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  MAD WORLD

  Mad World #1

  Hannah McBride

  Copyright © 2021 by Hannah McBride

  MAD WORLD

  Mad World Series, Book 1

  Original Publication Date: October 2021

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information and retrieval system without express written permission from the Author/Publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication’s use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Credit: Temptation Creations

  For Mom & Dad

  Thank you for a lifetime of support, laughs, and unconditional love.

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Coming Winter 2022

  Coming Spring 2022

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Hannah McBride

  Author’s Note

  Hey, friend! If you’re reading this, THANK YOU SO MUCH! But also, check this out:

  Mad World is a completely fictional story that deals with some very real world (and heavy) issues including substance abuse, childhood sexual abuse, language, and has an alphahole that can be unsettling for some readers. If you’re someone who might have a hard time with that, please stop here!

  If you’re one of my amazing family members here to support me… please skip to the acknowledgments. Seriously. You can read this note and that. Then you’re done. Mmmkay?

  Prologue

  “You stupid bitch!”

  His voice cracked through the empty hallway as I scrambled back several steps, as if I could actually outrun his fury.

  I had seen him angry, but never directed at me. And never this out of control. His rage was its own entity as it swallowed up the air in the space and pressed around me from every side.

  Terror dried my mouth to ashes, and I struggled to form words to calm him down.

  “Just... take it easy, okay? We can talk about this.” I held up my hands between us, but he lunged forward and grabbed me, hauling me toward his powerful body.

  He wrenched my wrist to the side, and I cried out at the sharp sting of pain that blasted up my arm. My eyes flooded with tears, but I wasn’t sure if it was from fear, frustration, or physical agony.

  “I’m done talking.”

  I tried to pull away, but that only made him angrier. The haze of rage in his eyes was chilling.

  “I can expl—”

  He cut my words off with a backhanded slap that sent me stumbling into the side table and knocking it to the ground. Glass shattered as a picture fell.

  A picture of us. Or, more accurately, what should have been us.

  I raised a hand to my jaw, feeling the pulse of blood as it swelled and throbbed.

  Fuck.

  Someone had hit me before, but never with that much power or strength.

  Maybe because I had never been hit by someone who truly hated me. Hated me in a way that I hadn’t seen until it was too late.

  Way too late.

  I had made a mistake. A horrible mistake.

  Believing him was going to cost me everything. The same way it had cost my twin.

  I closed my eyes as the next punch he threw sailed toward my face.

  Pain exploded in a riot of white pops of light behind my eyes as my legs gave out and I fell to the floor.

  See you soon, Madelaine, my brain whispered as I surrendered to the dark.

  Chapter 1

  Six months earlier

  The end of my life started with my speech class final assignment for my junior year. It seemed easy enough on the surface: research an issue you’re passionate about and create a presentation for how you would recruit potential investors.

  By the time the last school bell rang, I had an idea of what to do. I went straight to the library, which was where I spent most of my evenings and weekends when I wasn’t working or at cheer practice. It was easier than stepping around the empty bottles and ashtrays of the double wide I shared with my mom.

  And it definitely smelled better.

  Plus, we didn’t have internet in our trailer. Or a computer. Even my cell phone was an antiquated brick that I filled up with minutes whenever I got a paycheck that didn’t first go toward things like food or rent.

  I smiled at Marge, the librarian I was on a first-name basis with despite her being old enough to be my grandmother, as I headed for the cubicle with the desktop that I had claimed as my own almost five years earlier.

  Dropping into the wooden chair, I used my library ID to sign in and started my search.

  World hunger charities.

  I could have picked a harder topic, but I was going for the easy A to keep my average on track for the scholarships I needed to apply for in the fall. I didn’t have many options since my funds were limited to whatever scholarships I could piece together and could finance on my own. Most of the money I made from my jobs went toward things like bills and food.

  You know. Small stuff.

  But I planned to finish my junior year with a perfect GPA to give me the best chance possible. I needed to focus all my attention on my upcoming finals. Speech was an easy class. It was the elective that filled up the fastest because it was widely known that the teacher, Mrs. Bryant, was willing to give you an A if you provided a halfway decent presentation.

