[A/N: I give you "Young and Menace" again because honestly it stands for a major theme in this book.862Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHoxXCU46XA
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Also, another song from MUNA:
Please bear with me as this chapter is the longest I've ever written for this book. Hope you enjoy it!]
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Trigger warnings: brief child abuse & molestation, brief violence (one scene involves shooting a gun)
862Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1hXxqoIUAp
862Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVNAoGTKytl
“I’ve never tried to get someone caught before,” Paige said. She was walking with Christy toward the back of the school, the area where Christy would get picked up by her mom.
“That motherfucker Brandon needs to get caught,” Christy muttered. Studying her, Paige felt a bone-deep sadness at the thought of Christy being threatened by Brandon. What if he was going to threaten Paige too?
She gripped her elbows. “Maybe this won’t work.”
Christy stopped, prompting Paige to stop too. “Trust me, okay? This will work.”
“How?”
“Well, you said your mom doesn’t know, right? So maybe she could catch him in your room. Does he come over a lot?”
Paige nodded. “He comes over to babysit when she’s working. He comes randomly too, ‘cause he lives down the street.”
“You’re neighbors with him too? Fuck,” she murmured as she glanced at the floor.
“He’s coming over tonight.” A shiver crawled up Paige’s spine. “Oh my God, he’s gonna come at like two A.M. What should I do?”
“You know what? Just scream, as loud as you fucking can so your mom’ll see how fucked up he is.”
Paige nodded. “Right.”
“And if he tries to strangle you or something,” Christy said, stepping closer to her until Paige realized she had a lazy eye, “you fight back. Remember he needs to get caught.”
Nodding again, Paige let tears flow down her cheeks. She was so glad she had someone helping her through this. “Yeah, I’ll remember. Thanks so much.”
“Don’t thank me till he gets caught.” But Christy smiled.
Paige could already see them both hanging out after this was over.
The alarm clock showed it was one-thirty in the morning. Of course, Paige couldn’t fall asleep ever since going to bed at eleven. Her eyes kept checking the bedroom door reflected by the moonlight shining through the window. She had left the window open so her neighbors could hear her too, and she kept her fingers crossed for Brandon to not notice it.
Her heart thumped hard in her ears and chest. This might’ve been the night when her mom and Jerry would finally see Brandon’s other, much darker side.
The doorknob turned, making Paige jump out of her skin. As the door creaked open, her eyes could make out his silhouette, but it took them time to find in his hands a small rope and a black, belt-like object with a ball connected to it. She gasped and backed away as he closed the door quietly, the hairs on her arms standing on end. When she whimpered, he bolted to her bedside and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“If you make another sound, I’ll choke the life out of you.”
She started panting as if she had just run a marathon. As she eyed the objects he had in his other hand, she figured obeying him sounded wiser.
His thumb dug into her mouth and between her teeth. “Open,” he growled. When she did, he put the belt-like thing around her head and pushed the ball into her mouth. She felt like gagging as he tightened the belt. “This is for you to shut up, and this,” he said as he held up the rope in the dark, “is so you can’t escape.”
Now weeping quietly, she felt him wrapping the rope around her ankles a few times and then tying the ends into a knot. She realized he didn’t have another rope for her hands. After he was done tying a knot, her feet hit his stomach and her hands choked him by the neck. But his larger hands were much stronger when they pinned her wrists against the bed.
She squirmed as he tightened his hold and laid his entire weight on her body. She gave in and relaxed her muscles, with tears dripping from the corners of her eyes, down to her hair and ears. What was she even thinking about trying to fight back tonight? If she and Christy were to keep going at this, he’d be one step ahead.
He leaned down and she turned her head away with her eyes squeezed shut. But then he whispered in her ear, “I saw you with Christy Vargas earlier today. So I came prepared, in case you were gonna try anything. Promise you won’t try anything?”
All she could do was whimper and retch from the ball.
“Open your eyes, baby.”
Her eyes flooded with tears, she forced them open to find his blurred face illuminated by the moonlight. He let go of one of her wrists to pet her knee as if it were a kitten. As soon as he let go of her other wrist, she scrambled away from him until she fell off the bed and hugged her knees by the small brown nightstand.
It was like she was in the kind of nightmare that wouldn’t happen in the real world. But with the ball making drool ooze from her mouth and the rope chafing her ankles and her eyes making out the smirk of a night monster, she was very much in the real world.
