It’s from Storm.
Before I unlock my screen to read it, I look up once more, but the woman is gone.
Stormy
Where are you?
I frown at that. Something about the tone I’m reading into, and the woman passing by, and the fact it’s before sunrise, it unnerves me.
I hunch my shoulders in and text Storm back without attitude; not how I’d usually respond if he sent me something like that, all up in my business.
Just got done at the gym, why?
I look for the woman again, but all I see is darkness along the edge of campus, trees and forests and the mountain ranges in the far distance, the sun somewhere back there giving a sliver of light to see them by.
My phone lights up and I look down, reading Storm’s text.
Stormy
Where EXACTLY are you?
I grit my teeth.
Watch your tone.
Stormy
Sloane.
It feels like a warning, the way he types my name.
The tiger fountain, outside of the gym.
Storm
Don’t move.
I lift my head up and look around.Don’t move?What the hell? He’s implying he’s coming here or something which doesn’t make any sense.
Paranoia starts to seep under my skin.
I think of Remi, the way she’d wake up crying from her sleep a couple of years ago. She went through something horrific withStorm and Cortland. I think they’re good people, despite it all, but the way I feel right now, I wonder if she healed from it. The sensation that your chest is caving in and your thoughts are on a loop and you want to crawl out of your own skin.
I feel it now. It’s worse when I haven’t slept. I used to have it all the time in high school.
I get to my feet despite Storm’s words, my chest heaving.
I scuff one lavender sneaker against the brick, then the other, shifting from foot to foot.Where are you, Storm?Is he even coming? And why?
There’s no one else out here. I spin around, scanning my surroundings, like I should’ve done before I closed my eyes at this bench. But nothing happened to me, so I’m okay, right?
I sit back down and bounce my thigh, waiting.
In my head, I hear my parents screaming at each other and I tense, going rigid. Then I crane my neck this way and that, looking for a threat.
Nothing.
I don’t see?—
