Breathe Me (Billionaire Bullies 1)

Chapter 1

Shana

I don’t want to die, but God, why is living so damn painful sometimes?

My parents separated when I was little. As a result, I barely know my dad. I only know him through my mom, who thinks I’m a mistake. In her eyes, I’m the child of a drug addict and someone she never wished had been born. To her, I’m useless and unworthy, just like my dad.

She hates me, and I don’t blame her. I hate myself too. That’s why I cut my wrists. That’s why I take pills to get rid of the pain and why I barely eat. But I’m conflicted. Part of me wishes to die and disappear, while another part of my brain just wants to be normal.

I want to be pretty and thin so that I won’t be bullied—I hope the pills and the puking will fix this for me.

I also wish to be funny and kind. Maybe then I won’t be so alone—that’s what fake smiles were invented for. That’s why I pretend to be happy when I’m not.

And I have friends, but even when other people surround me, I’m just...choking.

I’m always lonely because there is a difference between being alone and feeling alone. And that’s why I need the knife. Because the physical pain is better than the emotional pain of knowing there is no one there to save me. The scars on my arm aren’t pretty, but they are better than being suffocated by the war of emotions inside my heart.

I take out the O'Boy bag from our pantry, pausing when I hear a disapproving sigh.

“Shana,” it’s my mom. “You’re not supposed to drink that. Do you know how many calories there are in O’boy? Weren’t you trying to lose weight?”

Her words make it hard not to cry. I want to lose weight, but I can’t lose weight without literally starving myself. I weigh 143,3 pounds, but I’m only 5’1 feet tall. It means I still have a long way to go if I want my mom to approve of me.

My BMI needs to be perfect.

But losing weight isn’t that easy…

Why wasn’t I born blonde and beautiful like my mom?

The only thing I inherited from my tall, gorgeous Swedish mother is my blue eyes. Apart from that, my hair is a lackluster brown, I’m not nearly as tall as her and my skin isn’t nearly as perfect as hers. I have blemishes while my mom’s face looks like it has been smoothed out by a filter effect, making me feel all the more alienated.

I glance at my mom as she pours coffee into a cup. Her blonde hair is long, shiny, and coming down in perfect curls on either side of her rosy cheeks. She usually dresses in silver and white, and there are real diamonds in her earrings. There are many rings on her fingers, and her she never goes out without red lipstick.

No wonder all the guys she is dating are younger than her. My mom is beautiful, the complete opposite of me. I don’t even look like I’m hers.

“Are you excited for your first day of school”? she asks without even looking at me.

I’m not surprised. My mom often asks me questions, but I don’t think she actually wants me to answer them. Sometimes she doesn’t even wait to hear my response and instead busy herself with other things. Right now, she is fixing her earring, and I take a seat by the kitchen table.

“I’m nervous,” I begin telling her, but my mom is already walking out of the room with long strides.

“Aww, I’m sure you will be fine,” she says, looking at her reflection in the mirror inside the hallway before disappearing inside the bathroom.

My chest constricts. Why do I even try? I want my mom to love me. I constantly seek her approval, but it never seems to come. It is why I desperately want to lose weight. If I lose weight, she will like me. She will have to love me.

I finish eating breakfast, puke it up in the bathroom connected to my room and then head outside.

My mom comes from money. As an only child, she inherited everything from my grandparents when they died. She honestly has more money than she can spend, yet she still refuses to buy me a car. So waiting for the bus it is.

Once inside the bus, I put my headphones on, and my favorite song comes on. I sing along and stand up from my seat to do a little silly dance, smiling as I do so. That’s when I look up and see a beautiful dark blonde guy looking at me from the other side of the bus. I give him a shy smile and turn away.

My cheeks are warm, and I feel my body warming up. I wasn’t even completely conscious that I was staring at him.

