Janet Novel

Call Directions Website

Janet Novel Follow our fanpage for exciting updates and content!

10/10/2026

A STEPMOTHER SMASHED A FOSTER TEEN'S DISCOUNT MEAL BOWL ACROSS A PRIVATE CLUB PATIO FOR TOUCHING A BUFFET, BUT SHE HAD NO IDEA WHO REALLY STOOD BEHIND HER.

She sn**ched the white stoneware bowl right out of my hands before I could even take a seat near the stables.

"Look at this," she called out to the parents gathered around the terrace tables.

"Look at what sneaks into this club when nobody watches the gate."

She didn't lower her voice.

She never lowered her voice when she had a phone propped up in front of her.

Her phone was mounted on an aluminum ring light stand right beside the white tablecloths, streaming straight to her charity followers.

"We provide a home, we provide clothes from my daughters' closets, and this is what she does," she told the live broadcast.

"She grabs free lunch from the help's counter and brings it onto the member veranda."

---

Around the lawn, members paused with their iced teas.

A few trainers laughed and nudged each other near the tack room rail.

One mother in cream linen pulled her daughter back half a step, shook her head, and turned toward the bar.

Nobody told her to stop.

Nobody ever told Evelyn to stop when she was wearing her donor badge.

My father had been buried in Arlington six months ago, and since then, I wore my stepsister Corinne's outgrown boots and lived in the drafty room over the garage.

Corinne was leaning against the railing with her phone tilted upward, catching the angle of my face for Evelyn's feed.

"Evelyn, please," I said quietly.

"Dad set up this membership before he deployed."

"Your father left debts, Clara," Evelyn snapped back, loud enough for thirty donors to hear every syllable.

Then she took the heavy ceramic bowl of oily chicken soup and flipped it upside down over my head.

The greasy broth hit my hair, soaking into my secondhand collar and running down my cheeks in warm, yellow streaks.

Pieces of celery and torn meat clung to my sweater.

The entire terrace went dead silent for two seconds before Corinne burst out laughing into the camera.

"There," Evelyn declared to her screen, pointing her manicured finger at my chest.

"That is what happens to freeloaders in our stable."

I didn't wipe my face.

I didn't yell, and I didn't run toward the locker rooms.

Instead, I turned my eyes past her shoulder, toward the main iron gates at the bottom of the gravel driveway.

Three heavy black SUVs had just cleared the crest of the hill, their engines rumbling low over the crushed stone.

Behind their dark glass sat the one man Evelyn had spent eight months pretending did not exist.

Full Story is in the comments.

Should the ones who did this have been given mercy, or did they deserve every consequence?

10/09/2026

THE CAMPUS SECURITY CHIEF POURED BREAKFAST MAPLE SYRUP OVER A STRUGGLING SCHOLARSHIP RUNNER AT THE TRACK GATE FOR BRINGING AN UNAPPROVED BAG UNTIL THREE BLACK SUVS ROLLED ONTO THE TURF AND EVERYTHING CHANGED.

He popped the plastic cap with his thumb right in front of the bleachers.

"You think the rules don't apply to the back-lot bus line, Luke?"

Chief Officer Vance turned the clear jug upside down directly over Luke Miller's fair hair.

It came out slow, heavy, and amber.

The sweet, sickening smell of processed breakfast syrup hit the cool autumn morning instantly.

It dripped over Luke's eyelashes and glued his bangs flat against his pale forehead.

It soaked straight into the collar of his faded track jersey.

Nobody on the crowded walkway moved to stop it.

---

Two dozen students waiting in the morning check-in line pulled out their phones.

Somebody snickered near the hurdles.

"Look at that," Vance announced to the packed bleachers, his voice carrying straight over the fence.

"Now maybe the ants will teach you how to read the equipment policy."

Vance ran the gates with iron fists because his brother owned the biggest commercial trucking firm in the county.

Nobody ever challenged him, especially not kids who rode the township bus from the end of the county line.

Luke didn't drop his chin.

His track spikes were tied together by the laces around his neck, sticky drops pooling on the plastic soles.

