“Oh, I don’t know,” Mom said. “I want to be close to Presley and Ariel.”
“You can be,” Dice said. “Presley and Ariel stay with Ink at his house. You and Eugene stay at the house near Ink’s. And Nora can keep staying with Daphne and me.”
“That sounds perfect!” Mom exclaimed.
“Almost,” Ariel said. “What about Sir Pickles?”
“We can continue to have someone check on him and feed him, or we can move him to Ink’s house,” Dice said.
“You’re making me look bad,” Ink grumbled jokingly.
“I’m filling in for you like you did for me when I was in the hospital,” Dice said. “Unless you want them to think your silence is because you’re an asshole and not because you have a brain injury.”
“This shit sucks,” Ink complained. He’d been experiencing expected post-concussion symptoms, but he found the memory problems and inability to focus to be the most frustrating.
“Yeah,” Ariel agreed. “I tried to text Kaeli, but I couldn’t type the words I wanted without thinking about how to spell each one. I finally gave up.”
“You could use speech-to-text or send a voice message,” my mom suggested.
“My grandmother is giving me technology advice. Mom, is this really happening? Am I hallucinating?”
“Don’t start,” I said with a smile. Between Ink and Ariel, I’d been subjected to countless head trauma and brain injury jokes. It seemed to be how they were coping with the trauma.
“Did we make a decision about where everyone is staying?” Eugene asked.
“I vote for Dice’s plan,” Ink said. “And bring the shitty dragon.”
Mom clapped her hands together excitedly. “That reminds me. One second,” she said and rummaged through her bag, pulling out a T-shirt. “I had our shirts made! What do you think?”
It tookthe rest of the day to get home from the hospital and get everyone settled, including Sir Pickles. I was beyond exhausted, but there were several things Ariel wanted to know, and I had a few questions for her as well.
“Can we talk about Elsie now?” Ariel asked.
“Yes,” I nodded, swallowing the bite of pizza in my mouth. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“Elsie asked you to pick her up and come inside because she wanted to drug you. Calvin and his friends sold drugs for Calvin’s father. Every so often, Calvin, Leon, and Willy would have a party. The people who worked for them and owed themmoney could bring girls to the party to clear their debt,” I explained. “They called them Pay with Pussy parties.”
Ariel inhaled deeply and held it for a few seconds. “What a rotten cunt!”
Ink snapped his fingers and pointed proudly. “That’s right.”
“Why would she do that? No, I know why. Because she’s a rotten cunt. But why me? I never did anything to her. I didn’t even know her. We had a science project together. And we got an A.”
“If there’s a reason why, we’ll probably never know it,” I said. “But I think it can be simplified in one statement: she’s a bad person with no regard for anyone or anything other than herself.”
“It wasn’t only you,” Ink added. “Elsie’s sister, Chloe, is the one who helped me escape from Calvin’s house. Chloe was there because of Elsie. I don’t remember the details, but I know Chloe wasn’t there willingly, and they were using her phone to communicate—Elsie and Calvin.”
“So Elsie called me from Chloe’s phone?” Ariel asked in confusion.
“No, Elsie called you from Tripp’s phone.”
“Who?”
“Tripp Reynolds,” Ink said. “No Nuts’s little brother.”
“Who is No Nuts?” Ariel asked.