  She was a teacher who was a year shy of retirement and it showed. She knew the statistics of our school; half of the kids who entered freshman year wouldn’t graduate. Another seven percent would be lost to the mindless violence tha
t was everywhere in our county. Another fifteen percent would be hooked on drugs or dealing drugs. And that wasn’t even touching on the rampant STIs and teen pregnancy cases that cropped up on a daily basis.

  But that wasn’t me.

  That wouldn’t be me.

  Earlier this year I went to the local clinic and had an IUD implanted just in case. Not because I planned on needing it, but because I knew I didn’t want to get caught in a situation where I needed to worry after the fact about birth control.

  Sex wasn’t so much my concern as the out of control sexual assault statistics in our city. Combine that with my mom’s penchant for letting her dealers in our trailer for a party, and it was all the fuel I needed to make sure my uterus was locked down for visitors.

  I was part of that elusive one-percent club at school. The kids who were determined to make it out. And, with my 4.0 average, a spot on our mostly cheerless cheerleading squad (considering our teams rarely won), a couple of volunteer stints at the local soup kitchen, and a kickass essay about how I’d managed not to be part of the other ninety-nine percent, I was angling for a scholarship to a Michigan state school that would get me out of this place.

  Cliftown was only a few miles from Detroit, but it carried the same stigma, if not worse, than the larger city, with only a third of the population. I wouldn’t let this town swallow me whole the way it had my mother.

  I scanned the articles that popped up within a second of the search. There were thousands to sift through.

  I groaned, regretting my decision for a second.

  There were endless options, but the perfectionist in me wanted to find the absolute best articles to outline my pitch.

  An hour and a hundred clicks later, I changed tactics and shifted the view from search to news. Maybe if I saw a recent event it would spark a direction to focus on. I clicked on the first link I saw.

  Business Mogul and Philanthropist Pledges One Million Dollars to Little Angels Food Kitchen

  I scanned the article, clearly a puff piece that painted Gary Cabot, the donor, as a hero who was single handedly saving hundreds of starving kids in California.

  Because the volunteers and staff of the food pantry clearly did absolutely nothing at all.

  Insert sarcasm here.

  But, hey. It made Gary Cabot, a man with dark hair and sharp blue eyes, look like the benevolent king he was to the adoring public, dashing in to save the peasants as he smiled for the cameras.

  I scrolled to the bottom and flicked through the images of the recent fundraiser, which had been held at a hotel in Los Angeles. It was easy to spot who the rich donors were and who the underfunded volunteers were by the way they dressed.

  My finger clicked to the last picture of the slideshow... and my jaw fell open.

  I stared at the girl with her arm tucked inside Gary Cabot’s. A girl with my face.

  Her blonde hair was twisted into an elaborate updo, and I knew the diamond studs in her ears and the diamond chain around her throat were real gems. Her gown was a stunning ocean blue that matched her turquoise eyes.

  How the hell did my face get photoshopped on this girl?

  It was the only logical conclusion, right?

  I skimmed the caption beneath the photo.

  Gary Cabot poses with his daughter, Madelaine Cabot.

  Madelaine Cabot.

  Frowning, I abandoned my search for a new one.

  Madelaine Cabot.

  “Maddie?”

  A hand landed on my shoulder and I jumped and twisted around to see Marge looking down at me.

  “I’m sorry, honey, but I called your name a few times,” she apologized. “I need to lock up.”

  I glanced around the dark library and then at the clock. It was after nine.

  Flashing Marge a rueful smile, I started to gather my things. “I lost track of time.”

  “Not a problem,” she replied, waving a hand. “You know I like having you around. It makes my nights a little less lonely. I’m finishing up at the front, and then we can walk out.”

  I watched her leave. If I was around in the evenings when the library closed, I always made it a point to walk Marge to her car. Three years earlier she had been mugged outside in the dark.

  Seriously, who robbed a little old librarian at gunpoint?