He got off the bed and sauntered around it. “There’s a reason why I didn’t tie up your hands.” As he approached her, he unbuckled his belt.
She would’ve rather him kill her.
“Slow down!” Christy demanded, though she was able to keep up with Paige as they headed toward a cluster of shops. “Just tell me what happened!”
Paige looked behind her to see the middle school out of sight, but she needed to find a hiding place just in case. They passed by a few shops until she found a small alleyway and pulled Christy by the wrist with her.
They were both panting as they leaned against the cream-colored wall of a French bakery.
“What the fuck is going on?” Christy asked as she set her hands on her knees.
“He saw us yesterday,” Paige said. “I think in the hallway. He knew you were planning something with me so he tied me up and put this ball in my mouth and...and….oh my God, it was so fucked up!” Her back slid down the wall and she hid her face in her hands. Just thinking about last night made tears well in her puffy eyes. Then she heard Christy sit down next to her and felt a hand on her shoulder.
“All day I kept thinking he was spying on me,” Paige continued. “Maybe he got some teachers to spy on me or something. I know I sound super paranoid but he’s freaking me out now.” She wiped away her tears with her grey cardigan.
“Well, that’s the thing with pedos,” Christy replied. “They try to scare the shit out of you. We can’t let this motherfucker mess with you.”
“What’s the point?” Paige murmured and looked her in the eye. “He might bring that ball again. If I try to yell for help he might actually choke me. And now that he knows you’re onto him he might do crazy shit to you too. What’s the point?” she repeated as she stared at her own Toms. Brandon actually bought her those shoes. “Maybe it’s better to wait until he breaks up with my mom. Maybe next week.” She rolled her eyes at how her mom let go of guys as fast as she found them.
“No,” Christy said with her voice rising. “You made a promise, okay? You can’t just let him do whatever he wants to you. He’s fucked up and he’s fucking you up. We can’t let him win, okay?” She laid her head against the wall and seemed to think for a moment. “And so what if he knows we’re talking? It shouldn’t stop us, right?”
Christy did have a point. “Right,” Paige murmured.
“We can just hang around here, just not at school.”
“True.” Sniffling, Paige wiped away the last of her tears with her cardigan.
“You hungry?”
Paige knit her eyebrows together at the random question. “Um, kind of. Why?”
Christy stood up and held out a hand. After a moment, Paige took it and Christy pulled her up to her feet. They both headed inside the French bakery smelling of fresh bread and pastries. Paige simply followed Christy as they observed the baked food in the glass displays. Paige’s stomach growled. She only had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.
“Hi,” Christy said to the cashier, “I’ll get the chocolate caramel nut tart.”
After the twenty-something boy with acne handed her a brown bag containing the nut tart, Christy turned to Paige. “Want anything?”
She shook her head. “I don’t have money.”
“It’s on me. But anything less than ten.”
Paige widened her eyes. “You don’t have to.”
“Come on, before I change my mind.” But Christy winked.
Paige turned to the glass displays next to the cashier counter. She scoped the displays until she found macarons, a section of them labelled as chocolate. Pointing to the chocolate section, she said, “Two of those.”
After Christy too generously paid for that, the pair sat at a table outside the bakery.
“Really, you didn’t have to buy food for me,” Paige said, then took a bite off a macaron. “Mmm, they’re as good as they look.”
“That shit’s expensive,” Christy commented, seeming to ignore what Paige said. Then Christy took a bite of her nut tart, but made a face. “Fuck. Total waste of four dollars. Want it?”
Paige scooted her chair away when Christy held it out to her. “I’m allergic to nuts.”
“Really? All nuts?”
Paige nodded. “It’s not that serious. My arms get itchy and my tongue gets swollen.” She shrugged as she finished her first macaron.
“That sucks. I eat nuts like all the time.”
“Yeah, I see them everywhere, honestly.” She rolled her eyes.
Christy popped the remains of the nut tart into her mouth. “Wanna go shopping?” she asked with her mouth full.
“Thanks, but I gotta go home.”
“What for?”
Paige ate the second macaron in one bite and stared at the dark green tabletop. She really needed extra time to finish editing her latest video on contouring basics, and she’d promised her subscribers she would upload the video later that day. “For, um, my YouTube channel.”
