“Like a…teddy bear,” the woman says, her voice hoarse. “Brown like one too.”
“Marijuana?” I ask. It feels as if I am floating away from myself.
“No. He said he got it from a girl whose boyfriend was making it for…for someone else.”
“Who?” I demand.
Lele is still staring at me, his arms curled up toward his chest. He hasn’t stopped seizing.
I think I’m going to be sick.
“I don’t know his name. Someone in…Elli.”
Ellicottville.
The place Lynx has forever told me to stay away from, when it comes to business.
For the first time, I look directly at Fox.
And all I say is, “Find him.”
CHAPTER
THREE
STORM
The memory of the scent clings to me. It’s there, in my nose, but I feel it under my skin too. Even here, in the white and teal hallways of West River High, bleach in my lungs from the cleaning they must have done over the weekend, I can’t get away from the smell.
The nausea lurches in my gut and I close my eyes a second. I’m already late; the commotion of early morning is sealed off behind closed classroom doors.
I want to leave.
Get back in the WRX and drive far away from here.
Mom will know, though. She has a tracker on the Subaru and I haven’t been able to find it yet. It’s not that I’ll get in “trouble.” It’s…everything else.
There is no one in the world like my mother.
The guilt around my throat…it chokes me more than the scent. Of everything they’ve done to me, this is the worst crime. And what is there to do with it? Only my father is guilty, but if I tell, it’ll break a heart that isn’t mine.
I bring my fingers to my temple, eyes still closed, no one around to see me in the quiet. I could still bail. Mom will bedisappointed; it always shows in her big blue eyes, the ways me and Dad let her down. Dad won’t say anything. He’ll glance at me over the rim of his glasses and go back to his paperwork and this business and the secret the two of us keep between us.
I want to throw up.
I consider crashing my knuckles against the locker at my side, the one I tookParadise Lostfrom, but I know that’s immature and ridiculous and if I want to get into a real fight, I could find Cortland. I’ve already punched him once, when we first met, and now he knows me enough to know when I need the violence.
If I leave early, he’ll be pissed I missed football practice. But he should also know me enough to know I don’t give a fuck about sports. It’s something to do, and it can hurt, too. More so, it’s a distraction. It keeps me away from hearing whispers in my house.
The sound of heels clacking against the marble reaches my ears a second before I snap open my eyes and see Sloane Stevens standing in front of me, her chin lifted and her gaze searching mine.
I squeeze the paperback book between my fingers of one hand and drop the other from my head, clenching it into a fist at my side.
Sloane is dressed in jeans and a purple polo, both buttons undone, a butterfly necklace around her throat. It looks like solid gold, and her eyes, staring right at mine, are turquoise and jade gemstones. When I inhale, I catch the scent of strawberries.
For the first time all morning, it drives the memory of the rest of it away.
She doesn’t say anything and neither do I, her pink lips parted, long, light hair pulled back by a thin white headband. Her shoes are plain black heels and she wears them all the time;it seems kind of ridiculous, given we’re in school, but Sloane is like that. Extra.
