The Fight for Us Read Online Free PDF Page A

plastering her damn smile on her face for the couple for ten minutes, she didn’t handle it well when she found Harper on her cell phone talking to Lena. They were laughing, and given the way Harper instantly shut her mouth when Joss opened the door, it wasn’t meant for her ears.
    Now, they were home, and Harper’s only excuse for bullying Natalie Henry was, “I don’t know how it happened.”
    Huh… Joss wasn’t going to be accepting that answer, and as she pursed her lips and tapped her toe on the floor, Harper sighed and glanced around.
    “Is that all you have to say for yourself? This is the person you are now? You make a couple new friends, and suddenly, you’re too cool to be kind? Is that it?”
    “Mom, it’s not my fault! Jen and Lena—”
    “Have no control over your actions and choices, young lady! None!”
    Harper stared for a moment, a little too taken aback by her mother’s sudden loud voice to respond.
    And after they glared at one another for a few more long seconds, Joss continued. “Nothing? You have nothing at all to say?” Harper rolled her eyes, and that hit Joss’s last button. “Fine! You’re grounded. Three months. No activities outside of school activities. No Facebook, no phone, and if I catch one mention of you causing trouble with Jen and Lena at school, you can count on being grounded for a heck of a lot longer than that.”
    “Mom! That’s not—”
    “Shut it!” She yelled, and before Harper could respond, she turned to the counter, gripping the edge hard. She listened as Harper flopped herself down at the table dramatically, and when Joss turned to the fridge, grabbing the ground turkey from the shelf where she’d set it that morning to thaw, she said nothing. She started unwrapping the meat, trying to calm her anger, trying to keep herself from spinning back around and letting loose again. Joss had always been a sass—a sass as a child, a sass as a teen, and a damn hard ass sass as an adult. Harper had taken after that less that affable trait, and she didn’t want to perpetuate it.
    But as she realized the turkey was still frozen, she chucked it into the sink and lost her rein.
    “She’s a person, Harper!” Her voice was loud and incredulous, and her palm had clasped her forehead in utter shock that she had to have this conversation with her daughter. “You’re hurting a person!” She shook her head as Harper just stared. “I am so disappointed in you. You can’t want to be someone who does this. You just can’t! I know you. You rescue ladybugs and give them water soaked paper towels to keep them alive. You yell at me for swatting flies with the fly swatter. You can’t be this person, Harper!” She was still clutching her head, her forehead scrunched up as the shock of the situation hit her full force, and she just stared at her little girl who’d grown up to be a monster.
    But as she stared, Harper’s eyes filled with tears, and she stood from her chair. “I. Don’t. Know. What. Happened!” She stomped her foot as she yelled, and then her tears turned to sobs as she started to cry. “They used to hate me too! They called me train track teeth, and metal mouth when I used to have braces. They called me midget. All last year they made fun of me, and then…then they just stopped. They suddenly liked me, and I just wanted them to like me. I wanted them to stop picking on me.” Harper took a deep and shuttering breath as her sobs hitched and she sank into her chair again.
    Joss sighed, sitting in the chair across from her. She didn’t have a clue what to say. Wasn’t she supposed to have the answers? She hadn’t known any of that. How could she have not known what her daughter had gone through?
    “Harper, this isn’t you. You have to be stronger than this. The friendship of two mean, nasty girls can’t be more important to you than your integrity. It just can’t. You’re better than this.”
    Harper kept her focus on the table in front of her. Her