Mr. Henderson, the assistant cross-country coach, took one step forward from the shed.

Then Henderson saw Vance's glare, checked the school board badge on Vance's chest, and looked down at his clipboard.

Vance squeezed the bottle again, sending a thick glob down Luke's cheek.

"Drop the bag on the asphalt and go wash your face in the sprinkler, boy."

Luke wiped a single streak from his left eyelid so he could see.

"That bag has my mother's inventory sheet in it," Luke said softly.

Vance laughed, a sharp, ugly bray that echoed off the metal bleachers.

"Your mother doesn't own anything on this campus, Luke, and by noon you won't even have a hall pass."

Then Luke looked past the security chief's shoulder.

The heavy chain-link gates at the stadium entrance rattled hard as the padlocks were thrown back.

Three midnight-black SUVs rolled smoothly onto the perimeter gravel, followed by two more, their headlights cutting through the early fog.

Full Story is in the comments.

Should the victim have forgiven them once it was over, or was refusing to forgive exactly right?

10/09/2026

THE STEPMOTHER HERDED THE FOSTER TEEN INTO A PACKED CINEMA LOBBY CORNER TO CONFISCATE HIS JACKET OVER TICKET MONEY, BUT SHE HAD NO IDEA WHOSE MILITARY CONTRACTOR WAS ALREADY WATCHING.

She grabbed the collar of his faded olive coat right beside the ticket line and je**ed it hard enough to tear the shoulder seam.

"Take it off, Julian," Diane snapped, her voice carrying over the Friday crowd.

Her twin sons, Brett and Mason, immediately shifted their shoulders to block the exit to the glass doors.

They had cornered him against the velvet rope stanchion where nobody could squeeze past.

"You stole twenty dollars from my purse to buy your own seat," she said loudly, making sure the parents behind them heard every syllable.

"I didn't steal anything," Julian said quietly, keeping his hands down at his sides.

"My dad wired me that money before he flew back out."

Diane laughed, a sharp, ugly sound that made two women buying popcorn pause and look over.

"Your deadbeat father hasn't wired ten cents since he dumped you on my porch three months ago," she sneered.

Brett leaned in, grinning, his wide frame cutting off Julian's view of the open hallway.

"Give mom the coat, charity case," Brett muttered.

"Mason needs a spare for the trunk anyway."

Julian didn't flinch, even when Mason reached out and ripped the zipper down to the waist.

Diane sn**ched the coat completely off his arms, tossing it straight onto the sticky tile floor for Brett to step on.

"Look at you," she said, smoothing down her designer cardigan while people stared.

"Standing here in rags acting like you belong in the same row as my boys."

An older ticket-taker took one step forward like he was going to say something, but Diane glared right at him.

"Family business, unless you want me calling corporate about your theater letting thieves inside," she barked.

---

The clerk froze, looked down at his scanner, and stepped back behind his podium.

Julian stood in his thin gray t-shirt under the harsh industrial lights, shivering slightly in the air-conditioned blast.

He didn't yell or throw a punch.

He simply looked past Diane's shoulder toward the glass entrance.

"You really shouldn't have taken that jacket, Diane," Julian whispered.

"Oh, really?" Diane scoffed, stepping into his face with her purse clutched like a weapon.

"Who's going to stop me? Your imaginary dad?"

Outside the glass, three armored black Suburbans pulled up directly onto the red fire curb in perfect formation.

Four men in tailored suits stepped out before the engines even shut off.

Full Story is in the comments.

Be honest: should the victim have stayed silent and let it be handled properly, or fought back right there?

10/09/2026

THE CHEER CAPTAIN INKED A ZERO ACROSS THE SCHOLARSHIP RUNNER'S FOREHEAD FOR DROPPING HER BAG, UNTIL HEAVY ARENA DOORS CRASHED OPEN AND AN UNMISTAKABLE CONVOY STEPPED THROUGH.

She grabbed my secondhand warm-up fleece by the collar and je**ed me backward against the stadium tunnel brick.

"Hold him right there," Kendall snapped, laughing into the phone her flyer was pointing at my nose.

---

It was twenty minutes before the regional championship showcase at the metro civic arena.

