Free Bully by Penelope Douglas Page A

him.”
    “K.C.! Stop it. You’re my friend,” I scolded.
    “I’m sorry, okay? It’s just that he wasn’t that bad while you were gone. Honestly. He wasn’t the hell raiser he was before you left.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it had anything to do with you. He seemed moodier for a while but then got better. It’s just that I got to see him with different eyes. Before it was always about how he treated you—which was horrible,” she rushed to add. “But after you left, he seemed different. More human.”
    The idea of present-day Jared as human was incomprehensible to me. He was driven, confident, and severe. That’s the only side of him I’d seen since we were fourteen. I hadn’t seen him happy in years, and I thought for sure he’d be pleased as punch to be rid of me for a year.
    But why had he acted moodier
after
I left? It didn’t make sense.
    Was he having a hard time entertaining himself without his favorite chew toy?
    Aww, p
oor baby.

Chapter 9
    “Ugh!” I let out a guttural moan into the darkness as I stared at my ceiling that night, which was lit up by the headlights of another arrival next door.
    It was after one in the morning, and the bombardment of party noises coming from next door wouldn’t relent. The pillow brought up to both of my ears to drown out the sounds hadn’t helped. Texting K.C. to text Liam to text Jared hadn’t helped. Calling the police and filing a complaint an hour ago hadn’t helped.
    If it wasn’t the loud music or the constant arrival and departure of muscle cars with their sorry exhaust systems, then it was the shouting or laughing coming from Jared’s yards. I liked loud music, but a party in the middle of the night that was keeping the whole neighborhood awake should be shut down.
    Throwing the covers off, I stomped out of bed and stood at the French doors. His whole house was lit up and bustling with noise and activity. Some people stumbled around the front yard, which was littered with red Solo cups, and some gathered in the backyard either smoking or enjoying the hot tub.
    He is such a dick!
My hands were on my hips, gripping harder than usual. What kind of person had no regard for anyone else? The self-absorbed asswipe living next to me, I guess. I had a video chat with my dad in six hours, and I wasn’t going to be up all night just because they wanted to get drunk and high.
    Screw it.
I slipped on my purple Chucks and black hoodie and headed downstairs.
    I opened the door in the kitchen leading to the garage and went to my dad’s workbench, still as organized as we’d left it. Grabbing the big bolt cutters from the bottom tool-box drawer, I maneuvered them up my right sleeve. With my free hand, I opened another drawer and picked a padlock out of the three extras. Sliding that into the front pocket of my hoodie, I headed out.
    I rounded the corner of my house and strode to the rear, my heart beating faster with every step. Finding the hole I had made in the hedge years ago, I swiped the new growth aside and slipped through. As I took a right and continued to walk, I could hear the partygoers in his backyard on the other side of the hedge. I was about five feet away from them, but there was no way they could see me.
    Jared’s backyard, as well as mine, was encased by fences on the sides and tall hedges on the back. When I made it to the fence at the other side of his house, I poked my hand through the dense brush of leaves. I tried to push the branches aside as much as possible but still the needle-like sprigs scraped and stung my legs as I shimmied my way through. The party was going hard, and there were tons of people here.
    What I was going to do needed to happen fast.
    Taking several glances in all directions to make sure I had arrived unnoticed, I jogged up the side of Jared’s house to the circuit breaker. I’d spent enough time at his house as a kid to be able to find it in the dark. I slid the bolt cutter