The bus stops, and more people get on. My seat is now taken, so I end up standing all the way to school. I crane my neck to get a glimpse of the guy I saw earlier. I don’t see him anymore, but I know he is somewhere on this bus.

Whatever, I bet he wouldn’t be interested in me.

I close my eyes, swaying with the music in my ears. I just want to forget everything and just have fun. I want to stop worrying so much.

I step out of the bus and jump in fright when I hear June shouting, “Shana!” before she crashes into me and squeezes the life out of me.

“Hey, June,” I say, a bit overwhelmed. Truthfully, I don’t feel energetic enough to hang out with the frisky blonde today, but she is my only friend, so I ask, “How are you?”

June backs up from me and grins. “I’ve had the best summer ever. Daddy bought me a new car!” she looks very proud but pauses once her eyes rake me up and down. “Shana!” she gasps. “What have you done? Haven’t you been eating anything? You’ve lost weight.”

A grin spreads across my face. It’s rare for June to let me be the center of attention, and I’m glad that this time she isn’t going on about herself.

“Yeah, I have,” I spin around in my tighter clothes, feeling great since I wear jeans and a matching leather jacket instead of the usual: oversized clothes and sweatpants because everything else is too tight. I feel very pretty. “What do you think?”

“That you looked better before,” June says in a cold tone.

Wait, what?

Did I hear that correctly?

When I look at her with hurt in my eyes, she pretends not to notice and fishes up a protein bar from her pocket, handing it to me. “Here. You need it more than me.”

I take it from her with shaking hands. I expect her to say that she is joking, but instead, she turns around and squeals upon seeing the third girl in our friend circle. “Stina!” she exclaims in an excited voice. “I haven’t seen you since last week!”

Huh.

That’s…weird.

I texted June plenty of times this summer and asked to hang out, but she replied with the excuse that she wasn’t at home but spending the summer at her family’s summerhouse in Rome. She told me she wouldn’t be home before school started.

Did she lie to me?

I watch the other two girls hug each other before smiling and starting to catch up with one another. I feel incredibly left out. They are both my friends, but I have to try so hard to stay in the loop. Stina and June pretend not to hear me if I talk about myself. The only way to gain their attention is to ask them questions about themselves.

But I won’t be sad about that. June and Stina are my only friends, and I’m fine not being the center of attention.

I take a step back, accidentally crashing my back into someone’s firm chest. Strong hands land on my shoulder to steady me, and my whole face burns with humiliation.

“Sorry,” I mumble before turning around and realizing it’s the dark blonde guy from the bus. Only this time, he is wearing a scowl.

Calling him scary would be the understatement of the entire century.

He absolutely towers over me, and his tight clothes hug every taut muscle on his body, from his broad shoulders down to his powerful biceps. His toned physique tells me he spends a lot of time at the gym. But the most intimidating part about him is that he is ridiculously beautiful, but in that “if you’re not pretty yourself, you can’t speak to me” way, which I find to be incredibly scary.

Is he someone famous? I would believe it if someone told me he was a movie star. This guy is so stunning that it’s almost physically painful not to touch him, which I’m doing. s**t. When did I put my hand on his chest?!

I withdraw my hand from his tight white T-shirt, but it’s already too late. He growls, “Don’t f*****g touch me,” before stepping away with a cold expression.

I’m about to apologize again, but June gasps at the sight of the guy.

“Oh, right!” she says with a wide smile. “I almost forgot to tell you; my mom and Olof finally got married! This is my stepbrother, Vincent. Vincent, meet Stina and Shana, the two girls I’ve told you about.”

Vincent’s eyes flicker with sudden interest. He barely pays Stina any attention but decides to stare down at me with a cruel smile playing over his lips. “This the girl that had a huge crush on that math teacher?”

All blood drains from my face.

How does he know about that?

Last year, I trusted June enough to tell her my deepest and somewhat embarrassing secret: that I had a crush on Mr. Mårtensson, our math teacher. It was strange, and I now know he is far too mature for me, but the point is that it was meant to stay between us!