“Wait. You have a YouTube channel?”
“Yeah, I do makeup videos.” It felt weird telling people about her online personality, which was basically a separate, private life. She just really enjoyed telling people makeup tips and reading their comments.
“Makeup? I can see why,” Christy said, gesturing to her face.
“Oh, yeah.” Paige touched her cheek, remembering the fifteen minutes she spent that morning on her winged eyeliner, nude lip-line, and fake eyelashes. She grinned. It was nice to have people compliment on her hard work in the mornings.
“Well, if you have at least, like, twenty minutes, I was thinking we could steal some shit at this shop down the street. The surveillance sucks ass there.”
“Wait, are you talking about the one with the giant Buddha poster behind the cashier?”
“Yeah! You go there?”
Paige leaned closer to her. “I’ve stolen like half of my makeup from there.”
Christy cracked up. “Wanna go there?”
Paige thought back to the video she was still editing, but then she figured the trip to the store wouldn’t take long. “Sure.”
The pair strolled down the sidewalk toward the store.
After a long moment, Christy said, “I think you should look through his stuff in your mom’s room. If his toys are there, just steal ‘em.”
“Yeah,” Paige agreed, her eyes on the concrete.
“And call me with updates.”
Paige simply nodded. She was going to make good for the both of them.
With Mom not coming home from work until six P.M. and with Brandon supervising a school event, Paige was in the clear. In the late afternoon, she slipped into Mom’s bedroom and checked the closet first. A bag full of Brandon’s stuff sat in the very back. She unzipped the bag and sifted out clothes and toiletries, with no rope or ball gag in sight.
The bedroom door creaked, and Paige turned as her heartbeat tripled. Jerry was slowly wheeling himself into the room. “Paige? What are you doing?”
Now her heart was beating as fast as a hummingbird’s as she walked up to him. “Please don’t tell Mom I was here, okay? Don’t tell Brandon either. Please.”
“Why?” His green eyes seemed to take in Brandon’s open bag. “Are you stealing something?”
“I’m just...looking for something. Just don’t tell them, okay?”
His hands slowly rolled the wheelchair backwards until he was out of the room. “Okay.” As he turned away, he still didn’t look convinced. She planned to explain to him later, maybe after she finally exposed Brandon.
When Paige closed the door behind him, she took a deep breath. Then she went back to looking through Brandon’s things. After emptying the rest of the bag--with still none of his toys found--she scoped the closet again and couldn’t find anything else that belonged to him. She groaned as her eyes wandered to the bag gaping open, and she realized she missed a zipper.
So she unzipped it, but what she saw had her sucking in a breath.
She pulled out a handgun and turned it over in her hands. She had only seen a gun like this in the movies. Maybe it made sense for a pedophile to have a gun to threaten young girls, or worse, kill them. A giant shiver crawled up her spine and across her shoulders. Looking at the bedroom door as if he were walking in at that moment, she hid the gun inside her cardigan and checked the bag again for the extra bullets. After she stuffed them in her pockets, she hastily put all of the items back into the bag, left it where she’d found it, and left the bedroom.
Luckily Jerry wasn’t around when she made her way to her room. More than anything she wanted to lock the door, now and in the future, but there hadn’t been a lock installed. She used her desk chair to block it in case Jerry walked in on her again.
Then in the corner of her eye, she found the rope from the night before lying next to the nightstand. She laid out the rope, gun, and bullets on her bed. Backing away with her heart thumping harder in her chest, she guessed he had his other toys at home with him, or hidden some other place in the house.
But the gun was probably the thing she needed to worry about the most.
She rushed to her phone on her desk and dialed Christy’s number. As the phone rang, she tried to calm herself down with slower and longer breaths.
“Hello?”
“I found a gun,” Paige said instantly.
“What the fuck?! He really is a psycho,” Christy muttered.
“And...and he left the rope in my room.”
“You have his fucking gun. Do you know what this means?”
“Um…”
“You fucking use that on him tonight. Or maybe you should frame him so your mom sees how he’s a fucking psychopath.”
Paige bit the inside of her cheek. “Yeah, I could do anything with it.”
“So what are you gonna do?”
Paige kept twirling her red hair with her finger. “I can’t use a gun. It feels weird just holding it.” She held it up and studied it.
