Seventeen year old Safaya Bennett must navigate young adulthood under the stresses of her sins, her crumbling relationship with her twin sister, Rue, and a crippling mental disorder that makes her very dependent on her relationship with Nate Jacobs...
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For the next few days the energy had been peculiar.
My sister went about business like normal because she and Maddy were left in the dark about what Nate was doing behind their backs. I was in a funk, trying to figure out how I missed Jules falling in love with someone else. I wanted to be happy for her but I already didn't like this "Tyler'" guy no matter how much she tried to convince me he was amazing.
I didn't give a fuck if his dick is the size of an Evian bottle.
I. Did. Not. Like. Him.
Jules, in my eyes, was a saint. She's sensitive, and very forgiving, and basically the most wonderful fucking person on the planet. But she was naive. She had no clue about how these men were and I wanted to try to protect her. But I couldn't save her from him. I had failed.
It was the night of the carnival and my sister was standing in front of Fez's pretzel stand. She grabbed the yellow raffle ticket she had situated between her shoulder and the black spaghetti strap of her skin tight dress. "Wassup Bennett?" Fez said in a groggy voice. "A pretzel?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Thank you."
The last time Fez spoke to my sister was a couple of days ago when I was high off my ass on fentanyl. He called her to let her know that I was spending the night at Jules', she never knew why and she didn't care. Saf was busy being Nate's toy for the night.
"Aye." He called out for her. "Don't be a stranger, Lil Mama."
Safaya smiled. "See you, Fez."
She was beginning to freak out since the carnival was crawling with so many people. Safaya hated going to these types of things but with Nate around he made it tolerable. He stood a few feet away at the ferris wheel yelling into his phone and Safaya could overhear his temper building. She accepted the pretzel and tucked the molly into her strapless bra while she made her way through the crowd. As she approached Nate, she could hear him screaming at a smaller figure in front of him.
"Yo, why are you dressed like a hooker?" He frowned in his girlfriends direction.
Safaya came up next to him, trying to figure out why he was spazzing already. When her eyes landed on Maddy she didn't see a problem. No matter what issues she had with the girl she wasn't going to lie and say that she didn't look good. Maddy was beautiful and that was one of the core reasons Safaya would get jealous around her.
Maddy frowned. "What?"
"Jesus Christ, Maddy. I'm here with my parents."
The brunette rolled her eyes. "So what? It's the carnival." She looked Safaya up and down with disgust. "How is my outfit any different than what Saf has on?"
The curly haired girl took a bite from her pretzel, unbothered because she knew Nate would come to her rescue. She wore a simple black chainmail dress with white Doc Marten Chelsea boots, something comfortable that she thought she looked good in. Safaya knew she hadn't done anything wrong so she didn't care for what Maddy had to say.
