All Chapters of THE GOLDEN BOY'S TARGET: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

I hear my bottle still rolling down the steps, but I don't take my eyes away from the boy. His phone sits broken in a small pool of juice, a step below us, from when he must have dropped it.He calmly moves his head, accessing the damage. His white T-shirt is now stained a light purple. I see him glance at his wrist and stop.I watch as a look of mania clouds his green eyes. He springs to his feet. There's a sense of urgency in his movements as he yanks his watch off. He's breathing hard, frantically wiping it against his shirt. His brows are drawn together, as if pleading as he taps the face of the watch with his finger.I hear people begin to hurriedly climb the stairs. By the time he slides his watch into the pocket of the pair of jeans he's wearing, wet at the crotch and down one leg, a small crowd has gathered around me in a semi-circle.He looks up and his eyes zero in on me. The expression that takes over his face as he advances makes me shrink back; they’re cold, sharp and ful

(Ellie 's PoV)The video has gone viral in school. One of the most embarrassing, degrading moments of my life captured in stunning clarity and different angles.Silly me. I thought that maybe it would blow over, that if I just went home, ate something warm, hugged my mom very tight, that it would just . . . disappear.It didn't. Why would it? Shame sticks.I sat awake yesterday, reading through all the comments, watching all the edits already made from the original video until I felt like I was going to throw up in my bed. A lot of them were cruel, some of them were inappropriate, a handful of them blamed me and all of them were deeply hurtful.And now I'm standing in front of these school doors again, the feeling of déjà vu sitting heavily on my shoulders like a boulder. Carter's in there. He’s behind those doors, breathing, walking and talking like he hasn't now become the embodiment of terror I see when I close my eyes. And I'm supposed to go in there too.I hate the fact that he