“It’ll scare him even more. You got this, Paige.”
Taking a deep breath and putting down the gun, she said, “I think I’m gonna tell my mom the truth first. Then I’ll make her fake-sleep so she can catch him.”
“Yeah, and maybe use the gun so he doesn’t fucking tie you up again.”
Paige nodded. “Yeah.”
“You got this, okay? Call me if everything turns to shit.”
“I will,” she said weakly, then hung up. With her eyes never leaving the gun, she had to take another deep breath.
It was like she was in a scary movie, and the fact that it was real life made it ten times scarier.
The spaghetti on her plate made slurp-like sounds as her fork moved the noodles around. Just the thought of what she was going to do tonight forced her to keep her mouth shut and to cloud her head with unease. She could never be fully sure of the future.
“You’ve been quiet all night, Paige,” Mom commented. Still in her waitress uniform, she was sitting across from Paige, and Jerry and Brandon were on either side of her. “You don’t like Brandon’s spaghetti?”
The reminder of who made it got her stomach feeling weird. “It’s fine,” she said quietly. “I just had a weird day.” At least that was the truth.
“Is that why you were in...nevermind,” Jerry said as he stared at his spaghetti.
“Why she what?” Brandon asked.
Mom leaned closer, her green eyes on Paige and her eyebrows knit together.
“It’s nothing,” Paige murmured and shot a glare at Jerry, who was still eyeing his food.
“Where was she?” Mom asked Jerry.
He looked between Paige and Mom, then Brandon, then Paige again.
Paige threw her hands up. “I was in your room, okay? I didn’t steal anything.”
“Why were you in there?”
“Just forget it. I’m not hungry.” She pushed her chair back and went to the hallway, walking until she sat on the small steps leading up to the foyer. How could Jerry let that slip out so easily? She had to remind herself to never mention any secret to him again.
She heard footsteps approaching from down the hall. Glancing up to see Mom whose eyes appeared sad, Paige folded her arms and looked away. Mom sat next to her and sighed.
“What’s wrong, honey? Please tell me.”
This was the moment of truth. But how could Paige even go about it? After a moment, she decided to explain that she couldn’t trust Brandon, just like she couldn’t with Mom’s exes.
“I just don’t trust him, Mom. How can we tell if this guy’s for real?”
“Why do you always do this, Paige? Why can’t you have at least a little bit of faith?”
Paige covered her eyes with her hand. “It’s just that every guy you dated before Brandon were all dicks. You always find the wrong ones.”
“You’re right, my exes were awful. But I think Brandon’s actually worth it. Can’t you see that?”
“All I see is another guy pretending to be perfect. Then his drug addiction and temper come out, or a homewrecker comes along, then you break up with him, and then you find another guy just like him. It happens…Every. Single. Time.”
Mom just sighed again. They had this argument basically all the time. But whose fault was it to bring home a new guy every other month? Why couldn’t Paige just have the stable and normal kind of home life that so many other kids had?
“You probably can’t see it,” Mom said, “but Brandon’s the first one to not hurt any of us. He actually has a job, and he doesn’t change it every day.” They laughed about one ex that forgot saying he was a chemical engineer before claiming he was a programmer. He’d consumed an insane amount of drugs in the week before the breakup. “And he treats me like I’m perfect, which is actually weird because I’m not perfect at anything in my life.” Mom rested her chin on her palm. “Brandon truly sees me as a person. All my other exes never did. I know he’s worth it. Please believe me, Paige.”
Paige didn’t know what to say to that, her big toes touching. This whole time--scheming with Christy and all--she hadn’t factored in what her mom wanted.
“Can you please give him a chance?” Mom asked.
Maybe Brandon really was the right one for Mom. The way he acted with Paige wasn’t exactly ideal, but the way he treated Mom was all Paige ever wanted for her. He took care of the house when Mom was away, he did seem to be in love with her, and he even had a stable job. If Paige had him caught, it would likely be a long time before Mom would find a guy just like him.
Brandon made Mom truly happy, and the last thing he’d do was break her heart more than it already had been.
Paige couldn’t help but let a single teardrop fall. She wiped it away and said, “Yeah, I’ll give him a chance.”
Mom pulled her into a tight hug for a while. “Thank you so much. I promise you won’t regret it.”
