Doe, if King doesn’t get his head out of his ass and marry you and impregnate you with millions of his little man-children, he is a dumb fuck and I promise I will rise from the grave to take his place. It may take me a while to figure out how, but if anyone can do it, it’s gonna be me.

King, my brother, thanks for taking a chance on a skinny geek all those years ago. Thanks for fucking saving my ass, but you did more than that. You saved my life. You gave me a life.

I love you, man.

Be happy kids.

I gotta go be dead now. No after funeral bullshit. I fucking hate that shit.

Go get laid. That will make me happy.

Fuck. Party. Make merry. And know that I fucking loved all of you.

-Prep

PS-I have also written my own obituary which I would like published in all the local papers. I’m serious about this. I will haunt you if this doesn’t happen.

“Ummm, I don’t know if I should read this next part out loud.”

“Do it!” Bear cheered me on. Even from the other side of the tent, I could see the tears in his eyes, but now there was a smile on his face. “Let’s fucking hear it!”

The crowd joined in, and I was left with no choice.

“Oh, fine,” I said, taking a deep breath and speed reading through Preppy’s autobiographical obituary.

Samuel Clearwater

26 years old

Badass MoFo

Went out like a boss

Leaves behind the family he chose: King, Doe, Bear, and the GG bitches.

May God rest his soul…and his ten-inch cock.

The entire group of mourners burst out laughing. Not just a few chuckles, but knee-slapping, belly laughter. As I put the note away and took my seat next to King, I realized what Preppy had done. He was the kind of guy who couldn’t bear the thought of us crying over him, so he did what Preppy always did.

He made us laugh.

I looked over to King, who wasn’t smiling at all. I tugged on his hand, but instead of getting his attention, he stood up.

Before the preacher said his final words, King was already long gone.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

King

My girl had been raped, and it had been a week since we put my best friend into the ground. In that time, I didn’t know where to place my anger at the person I hated most in the world.

No, not Isaac. I killed that motherfucker. Splattered his head wide open with a bullet at close range.

The person I hated most in the world was me.

After everything Doe had done for me, after everything we’d been through, she deserved better than to live a life in fear of being raped or shot. As much as I wanted out of the life, it wasn’t something I could just jump out of in an instant. I needed to do something for her, but no matter what came to mind, it wasn’t big enough to make this huge wrong, right again.

Then, it came to me.

There was one thing I could do for her.

One fucking reverse GOOGLE image search. That’s all it took to find out who Doe really was. I’d uploaded a photo of her I took from my phone the first night she’d slept in my bed and pressed search and there she was, staring into the camera like she was looking right into my eyes. I wished I’d never done the search. I wished I’d never known who she really was.

I’d used the fact that I knew who she was and what that could do for me as an excuse to bring her back to me. Even though it was her I wanted since the very first moment I saw her.

I’d planned to keep her forever, and her secret even longer if need be.

Until now.

Seventeen year old Ramie Elizabeth Price.

Either the police were really shitty at their jobs, or they never really tried to find out who she was to begin with, because for the second time after searching her image, less than a second after pressing search, I was staring at multiple images of the girl I’d fallen in love with on my laptop.

There were no articles about her going missing, just pictures of her from various events. Balls, galas, fundraisers. It was her in the pictures, but it wasn’t. The gowns, the makeup, the fake smile, if there was any smile at all.

The last picture of her I found was taken almost a year ago. She had a blank look on her face. Her eyes were vacant.

I knew that look. I’d regrettably put it on her face myself. It was a look that broke my fucking heart.

Indifference.

She was holding the hand of a boy who looked a little older than her, who was smiling from ear to ear.

I wanted to reach through the computer and break his fucking hand and then break every single one of his pearly white teeth.

Senator Westmore Bigelow Price, with daughter Ramie Elizabeth and long-time beau Tanner Preston Redmond at the Heart Ball Gala to raise money for pediatric cancer.