Page 2 of Hateful
“There you are, Alex,” Mom says wearily as I cross the living room. “Could you take this plate to the table?”
She barely has the energy to glance at me as she waves in the direction of a bowl before turning back to something simmering on the stove.
I nod and grab the big platter of some sort of vegetable thing she pointed to. At the table, Caleb and Mason are already fighting over portions while Dad watches wearily from the head of the table. Spencer lounges in his chair while he dishes up food neither Caleb nor Mason has touched.
I walk to my place at the table and put the vegetable dish in the center before settling into my chair. Mom follows, and Blake isn’t too far behind, still rubbing his face with a towel. He has a large red mark on his cheek where the hot potatoes hit him.
It’s hardly the first injury to happen in this kitchen. Probably not the first injury to happen in heretoday.
“Caleb! Mason!”
Mom’s yells have barely any effect on them. They slow their fighting, but don’t stop.
“Boys,” Dad rumbles, not even looking up from his paper.
Still,nowthey stop.Mom throws Dad a grateful look as she settles into her seat. I grin down into my plate.
Dinner proceeds as usual. My brothers begin to bicker over food, despite the fact that Mom has made enough to feed a small army. I, meanwhile, end up just picking at my own plate.
I can’t help it. I’m nervous. I may be back with my family now, but in a few weeks I’ll have to head back to Bleakwood.
And I don’t even know if I can go back, especially after everything that’s happened.
After everything I’ve done, and after everything that’s been done to me.
Caleb leans over the table, his eyes looking at me with an uncomfortable level of scrutiny. But rather than ask me more painfully astute questions about what’sreallybeen going on at school, he just grins maniacally at me.
“Hey, Alex, you gonna eat that?” he asks, jamming his finger into my pile of potatoes.
Immediately, I see red. I go from zero to livid in a split second. Here, in this moment, it isn’t Caleb that I see.
It’s Jasper.
All I can see is my bully’s grinning face, jamming his own finger into my food as he yanks my tray away from me, taking my lunch for the third time this week.
I act reflexively; I grab my fork and stab it into the back of his hand. And I don’t jerk it back out—even when I realize, at last, that itisn’tactually Jasper in front of me.
Caleb lets out a cry of pain and the table erupts into chaos. I push the tines of the fork into his flesh as everyone around me yells. I hear myself yelling, my sentences coming out jumbled to my own ears, screaming things like “Fuck off!” and “That’smyfood, you dipshit!”
Someone grabs my wrist and finally yanks it away from Caleb. I lose my grip on the fork, letting it clatter noisily to my plate in front of me on the table.
Across from me, Caleb cradles his bleeding hand.
“What the hell, Alex?” Caleb yells, holding up his injury for me to see what I’ve done.
But I’m unrelenting, even if I know I should feel guilty.
“Don’t touch my food,” I growl, struggling against the iron grip on my wrist, my heart beating like a jackhammer.
Caleb glares at me, the kind of hatred in his eyes that’s reserved only for siblings. “You should just fly on back to that stupid school of yours.”
I bare my teeth at him and start reaching for my fork a second time, but this time it’s my mother who reaches out to swat the utensil from my hand.
“Alex!” my mom snaps at me, shooting me a look that makes me whither in my seat. “This is ridiculous. Maybe that schoolistoo much for her,” she adds, glancing towards my father for one brief second.
He, as usual, is barely paying attention.
This is somehow the thing that pushes me back over the edge.
