I walked slowly over the ice, searching for freedom. I did not want to be here nor knew why my older brother had dragged me to this cold, frozen lake to skate as if we did brother-sister bonding all the time.

Well, heck. I did know that whenever he drove me somewhere that meant bad news. That meant something was going on at home that he didn’t want me to know about. That meant that our mom was having an issue or that he was hiding something. But, I’m not stupid.

“Scott, what’s going on?”

Scott sighed and ruffled my hair like he used to when we were little. But we’re not. I’m going on fifteen and him seventeen. “Maddie, I need you to understand something.”

“What? What is it?”

“Maddie, this is bigger than anything else. It’s about Stephy.”

“Oh. Your whore-slut girlfriend. What’d you do to her now?”

“Maddie, shut up and listen to me!”

Then I realized this was serious. And that my brother did a lot of stupid and against-the-law things. And that this was probably just adding to the very long list.