“Girlfriend?” Alabaster grins, stretching his pale skin even tighter across the bones of his face. “You’re even more like me than me! A regular chip off the old block!” I cringe. He can’t know how close that is to the truth. A chip off the old block—as in they took a chip off him to make me. Aloud, I tell him, “She’s not my girlfriend.” He doesn’t believe me. “That’s exactly what I would have said. Don’t snow me, Bryan. You’re talking to the master. How old are you?” “Fifteen,” I lie. I’m actually thirteen, but it has to make sense that he could have fathered me before going in to prison. “Where are you from?” “New Mexico,” I reply, sticking to Tori’s maximum truth rule. “I never knew who my real father was until my mom heard on TV that you were—about your medical situation.” “That I’m about to croak,” the old gangster amends. “Pointless to sugarcoat it.” “I wanted to meet you, and she said no,” I go on. “So I took off.” He nods understandingly. “I left home around your age too. My old man kicked me out. Said I’d never amount to anything. By the time I was eighteen, I’d made more money
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