The Beginning

YESONIA HARTMAN, SIXTEEN

9:30 P.M., SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2015

BUCKMAN, MINNESOTA

FALL WAS THE WORST TIME to have a sinus infection, and my misery was not going over well with my seventeen-year-old sister. Leah had a big night planned with some guy she’d been talking to online, and she wanted me out of the house. I didn’t blame her, but I couldn’t move without my head hurting. Leah was being such abitch about it. We shared a bedroom, so I agreed to lock myself in the room for the night and not make a sound. Our parents were out with friends at the Bottoms Up Saloon. I called it the “twerk bar,” but my humor was lost on them.

Leah could afford to be a bitch, as people described her as a young Sophia Vergara, while I, on the other hand, was nicknamed “Sony,” and compared to a flat-screen television. Older boys had been after Leah since she was eleven, and she had fallen so hard for the last one she humiliated both of us by sending him a topless picture. Our parents would freak if they knew boys were now sending it around. If that’s what she had to do to get a guy, what amI going to have to do? And she was the one who wasmature enough to have a cell phone. It wasn’t fair.

As crappy as I felt, I wasn’t going to miss creeping on Leah’s first meeting with Cully for anything. I was upstairs, so I crawled next to the banister. I figured if laid on my stomach, I could see down into the living room without being seen.

Leah was primping in a small mirror in the entry hallway—all chocolate brown hair and smooth, caramel-colored skin. Her simple beige dress contrasted with her colorful personality. There was nothing understated about her eye make-up. She went with her signature cat eye, which involved the use of Kat Von D’s raven black, super thick