I was just a junior varsity track alternate who took an equipment pass to watch my cousin run hurdles.

I had saved for four months washing dishes at an all-night diner just to buy the team track spikes sitting inside my canvas tote.

Kendall didn't care about track, or spikes, or four months of greasy dishwater.

She was the varsity cheer captain, the daughter of the arena's primary luxury-suite donor, and she treated the entire service concourse like her private playground.

When I brushed past their warm-up circle carrying two water racks, her designer gym bag slipped off a bench.

Not a scratch was on it.

Not a single seam tore.

Yet she screamed like I had thrown her life's work down an incinerator shaft.

Her co-captain, Peyton, stepped in front of the exit door to cut off my hallway run.

"Pick it up, grease trap," Peyton sneered, kicking my canvas bag into a puddle of spilled sports drink.

Then came Brody, their stunt anchor, who grabbed my arms from behind and pinned them against the cold cinderblock.

"Look at the camera, scholarship boy," Brody muttered in my ear, twisting my wrist until my fingers went numb.

Kendall pulled an industrial, permanent black paint marker straight out of her pocket and uncapped it with her teeth.

"If you're going to wander into our tunnel looking like a nobody, you need to be labeled properly," Kendall announced for the live stream.

She pressed the thick felt tip hard against my forehead and dragged it across my skin.

The chemical fumes stung my eyes, but I didn't blink.

She carved a giant, thick '0' right between my temples, letting the wet black ink drip into my left eyebrow.

"There," Kendall laughed, tilting her phone screen so her viewers could see my face.

"Now everyone in this stadium knows your exact value."

Peyton and Brody howled, slapping each other on the back while three other squad members recorded from different angles.

An arena security guard walked past the end of the tunnel, saw what they were doing, looked down at his clipboard, and kept walking.

Nobody was going to cross Kendall's father an hour before tip-off.

I felt the ink dry tight against my forehead.

I didn't yell.

I didn't fight Brody's grip.

I just looked Kendall dead in the eyes and whispered, "You should have asked who bought your team's uniforms."

Kendall rolled her eyes and raised her hand to shove my face back into the brick.

Then the heavy steel security doors at the end of the VIP hallway slammed open against the wall.

A row of dark suits came walking straight down the concrete runway toward our circle.

Full Story is in the comments.

Should the victim have forgiven them once it was over, or was refusing to forgive exactly right?

10/08/2026

THE CAMPUS SECURITY GUARD PINNED A SCHOLARSHIP RUNNER AGAINST THE LIBRARY WALL OVER A MISSING BUS PASS UNTIL A LINE OF DARK MILITARY VEHICLES ROLLED ONTO THE GROUNDS AND EVERYTHING CHANGED.

He had both hands wrapped around my collar before the second bell even quit ringing.

His name was Officer Arlo Vance, and he worked the campus perimeter like he owned every square inch of asphalt between the west gate and the library doors.

He drove the morning express shuttle when regular drivers called out, and he spent every morning reminding the county scholarship kids that our vouchers were a courtesy, not a right.

---

My back slammed flat against the oak paneling between the history stacks.

My heels were dangling two inches off the parquet floor.

"You don't belong on that line with the tuition kids, Leo," Vance snarled into my jaw.

"You ride when we have room, and today you don't even have the county paper."

Beside him stood Patrick Meyer, the senior council liaison whose family paid for the whole media wing.

Patrick held up my soaked cloth binder, letting the loose-leaf notes dump straight into a plastic recycling bin.

"He thinks because he ran the four-hundred in state qualifiers, he gets to sit up front with real students," Patrick said.

Then came Julian Hayes, the track co-captain who had been trying to scrub my times from the board all winter.

Julian took my replacement plastic bus card right off my lanyard and snapped it down the middle.

"Nobody rides the four o'clock coach on county funds, Vance," Julian laughed.

"He can walk the nine miles back to the ridge trailer park."

At the circulation counter twenty feet away, Mrs. Enright simply slid her reading glasses down her nose, stamped a return card, and stared at the ceiling.

