Proven Guilty (Treadmill III)

XXII

Foreword

A few years ago, I fell off a treadmill. Catapulted right off the damn thing.

I like to think that flying off of that treadmill changed my entire life, but if I thought about it fully, that wouldn't be the truth. You see, Kennedy Abrams had a plan for me. And while I hated that plan for a long time, today I can say with complete confidence that her plan changed my life forever. And it certainly changed my life for the better.

This book is probably the best book you'll ever pick up, so congratulations. I'm not going to lie to you and say it's the most important book you'll ever pick up, or the most world-shattering. But it is the best book you'll ever read, in all the ways that you want a book to be the best book.

Because this is a book by Kennedy Abrams, about Kennedy Abrams. And if there's one thing Kennedy excels at above all others, it's telling a good story.

Scratch that. The best story.

So, let me take advantage of my few pages to tell you a little bit about the woman I now call my best friend.

But first? I'm going to make this about me. This is my foreword, after all.

I grew up in a family where my parents hardly fought, my older sister was my role model, and home was my safe haven. I didn't fit in completely in high school, but I could always come home and share the events of the day with my parents, who would make me feel better with an elaborate homemade meal and a 2000s rom-com movie marathon.

Kennedy grew up in a family where her parents hated each other, she essentially raised two younger siblings, and her father remarried someone who wanted nothing to do with Kennedy and everything to do with her father's money. Little did she know, her stepmonster, as we affectionately call her, was also at the heart of the shitshow that derailed Kennedy's early 20s. Her family was split at the seams, her father was a narcissist, and Kennedy found her happy place surrounded by the people who worshipped her—her classmates.

When I think about Kennedy's actions towards the beginning of our friendship, I think about them with the Abrams family tree in the back of my mind. Dozens of people have told me that I'm naïve for taking her back as a friend, after everything she did to me and asked me to do for her. And you can think I'm naïve. I can put up with that. Because Kennedy Abrams is one of the few people on this planet that I would absolutely trust with my life, over and over again, forever.

According to the Greenleaf Book Group, a foreword is supposed to "introduce the author or work to readers, tell readers why they should read the book, and give credibility to the book or author." So, I'm going to split the rest of this foreword into three parts: introducing Kennedy, explaining why you should keep reading her book, and give her credibility.

Part I: Introducing Kennedy Abrams

Kennedy Abrams is a thirty-year-old professional influencer from Rockville, Maryland, who spent a year and a half studying Food Science and Human Nutrition at Clemson University. Her education was interrupted when she was put on trial for the murder of her ex-boyfriend, for which a verdict was never decided, and then again when she was put on trial for the murder of her stepmother's ex-boyfriend, for which her charges were eventually reduced to accomplice to murder, and she was found not guilty.

After the end of her second trial and the conclusion of her court-mandated community service for escaping from jail, Kennedy left the United States indefinitely. She picked up the influencer persona that she had created along with me, Drew Parley, and started using it and the attention it had received from her multiple trials to support her lifestyle. Eight years later, she returned to the United States when her ex-boyfriend's wife died and left the couple's entire multimillion-dollar fortune to Kennedy.

Part II: Why You Should Keep Reading This Book

First of all, did you read the last sentence of Part I? Exactly.

Kennedy's life story is something out of a novel where the author just keeps throwing disaster after disaster at their protagonist. She escaped an abusive relationship, was put on trial for her abuser's murder, and had her trial dismissed by the judge due to her prosecutor being behind her abusive relationship in the first place. Barely 24 hours later, she was arrested for the murder of said prosecutor, denied bail, and escaped from jail. She turned herself back in with new evidence of her innocence, was tried as an accomplice to the prosecutor's murder—which was in fact committed by her stepmother, who framed her—and subsequently found not guilty. All this before the age of 23.

If you're going to read anyone's memoir, it better be Kennedy Abrams'.

Part III: Giving Kennedy Abrams Some Credibility

This part doesn't really apply to me, but I'll fill something in anyways. News stations, tabloids, showrunners, producers, directors, and anyone else you could think of approached Kennedy about running stories or making shows and movies about her life. She denied each and every one. Quite literally no one knows what happened in her head that resulted in her multiple trials and acquittals. There have been investigative stories, true crime documentaries, and countless conspiracy theories over the years—all of them created without a drop of input from the person who lived through every single ordeal.

And now, you get a first-hand look. You get to experience Kennedy's story, from Kennedy's perspective, with Kennedy's justifications and thought processes, for the first time. That's not exactly a little deal.

So, go on. And remember that this is a treasure trove of secrets that you have in your hands.

A/N: One more chapter, guys.