As they made their way back to the dining table, Paige knew it was dumb to regret this already, having made in the first place the mental promise to endure more of Brandon’s torture.
But it was all for Mom’s happiness.
When Brandon opened her bedroom door at one in the morning, she didn’t care. When he closed the door and stalked toward her bed, she didn’t care. And she still didn’t care when he gripped her wrists and hissed, “You took my gun! Where is it?”
She didn’t look at him once as she took the gun and bullets from under the blanket and handed them to him. “You left your rope in here too,” she said, bringing that out.
He paused for a while. A few hours ago she would’ve been shocked at her actions too. “Uh, thank you,” he said as he accepted the gun and bullets. “The gun’s still full.” After putting everything except the rope in his pockets, he gave Paige a questioning look. “You’re not gonna fight back?”
She shook her head, thinking of Mom and how happy she was with him.
“Oh. Alright.” He sat in front of her. “So you won’t tell your mother anything?”
“Nope.” Feeling her phone in her back pocket, she remembered she had to call Christy about changing her mind. “I need to use the bathroom first.”
“Take your time, baby.” He made a kissing sound in her direction as she left the room and fought back the tears beginning to form.
She closed the bathroom door behind her and started dialing Christy’s number. The crying turned into sobbing. She forced herself to take deeper breaths as the phone rang.
After the third ring, Christy answered, “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t do it,” Paige bursted out. “I…” She couldn’t continue when she was unable to control her sobs.
“Calm down. Tell me what happened.”
Paige had the words to say, but she just couldn’t say them. All she could think about was having to deal with even more nights being touched by a man with a gun, yet he was perfect for her mother.
“I...I gotta go,” Paige stuttered, and she hung up. She did her business on the toilet, and after washing her hands, she looked up at the mirror to see her even puffier eyes. But the amateur-makeup-artist in her didn’t really care. This was the look of accepting her defeat.
She tried to get herself together, which felt like it took her a few minutes. Then she returned to her room to meet Brandon with his pajama pants off. The rope was also out of sight. She had to refrain from fighting back, and that seemed more painful than actually fighting back. When she closed the door, he said, “What’s wrong, baby?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
She drew a shaky breath and faked a smile. “I guess I’m just happy that my mom finally found you, the greatest boyfriend she’s ever had. I don’t wanna take that away from her, you know?”
He motioned her to sit next to him, and when she did, he rubbed her shoulders. “Of course not. That’s why you shouldn’t try anything with Christy Vargas. Your mom needs you. You need me too.”
Paige bit hard on her tongue as his hand dug into her pants and into her underwear.
“She’s so busy with work, and she’s used to guys breaking her heart,” she continued as she looked away from him. “I just want her to be happy.”
He bent down and whispered in her ear, “I do too. I can make the three of you happy. Just promise me you won’t tell them anything?”
She finally looked up at his dark eyes with the moonlight shining on him. To keep this promise was to agree to please him in all the strange ways he wanted, as long as it was all for Mom.
Just when she was about to confirm her promise, the doorbell rang. Who would visit in the middle of the night?
But then she remembered her call with Christy.
Brandon pulled his pajamas back on. “Wonder who that could be.”
It felt like the world was ending as she quietly followed him down the hallway. She hid behind a wall as he answered.
“Where the fuck is she?” Christy demanded. “What did you do to her?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Brandon growled. “Get out of here!”
“Paige was crying on the phone! If you did something even more fucked up to her I’m gonna fucking call the cops on you, you messed up piece of shit. All the kids in this neighborhood need to know you’re a fucking pedophile!”
Mom appeared from behind Paige and yawned. “What’s going on? Who is that?”
“I...I don’t know,” Paige said, though she regretted saying that immediately.
“What the fuck, Paige? Don’t act like you don’t know me!” She looked at Brandon again. “If you tied her up again, I’m gonna lose my shit.”
Brandon turned to Mom. “I believe she has a mental disorder. Maybe you should call the police.”
“What the fuck?” she screamed. “I’m not crazy, you are! Paige! Aren’t you gonna say anything?”
Paige said nothing and watched as Mom left and called the police.
Brandon reached out to Christy, but she slapped his hands away from her. “You can’t touch me again, you fucking scumbag.” She barged into the house. “Where’s the gun?” She wandered down the hall and peeked into the rooms until she found Mom’s bedroom. “Here?”