She was on shift, responsible for keeping order in the study hall, but her contract renewal was up before Patrick's father on the school board next month.

Four students at the corner study carrels lifted their phones, their screens glowing white against the dim library light.

Nobody stood up.

Nobody called for the vice principal.

"Take a breath, runner," Vance whispered, his knuckles twisting the fabric of my thrift-store collar until the wool dug straight into my windpipe.

"Because you're not breathing our air on that bus again."

I couldn't get enough air to form words.

My fingers gripped his stiff leather duty wrist, trying to pull his forearm down, but my toes were barely scraping the baseboard.

"I paid the county surcharge," I choked out in a thin rasp.

"My voucher was stamped."

Vance leaned in until his breath smelled like stale coffee and winter mint.

"Show it to the road when you're walking home, kid."

Then the tall arched windows facing the quad began to rattle in their lead frames.

A heavy diesel rumble vibrated through the floorboards, loud enough to cut through Julian's snicker.

Full Story is in the comments.

Should what happened have been handled quietly through official channels, or did the cruelty deserve to be answered in public?

10/08/2026

A CAFETERIA WORKER DRENCHED A SCHOLARSHIP RUNNER WITH STICKY JUICE ON THE MAIN STAIRS OVER A DISPUTED SNACK — BUT HAD NO IDEA WHO THE BOY’S FATHER WAS.

Red fruit punch dripped off Caleb's chin and soaked straight through his thin cotton shirt.

He stood frozen on the wide third-floor landing under the school's central glass skylight.

Mrs. Janice Gable, the campus concession vendor, held the crushed plastic jug tilted right over his head until the last thick syrup drained.

---

"That’s what thieves get when they try to pocket extra snacks before fifth period," Janice barked, shaking the empty container.

She ran the daily booster carts and campus store kiosks under contract with the school district.

Right beside her, Nolan Vance, the varsity cross-country captain, leaned over the landing railing and laughed until he wheezed.

"Look at him!" Nolan shouted, whipping his phone out to capture Caleb's dripping face.

"Dripping sugar like the cheap freeloader he is!"

Then Janice’s nephew, Garrett, stepped forward and flicked a sticky candy wrapper into Caleb's wet hair.

"You couldn't even afford the ninety-cent label on that punch bottle, Vance," Garrett sneered.

"Don't worry, the booster club will charge your zero-balance account!"

Dozens of students lined the metal railings above, leaning over to record the spectacle as laughter echoed against the brick walls.

Caleb had only reached into his gym bag to pull out his own packed thermos and a three-dollar receipt from the lobby counter.

He had counted nickels and pennies to buy the juice legitimately ten minutes earlier.

Janice had sn**ched his bag anyway, accused him of swiping booster supplies, and poured the jug straight across his forehead before he could speak.

Mr. Henderson, the hall monitor on second-floor duty, started up the steps, caught Janice's glare, and quietly turned back around.

Nobody wanted to cross Janice Gable; her husband funded the athletic banquet every winter.

Caleb didn't yell.

He wiped a smear of red syrup out of his left eye with the back of a shaking hand.

"You didn't even look at the receipt on the floor," Caleb said, his voice flat and clear through the noise.

"I don't need a receipt to spot trash taking what isn't his!" Janice snapped back, tossing the empty plastic jug directly at his sneakers.

The jug bounced with a hollow clatter against the tile.

Then, through the massive skylight directly overhead, the steady thrum of heavy rotor blades began to rattle the thick glass panes.

Full Story is in the comments.

Was this one cruel person's fault, or a system that let it happen for years?

10/08/2026

A STRUGGLING FOSTER TEENAGER HAD HIS TAPED NOTEBOOK SMASHED ACROSS A PACKED CLASSROOM BY A NEIGHBORHOOD STREET ENFORCER, BUT THE ENTIRE CREW HAD NO IDEA WHO WAS WATCHING.

The hit caught Leo right between the shoulder blades.

He didn't drop to his knees immediately, but his hands skidded hard against the linoleum between the third and fourth rows of desks.

His social studies binder burst open on impact, spitting out sixty days of handwritten notes, torn loose-leaf sheets, and the blue index cards he kept rubber-banded inside.

