Hidden (The Ambrosia Series Book #1)

The Froyo has STDs!

"Tris, want to go out to celebrate finally getting rid of that skinny bitch of a pity boyfriend?" Ash asked me as the three of us laid out on the beach chairs in my backyard tanning.

Yesterday I'd officially schooled Jesse and today we skipped school to tan in the blistering heat. We were going to make some use out of this hole in the wall.

"Hey! He wasn't that bad!" Ash and I looked at Russell with our you're-kidding-right? faces. She rolled her eyes, "Okay, he was but he was an outcast like us-!"

"No one's like us." I cut in.

I'm serious, no one is like the three of us.

Let's see, we have the town slut's daughter, the abused orphan, and the incestuous rape victim. There was no one like us.

Russell had been raped by her father since the age of 6 and no one is this goddamn town gave a shit. For 10 years she had to endure it and not her mother-not anyone- did a damn thing. Not until he targeted their precious Cindy Brewster and simply stole her panties. He never touched the little bitch but they prosecuted him and sent him to jail. All it took was her little finger and she got the justice Russell should have had. Ash and I will never forgive ourselves for listening to her pleas to not tell the cops because he threatened to do her younger sister, Kayla, if she told. Kayla thinks lowly of Russell because Kayla listens to the sermons about us "delinquents" and sometimes I wish I could punch her and the rest of this fucking town into enlightenment of Russell's goodness. But Russell was strong and despite her hardship she still looked for the good in everything and happiness for everyone.

Ash's parents were murdered in an occult rampage when she was 8. She was then sent to live with her ultra religious aunt and uncle here. But she wasn't exactly warmly welcomed since she'd been born to hippie parents who didn't believe in marriage and so her aunt and uncle decided she was an evil child of wedlock. They tried to exorcise her 12 times, tying to her to a bed, making her endure something similar to Chinese water torture and cutting her and leaving her to bleed out all night. They even burned parts of her body. Eventually, Ash just couldn't take it and exploded nearly killing the both of them with a belt and a candlestick and scaring them into leaving her be. To hide the scars and burns she got numerous tattoos and that only solidified her aunt and uncle's belief of her "sinister creation." At this point, Ash just doesn't have time to give two fucks. She tried behaving and being the good girl but all it got her was scars and burns and so she became a wild kind of girl. Drinking, dancing, running with the wolves kind of wild. She was free-spirited and just free.

My story is pretty simple and much kinder compared to theirs. Everywhere I went I was "the whore's child". People cursed and spit on me in the street. I tried to escape it but I was isolated because I'd been born in wedlock. When I was 5, while I was in the schoolyard, men from town reached over the fence to where I sat to the side with a book and beat me in a alleyway calling me a "bastard", "filth", "whore", I could go on and on and when they were finished I dragged myself home with my broken arm, a few fractured ribs, and busted face. My mom was furious and went looking for blood but when she saw my tears she stopped and held me, apologizing over and over that I had been born that way.

Needless to say, kids weren't too kind to me and, up until I met Ash and Russell, they bullied me. When I met them, Cindy, Ann, Felicia and their whole cohort of bitches chased all three of us down in a 3:12 fight. We got our asses kicked, of course, but in the midst of our beating, Russell started fighting back and then all three of us fought together forging out bond of camaraderie, then friendship, and finally sisterhood. I don't think I have to say this but our delinquent posse could totally take Cindy, Ann, and Felicia easily now. Of course, our lives aren't as nearly as important to them as their manicures and hair appointments, so torturing us has fallen quite a bit on their to-do list over the years.