Cracked
Authors: K. M. Walton
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Physical & Emotional Abuse, #Social Themes, #Suicide, #Dating & Sex, #Dating & Relationships, #Bullying
Victor:
I have wished that Bull Mastrick would die almost every single day. Not that I would ever have anything to do with his death. I’m not a psychopath or some wacko with collaged pictures of him hanging in my room and a gun collection. I’m the victim.
Bull:
I fought my way through elementary school and middle school. My nose has been broken and my pinkie on my right hand has been snapped the wrong way and my lip’s been ripped open a bunch of times. But people leave me alone. I’m sort of over beating kids up.
Sort of.
Victor hates his life.
He has no friends, he gets beaten up at school, and his parents are always criticizing him. Tired of feeling miserable, Victor takes a bottle of his mother’s sleeping pills—only to wake up in the hospital.
Bull is angry,
and he takes all of his rage out on Victor. That makes him feel better, at least a little. But it doesn’t stop Bull’s grandfather from getting drunk and hitting him. So Bull tries to defend himself with a loaded gun.
When Victor and Bull
end up as roommates in the same psych ward, there’s no way to escape each other or their problems. Which means things are going to get worse—much worse—before they get better.
K. M. Walton
spent twelve years teaching and loved every minute. She has a penchant for reading
Entertainment Weekly
cover to cover, and she lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons.
Cracked
is her first novel. Visit her at kmwalton.com or follow her on Twitter at @KMWalton1.
Jacket designed by
RUSSELL GORDON
Jacket photograph copyright © 2012 by
DAVIES AND STARR/GETTY IMAGES
Author photograph by
TODD WALTON
simon pulse
SIMON & SCHUSTER, NEW YORK
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Simon Pulse hardcover edition January 2012
Copyright © 2012 by K. M. Walton
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walton, K. M. (Kathleen M.)
Cracked / by K. M. Walton. — 1st Simon Pulse hardcover ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When Bull Mastrick and Victor Konig wind up in the same psychiatric ward at age sixteen, each recalls and relates in group therapy the bullying relationship they have had since kindergarten, but also facts about themselves and their families that reveal they have much in common.
ISBN 978-1-4424-2916-1
[1. Emotional problems—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction. 3. Bullies—Fiction. 4. Self-esteem—Fiction. 5. Psychotherapy—Fiction. 6. High schools—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.W177Cr 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2011010340
ISBN 978-1-4424-2918-5 (eBook)
“Everything’s Not Lost”
Words and Music by Guy Berryman, Jon Buckland, Will Champion and Chris Martin
Copyright © 2000 by Universal Music Publishing MGB Ltd.
All Rights in the United States and Canada Administered by Universal Music-MGB Songs
International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
To my mom, Mary Anne Becker-Sheedy, this dedication is a drop in the bucket.
An ocean full of drops wouldn’t be enough to thank you for your unwavering belief in me.
Victor
I HAVE WISHED THAT BULL MASTRICK WOULD DIE
almost every single day. Not that I would ever have anything to do with his death. I’m not a psychopath or some wacko with collaged pictures of him hanging in my room and a gun collection. I’m the victim.
Bull Mastrick has tortured me since kindergarten. I’m sixteen now, and I understand that he’s an asshole and will always be an asshole. But I wish a rare sickness would suck the life out of him or he’d crash on his stupid BMX bike and just die.
Lately, as in the past two years of high school, he’s been absent a lot. Each day that he’s not in school I secretly wait
for the news that he’s died. A sudden tragic death. As in, not-ever-coming-back-to-school-again dead. Then I’d have some peace. I could stop looking over my shoulder every five seconds and possibly even digest my lunch. Bull has a pretty solid track record of being a dick, so death is my only option.
Last year Bull pantsed me in gym. Twice. The first time was—and I can’t believe I’m even allowing myself to think this, but—the first time wasn’t that bad. It was in the locker room and only two other guys saw me in my underwear. And they’re even more untouchable than I am. They’re what everyone calls “bottom rungers.”
Fortunately, the bottom rungers just dropped their eyes and turned away.
But a few weeks later Bull put a little more thought and planning into it. He waited until we were all in the gym, all forty-five of us, and when Coach Schuster ran back to his office to grab his whistle, Bull grabbed my shorts and underwear and shouted, “Yo, look! Is it a boy or a girl?”
I’m not what anyone would categorize as dramatic, but it seriously felt like he grabbed a little of my soul. I remember standing there like a half-naked statue—not breathing or blinking—as wisps of
me
leaked out of my exposed man parts. I heard a snort, which unfroze me. I slowly bent down,
pulled up my underwear and shorts, and walked back into the locker room.
And puked in the corner like a scolded animal.
He got suspended for it, which earned me two guaranteed Bull-free days in a row. You think that would’ve made me feel better. But each time I walked down that hallway in school or thought of the forty-five fellow ninth graders—eighteen of them girls—seeing my balls, I would gag. Then I’d run to the closest bathroom and regurgitate perfectly formed chunks of shame and disgrace.