A heavy hardcover algebra textbook slammed down on his tailbone next.

"Pick it up, grease fire," Jax shouted from the center aisle.

Jax was nineteen, wore a grease-streaked work jacket, and didn't even attend the school.

He hung around the corner bodegas and the pickup court every single afternoon, shaking down younger boys for twenty-dollar bills or their bus passes.

Today, he had simply walked past the open front security desk because the campus monitor was outside having a cigarette.

Nobody had asked Jax for a visitor badge, and nobody had asked him to leave.

He had kicked the classroom door wide open ten minutes before the final bell just to settle an old score over a pair of secondhand sneakers Leo had refused to hand over near the deli.

Mr. Albright, who had taught American government for thirty years, took three steps backward toward the chalkboard.

He picked up a felt eraser and rubbed at a clean piece of slate like he was busy.

Two varsity players at the front desks pulled out their phones, angling the camera lenses downward to catch the floor.

They didn't jump in.

They didn't tell Jax to stop either.

They just started counting the hits out loud.

"That’s one!" one called out.

A thick dictionary caught Leo’s forearm as he shielded his face.

"That’s two!"

Leo stayed on his hands and knees, staring at the dust under desk 14.

Three weeks ago, his backpack had been dumped into the urinal in the second-floor bathroom, and Albright had told him to just replace the paper.

Last Friday, his bike chain had been snapped with bolt cutters outside the library gate while two neighborhood guys laughed from a parked sedan.

Leo had walked five miles home in the rain because his foster parents were working the night shift at the dairy plant.

He didn't have anyone coming to yell at the principal.

He didn't have anyone with a law degree to file an emergency injunction.

Jax scooped up a taped, bent spiral notebook from the floor, ripped the cover down the center, and dropped it into Leo's hair.

"You aren't a person, little man," Jax sneered, digging the toe of his work boot into Leo's ribcage. "You're just free stuff on the curb."

---

The room waited for the sob that usually came.

Instead, Leo's pale, bruised fingers closed around the split spine of the notebook.

He rose slowly, pulling his legs under him without shaking.

He looked Jax dead in the chest and spoke in a voice so flat the boys filming stopped laughing.

"You're standing in the wrong room today, Jax."

Jax barked out a laugh, turning around to milk the room for applause, but the sound died halfway up his throat.

At the classroom door, two men in pressed grey suits were standing completely motionless.

One was holding an open district folder, and the other had a county compliance badge clipped to his lapel.

Full Story is in the comments.

Team Justice or Team Let the School Handle It?

10/07/2026

THE DONOR'S DAUGHTER SMASHED THE SCHOLARSHIP SPRINTER'S ONLY GEAR FOR TAKING FIRST SEED, THEN SIRENS OUTSIDE THE REC CENTER MADE HER FAMILY NAME INSTANTLY USELESS.

Chloe Vance didn't even look angry when she brought the heavy heel of her designer sneaker down on Sean Miller's racing flats.

She looked completely bored, smiling like someone casually stepping on an empty soda cup because there was nothing better on television.

The thin carbon-fiber plate inside Sean's left shoe snapped with a dry, sharp pop that echoed right through the rec center gymnasium.

Beside her, Mason Drake let out a lazy snicker and dragged his steel-toed practice cleat across the nylon mesh, tearing the tongue clean out of the stitching.

"Look at that," Mason shouted toward the varsity sprinters lounging on the lower bleachers.

"Cheap glue and second-hand sweat."

Then Tiffany Briggs stepped out of the circle, twisted the blue cap off a fresh bottle of sports drink, and emptied the whole sticky pint directly over Sean's regional qualifier bib.

The number 104 ran dark purple, the wet cardstock curling into mush against the scuffed gym boards.

Around the front sign-in desk, five different kids had their phones up, the little red recording dots glowing under the fluorescent tubes.

Nobody stepped forward to stop them.

Behind the laminate counter, Director Kent slid a plastic clipboard over his open ledger and stared intently at his pencil sharpener.

He knew which girl's father signed the quarterly rec center endowment checks.