  I couldn’t stop a bullet, but there was safety in numbers. Plus, Marge would drive me home as a thank you. I was getting the better end of this deal. I might have saved her from walking alone a hundred feet to her car, which was parked around the side of the building, but she saved me the trouble of walking a couple miles or taking the bus.

  I finished gathering my books into my backpack and waited until Marge turned off the overhead lights before shutting down my computer.

  The image of Madelaine Cabot’s Instagram page flickered as the screen powered down.

  “Ready?” Marge gave me a wide smile as I joined her in front of the main doors.

  I waited as she let us out and then locked the doors, my gaze darting around the dimly lit street. The sound of glass shattering on the pavement echoed down the alley behind the library where the dumpsters were.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what Madelaine Cabot was doing right now.

  Probably not standing guard in front of a library and wondering if the shattered glass was from a rat knocking something over or Homeless Harry on another bender.

  Marge finished closing up and gave me a weak smile. We walked around the corner and she quickly unlocked the car so we could slide inside.

  “What were you looking at that had you so enthralled?” she asked, pulling out onto the street.

  I hid a smile at her word choice, wondering if enthralled was the word of the day from the calendar she kept at the front desk.

  “Just research,” I replied.

  She nodded sagely. She was well aware of how hard I was working toward a scholarship. “Which class?”

  “Speech.” I focused my attention on her, shoving thoughts of my doppelganger out of my head for the time being.

  “My Chester was always such a wonderful speaker,” she replied with a heavy sigh.

  Chester, her only child, had been killed in a drive-by nearly a decade earlier. But Marge kept his memory alive by working him into almost any and every conversation.

  I settled into my seat as she reminisced about Chester and his grades. Who he would have been if not for being at the wrong party on the wrong night.

  As usual, Marge was sniffling as she pulled up in front of the entrance to the Bright Woods Trailer Park. A single streetlight overhead blinked and hummed with static as it struggled to stay on and illuminate the rusted sign that welcomed all who dared enter.

  With twenty trailers deep across four roads, situated on a plot of gravel and mud, the trailer park wasn’t all that bright, and the only woods to be found was a scraggly little forest along one side of the chain-link fence that surrounded the area like a prison.

  The car coasted to a stop, the brakes whining in protest.

  “I’m sorry,” Marge apologized, grabbing a tissue from the console compartment.

  “It’s fine,” I assured her, reaching across the space between us to squeeze her hand in mine. Marge was the closest thing to a grandmother I had. I knew she was lonely, and I was happy to listen to her if it gave her someone to talk to.

  “Such a good girl,” she murmured. “Thank you, Maddie. Will I see you tomorrow?”

  I swallowed. Even though tomorrow was Saturday, I had early morning cheer practice and then was working a split shift at the diner. But I needed to get back to the computer and find out more about Madelaine Cabot.

  “I’ll stop by after work,” I promised, opening my door.

  Her face brightened considerably. “Don’t work too hard. You’re too young to be so serious.”

  I could only smile as I closed the door and headed inside the park. Slipping through a gap in the fence along the side nearest my home to avoid the crowd of men hovering by the f
ront entrance, I kept my head down while walking by another man chain smoking on his steps. His gaze crawled over me as I passed, so I hiked up my backpack and lengthened my stride.

  Our trailer was the seventh one in the far-left line of double wides that backed up to the only waterfront property the trailer park had: a tiny little canal with more trash than liquid in it. It smelled like urine and brackish water and whatever trash the late-spring sun had warmed.

  It was the reason I never opened my bedroom window, even in the stifling summer heat.

  I frowned when I got to the front door and realized it was not only unlocked but also slightly ajar.

  Great.

  Stepping inside, I flinched at the loud, tinny sound coming from our television. Apparently drugs also meant your hearing was just another sense that copious amounts of drugs and alcohol distorted.

  With a sigh, I closed the door and locked it before crossing the cracked linoleum to turn off the TV before my ears started bleeding.

  Mom was sprawled across the couch, the glass pipe still dangling between her fingers. I pulled it away and set it on the end table beside the baggie of little pellets.