Chapter 1

I was bored.

It was still the first week of summer vacation, and my friends had evaporated, or so it seemed.

A group of them had gone away to Greece together.

I’d been invited, but I didn’t have enough money to go to Starbucks, let alone Greece.

Most of the rest had gone away with their families, and a few were working... technically, I was supposed to be finding a job right now too, but this town had like five shops, and I’d already tried them all.

I’d been commiserating with my best friend, but even Penny had suddenly stopped replying to texts an hour ago.

Penny had been stuck in the same situation; no rich parents to pay for a holiday ... or, much more worryingly, pay for college.

We were supposed to be looking together, but Penny had been evasive all week about meeting up to go job hunting, and now she’d gone dark on me.

In the absence of anyone to talk to, I was actually bored enough that, for a moment, I started to consider cleaning my room.

Thankfully, my phone buzzed just as I was contemplating the scattered debris and discarded clothing.

I scooped it up and quickly scanned Penny’s latest message.

Thank fuck for that.

Penny had called me Hails from the first day we met.

One by one my friends picked it up and somewhere along the way I stopped being ‘Hailey’ and became ‘Hails’ ... except to my family.

She’d never asked, but Penny was like that, a force of nature, oblivious and destructive.

I resumed ignoring the carnage all around me and quickly typed out a reply.

I started to get mad.

It was an automatic response whenever Penny said, ‘Don’t get mad.’

“What the fuck, Penny?” I shouted.

Boss? She’d gone out and got a job without me?

I’d been ditched by all my other friends this summer, but fuck the rest of them.

This one really hurt.