All Chapters of My Brother best friend hates me: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

They think I don’t hear them. I always hear them.“Damn, she’s bigger than the linebackers.”I keep my head down and keep walking, the way I’ve trained myself to do since middle school. Pretend the words bounce off. Pretend they don’t land somewhere just under my ribs and stay there, collecting with all the others.At my locker, I hear him before I see him. That low, easy laugh that used to make my ten-year-old heart do something stupid, and now just makes my stomach drop like a missed stair.“Morning, sunshine.” Marion doesn’t say it like a greeting. He says it like he’s testing whether the words still work on me, like I’m a lock he’s checking hasn’t been changed.“Don’t call me that.”“What? Thought you’d like a nickname.” He isn’t even looking at me when he says it he’s watching me sideways, the way you’d watch something you don’t entirely trust not to move. There’s a stillness to him that’s worse than the insults. Like he’s got more in reserve and hasn’t decided yet if today’s th

Marion povI don’t remember deciding to move.One second I’m three lockers down, half-listening to Reece run his mouth about Friday’s game plan, and the next my hand’s fisted in some sophomore’s collar and he’s on the floor looking up at me like I fell out of the ceiling.“Some people say she’s the curviest”I don’t even hear the rest of it. Something in my chest just goes white and loud, and then I’m moving, and then it’s already done, and I genuinely could not tell you the seconds in between.“This is a warning,” I hear myself say, except it doesn’t sound like me. Flatter. Meaner. I don’t know where that voice comes from. I don’t love that I have it.The hallway’s dead silent. Reece is staring at me like I just failed a drug test in front of him.I don’t know why I did that. That’s the truth, and it’s an ugly one, so I’m not going to sit here and dress it up with some speech about how I’ve secretly cared about her all along like some movie. I don’t know. I heard something and my bod

Sasha povI don’t cry in front of him. That’s the one rule I have left.I make it through the rest of the carnival setup on autopilot stringing lanterns, hauling boxes, answering in single words when Mrs. Whitfield asks if we’re almost done and I don’t let a single thing show on my face until I’m three streets from home, walking because I couldn’t stand one more second in a car with my own thoughts, let alone anyone else’s.I shouldn’t have said that.Four words. That’s all it took to undo about six years of very carefully deciding Marion Carter was simple. Cruel, sure, but simple a guy who says the meanest thing available because it’s easy and it works and nobody’s ever made him stop. Simple, I could survive. Simple, I understood.There was a guy about to say something worse.That’s not simple. That’s a whole architecture I didn’t ask to see the inside of.By the time I get home I’ve talked myself out of caring about four separate times, and failed all four. I go straight to my roo