Why did June tell her stepbrother my secret? What other things has she shared about me with him or other people?

Right then, Mr. Mårtensson steps out of the bus. He doesn’t work at the gymnasium but at the primary school right next to it. When he notices me, he sighs and shakes his head with a disgusted expression.

It breaks me.

Somehow I just know that he knows about my former crush on him—June must have told my secret to other people. Even the people stepping off the bus snicker once they see me, and my heart clenches.

“How could you?” I whisper and look at June with tear-filled eyes. I want to yell at her but am too shocked and sad to do that. All I want is to sink through the ground.

June looks at me with a villainous look, her face conveying pure disdain, as if I’m nothing to her and our five years of friendship never existed.

“What can I say? You shouldn’t have trusted me,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.

“Shouldn’t have trusted you?” I repeat, hardly believing what I’m hearing right now. A crowd has formed around us, but I don’t care. Not right now. I should be able to trust my own friend, and the fact June is acting as if I made a mistake doing that is painful.

“Yeah,” June says. “How could I keep all of your embarrassing moments to myself when they are worth pure gold? You should see the likes I got on the video about the teacher thing. I shared the story on t****k. You’re a character on there. People think you’re crazy.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. My voice is trembling, but I don’t care about that either. I’m just sad and angry at June.

How could she do this to me? She was supposed to be my friend, my best friend. Sure, I sometimes find her bubbly personality irritating in the early mornings since I’m so sick and exhausted from my own sad life and living with a mom that doesn’t love me. But I still value June as a friend! I would never do something like this to her!

“I already told you,” June says with a mean-girl quirk to her lips. “I shared your secrets with the world. And you know what? People love it. You’re famous now, thanks to me.”

Stina laughs. “Wait, is Shana period girl? The one that bled through her underwear at McDonald’s and then had to fill her jeans with paper?”

She shared that information too?!

I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I trusted June with everything. She was my person—the Phoebe to my Monica—and then she betrayed me. All this time, she wasn’t a Phoebe, but a fake friend with a fake personality!

“That’s right,” Vincent suddenly says, folding his big arms behind his head with a look of pure amusement. “Shana is the period girl, in-love-with-her-teacher girl, crush on the hot guy at school girl, and leaky girl. Wait… Do you still bring panty protection in your bag wherever you go?” he asks. When I stare at him in horror, he breaks out into a laugh. “Seriously? Are all of the stories on June’s t****k true?”

My bottom lip trembles. June and Stina are laughing, and so are a few other people that I don’t recognize. They seem close to June, but I can’t hear what they are saying. Blood is rushing into my ears. I think I’m going to be sick. It’s like I’m floating above my body. I want to move, but my legs are rooted to the ground. My life has turned into a living nightmare that keeps on getting worse.

My heart starts racing, and my lungs feel like they are caving in. I can’t breathe.

My mom hates me.

My best friend betrayed me.

It shouldn’t matter, but I’m also embarrassed June told the hottest guy I’ve ever seen about my secrets.

But it doesn’t end there!

Everyone at my new school knows about my secrets—I’m a freaking t****k star, and I bet June has shared all of my secrets with the world. And for what? A few likes and a little bit of money from the views?!

Was our friendship worth nothing to her?

My arms and legs start shaking, my stomach churns, and my head is spinning so fast I can barely think. Sweat is beading down my forehead, and my vision gets blurry. My throat starts to close up, making it even harder to breathe.

“Oh, look,” Stina grins. “She is going to cry.”

“Really?” June sneers. “What is she? Twelve?”

Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I don’t care about June, Vincent, or Stina anymore. All I want to do is escape this painful reality and be left alone.

Without another word, I turn on my heel and run away from them as fast as I can. Going home isn’t an option. My mom would be mad at me if I skipped the first day of school, so I’m heading to my first class even if it feels like I’m dying.

Why does everyone in my life hate me?