---

Sean stayed on his knees, his palms flat against the cold maple floor.

He didn't scream.

He didn't scramble to sn**ch the ruined flats away while they were stomping them.

He had run forty miles a week in those shoes, patching the outer tread twice with hardware-store epoxy just to survive the sectional heats.

He was the scholarship kid who worked the rec center desk from six to ten every single night just to get weekend access to the rubber track.

And two hours ago, he had clocked forty-six point eight seconds in the open four-hundred, bumping Chloe's hand-picked relay partner completely off the regional traveling roster.

Chloe kicked the mangled rubber sole toward the basketball rack, tossing her blonde ponytail over her shoulder with an easy laugh.

"You should thank us, Miller," Chloe said, smoothing down the front of her team warm-up jacket.

"Now you won't have to embarrass our county by showing up at the regional pavilion looking like a transient."

"Real equipment belongs to families who actually fund this facility."

"Take your little flea-market junk back to the bus station."

Mrs. Gable, the craft room supervisor carrying a wire basket of ceramic glazes, took one quick step toward the gym doors with her mouth half-open.

Director Kent caught her sleeve with two fingers and gave her a fast, quiet shake of his head.

Sean picked up the shattered carbon shank from the floor.

His hands were completely steady.

He looked straight up at Chloe, then at Mason, then down the line of laughing teammates who had formed a wall between him and the lobby doors.

"My grandfather paid for the concrete under your feet," Sean said quietly.

Chloe threw her head back and laughed so hard she had to grip Mason's shoulder to keep her footing.

"Your grandfather's a deadbeat who couldn't even pay your county bus pass, you pathetic charity case!"

She never got to finish the next insult.

A sharp siren blast ripped through the double glass doors of the rec center, followed by the deep, flashing pulse of blue emergency strobes washing across the gym walls.

Every phone dropped.

The laughing died instantly in Chloe's throat.

Full Story is in the comments.

When a child is hurt in front of adults and nobody stops it, who failed them - the bully, the school, or every adult who watched?

10/07/2026

THE DONOR'S HEIRESS DUMPED A FOAM BUCKET ON THE SCHOLARSHIP RUNNER FOR TOUCHING HER WATER BOTTLE, BUT THAT LAUGH BECAME THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF HER LIFE. KARMA HIT FAST.

White suds exploded over Caleb's head before his knees even hit the synthetic turf.

The stinging chemical foam rushed straight into his eyes and plugged his nostrils.

He gasped, choking on lemon floor disinfectant, but the thick grey slime just kept sliding down his collar.

Brynn stepped back with the yellow wheeled bucket tilted in both manicured hands, grinning like she had just performed a public service.

"Don't move," she called out to the forty kids lined up on the track.

"I'm just scrubbing the cheap smell off the roster before regionals."

---

Laughter broke out instantly across the fifty-yard line.

Three varsity sprinters pulled their phones out, zooming in on the white soap suds dripping off Caleb's chin and soaking his faded, taped sneakers.

Nobody moved to stop her.

Coach Miller stood twenty yards away by the equipment shed, clipboard tucked against his chest, staring straight down at his stopwatch like he had suddenly gone deaf.

He knew whose name was carved in limestone over the stadium gates: The Vance Pavilion.

Brynn Vance didn't get benched.

Brynn Vance didn't get detention.

Caleb sat on the wet rubber track with his hands shaking in his lap.

This was not the first time Brynn had targeted him this semester.

Last month she kicked his chemistry binder into an open locker-room drain while two teachers looked the other way.

Two weeks ago she dumped black dye across his track jersey and told the hall monitor he was carrying contraband ink.

Caleb had taken every blow because his partial athletic stipend was the only thing keeping him enrolled at Oakridge Academy.

If he fought back, his scholarship vanished.

His mother worked double shifts at the county clinic just to cover his transit passes.

"Look at me when I'm cleaning you up, Caleb," Brynn taunted, tossing the empty bucket onto the grass with a loud plastic clatter.

Her friends whistled from the bleachers.

