After the Easy

PROLOGUE

Brett MacKenzie Pierce
_______________________

Bullshit.

Life is a steaming pile of bullshit.

I should have known that life was out to get me when my parents didn't divorce when I was five. Instead, my mother let my father get away with committing adultery.

I should have known that after the tenth time this happened, he would only become worse.

I should have known that he would blame me for all of his actions and start emotionally abusing me.

I'm dumb.

I'm stupid.

I should've known that he would cheat again, and that my mother would accept him back into our home.

I don't know what the hell I am doing.

No one will ever love me.

Inappropriate names and sexual advances, that's what little girls are made of.

I should have known that my father was a pedophile after our preacher told us he inappropriately propositioned a girl my age at church.

I should have known something was wrong when my friends didn't want to come to my house.

He made my cousins feel uncomfortable.

He cheated again—for the eleventh time.

I threatened to leave my mother if he came back home.

He came back.

I didn't leave. I was only fifteen.

I should've known it would only get worse from there.

Then it all changed.

My mother kicked my father out of the house, and she stuck with the decision this time. I thought that my life would only get better from there, but the damage had already been done.

I didn't get into my dream school.

I dropped out of my backup—three months before graduation.

I developed cancer. I was twenty.

I told you life had it out for me.

Everything hates Brett MacKenzie Pierce.