded my phone.

Even when I walked down the street, people pointed and whispered.

My anxiety flared up badly. When I got back to the dorm, Selena was standing on my bed in her high heels, laughing.

"I'll give you a chance to make up for it.

"There's a charity booth off campus today that pays people to give plasma.

"I've been wanting a new purse. Go earn the money and buy it for me, and I'll get my fans to forgive you."