A junior girl took a step forward from the hurdle racks, her face tight with worry, but a senior captain grabbed her arm and pulled her back into line.

No one crossed the Vance family.

Caleb wiped a blob of stinging suds away from his eyelashes.

His voice didn't crack.

"You think having your name on the gate means you own the ground everyone walks on," Caleb said quietly.

Brynn barked a sharp, amused laugh and crossed her arms over her branded warm-up jacket.

"At this school?" she sneered.

"I do."

Caleb didn't answer.

He didn't lower his head either.

He looked past her shoulder toward the visitor access road behind the stadium end zone.

Two dark, unmarked sedans had just cleared the main security barrier without stopping for the guard.

They didn't park in the visitor stalls.

They rolled straight across the access track, their low tires crunching heavily over the gravel, heading directly for the fifty-yard line.

Full Story is in the comments.

Should the ones who did this have been given mercy, or did they deserve every consequence?

10/07/2026

THE SUBURBAN QUEEN BEE INKED A ZERO ON THE TEEN ARTIST'S CHEEK OVER A LOST SCHOLARSHIP WHILE HE BEGGED, AND THAT LAUGH BECAME THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF HER LIFE AS KARMA HIT FAST.

The thick black chisel tip of the permanent marker squeaked across Nolan's cheekbone, dragging in a heavy, deliberate circle.

Hadley Mercer didn't blink while she drew it.

She pressed hard enough into the skin to leave a rising red welt beneath the greasy black stain.

All along the cul-de-sac of Oak Hollow Lane, the Fourth of July neighborhood cookout was running in full swing between the parked pickup trucks and smoking kettle grills.

Paper plates stacked with smoked brisket sat on folding tables in front of open garages, but nobody was looking at the food anymore.

The lawn chairs had gone completely still.

Garrett Shaw stepped up next, sn**ching Nolan's open sketchbook right off the metal basket of his bicycle.

He ripped the winning charcoal portrait down the center binding with a slow, deliberate tear that cut right through the country song drifting from the garage speakers.

Dylan Pierce took the third turn, dumping Nolan's plastic jar of murky brush-rinse water straight down the collar of his faded cotton shirt.

Cassidy Finch raised her phone, stepping in close to catch the black zero drying against Nolan's fair, sunburned skin.

---

"Look right into the lens, zero," Cassidy laughed, tilting her phone so the girls standing by the cooler could see the screen.

Nolan didn't swing on any of them.

He was seventeen years old, pale, wearing steel-toed work boots with cracked leather and a thrift-store work shirt he had washed until the seams turned white.

He had lived in the converted carriage house behind the pine ridge for barely four months, keeping to himself and painting on an easel in the open shed.

His regional youth arts scholarship letter was still folded in his back pocket, awarding him the commissioned mural for the new civic center downtown.

Hadley's mother was the vice president of the neighborhood association, and her father owned the largest commercial framing firm in the county.

Hadley had entered three massive oil canvases into the same contest and hadn't placed in the top ten.

"My dad pays five thousand dollars a year in HOA dues so we don't have to look at welfare trash on our street," Hadley said, tossing the dried-out marker into the dirt between Nolan's boots.

Mr. Henderson, who ran the corner hardware franchise and stood holding a pair of chrome barbecue tongs, took half a step forward from his driveway.

He looked toward Hadley's father standing by the b**r cooler, caught the man's flat stare, and stopped.

Mr. Henderson looked down at the grass and said nothing.

"Just let me have the portfolio binder," Nolan whispered, his voice trembling only on the final syllable.

"You don't get a portfolio binder, nobody," Hadley sneered, leaning down into his face.

"Because everything you make is worth exactly what you are."

Nolan didn't wipe his cheek.

He let the black ink set in the muggy summer air, his shoulders level and still.

Then he looked past Hadley's shoulder toward the mouth of the cul-de-sac.

A heavy, low rumble vibrated through the asphalt before the headlights even swept the curb.

Full Story is in the comments.

Be honest: should the victim have stayed silent and let it be handled properly, or fought back right there?

Address

Amber Jeffries
New York, NY
61602

Telephone

+14343730249

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Janet Novel posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category