“Stay away from there! You’re breaking and entering!” Brandon said.
“Am I breaking and entering when you answered the door?” She looked under the bed and opened the drawers.
“Don’t you even remember what we talked about last time?” Brandon said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, and I’m gonna get you caught before you do anything with me!” She turned to Paige. “Where is it?”
It was like Paige’s mouth was sewn shut.
Groaning, Christy pushed past her and went into the next room, which belonged to Paige.
“Please calm down, Christy,” Brandon said with his hands up.
“My fucking God, where is it?” she yelled. After finding nothing under Paige’s bed and in her desk drawers, she turned and scanned Brandon. She ran to him and pulled the gun out of his pocket. Her hands shaking, she held the gun up toward his face.
Paige didn’t move or say anything as Brandon yelled, “Wait a second! Be careful with that!”
Christy started crying at the same time Paige did. “You need to stop what you’re doing,” she declared. “You stay away from Paige, from me, from all the little girls you get off on for some fucking reason! You need to be in jail!”
“And shooting me will help? You’ll get yourself in jail.”
“If that’s what it takes!”
Mom and Jerry just made it to Paige’s room and they both gasped.
“Oh my God! Are you crazy?” Mom screamed.
Christy pointed the gun to Mom, earning a gasp from Paige. Christy glanced at Paige, her eyes looking a bit sad, then pointed the gun back to Brandon.
“Just put the gun down and we’ll talk this out, alright?” Brandon said with his voice lowered.
Paige wanted so badly to say something, but the gigantic promise she made to herself about Mom’s relationship left a lump in her throat, keeping her from making a sound. All she had to do was watch Christy in her confusion and pain, though the sight brought more tears to Paige’s eyes.
“I already called the police on you!” Mom exclaimed. “You freak!”
With the gun still pointing to Brandon, Christy turned to Paige tearfully. “What the hell is wrong with you? Aren’t you gonna say anything?”
Paige didn’t move or speak.
Christy turned to Brandon. “Yeah, Paige and I teamed up. Just wait until I...I tell the cops what you’ve done. Jail is where you’re gonna be. I swear.”
Brandon glanced at Mom briefly before looking back at Christy. “You sure?” he said. “It doesn’t sound like Paige to try to hurt me.” He looked at Paige with soft eyes, but she broke their eye contact to glance at the floor.
“Please put the gun down,” Mom pleaded. “It’s making me nervous.”
“Not until Paige says what I’m saying is true!” Christy screamed.
Paige started sweating with all the pairs of eyes on her. Her eyes stayed on Christy. If only she could tell her all she wanted was the best for Mom.
The silence seemed to anger Christy even more as she started sobbing. “I can’t believe you. You’re just gonna back away like that? Blame everything on me?” She stopped pointing the gun at Brandon and fully turned to Paige. “How could you? You’re just gonna let him do what he’s doing to you?”
“Do what?” Mom asked.
Paige shook her head. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
Suddenly Christy let out a scream. She turned to Brandon and pointed her gun at his chest. Paige felt as though she could see everything happen in slow motion: the finger pulling the trigger and Brandon widening his eyes, too late to respond to what was happening. The sound of the gunshot ricocheted off the walls of the room, and a red blot appeared on his left shoulder. The blood stain spread all over his shoulder as he fell to his knees and pressed his right hand against the wound.
“You crazy bitch!” Mom screamed, and she ran to his side as she tore off a piece of her shirt. She applied the piece to the wound.
Christy breathed audibly with the gun still in her hand. Looking at it as if it were an unknown object, she dropped it on the floor, backed away, and sobbed hard. Paige was about to tell her to run before the cops came.
But the doorbell rang.
“Help!” Mom called. “Paige, can you keep pressure?” After Paige obeyed, Mom ran out of the room and talked to the cops waiting outside.
“Of course, you were always stupid,” Brandon snarled. “They’re going to arrest you.”
Christy hugged her knees tightly with her back against the wall and just let out a long cry. Mom entered the room and pointed to her. A couple of cops charged into the room, shouting at Christy to put her hands up. She reluctantly complied and stood up, before the cops pinned her to the wall and patted her down. Paige looked away after they bound her hands behind her back with handcuffs.
Paige didn’t want any of this to happen, but that was how unfair life was.
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