I chuckle. “Go to sleep, Pest.”
“Okay, fine, I will, but first you have to promise me something.”
“What?”
“You’ll say sorry to her. When you see her.”
Pain in my chest flares up again and I tell her, “I’m not seeing her.”
“You are,” she tells me. “Because I’m going to tell youexactlywhere she’s going to be tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to know.”
She ignores me. “And you’re going to apologize to her for being such a dick tonight. Promise me. And you’re going to apologize to her for what happened two years ago. I know you want to.”
I grit my teeth. “I don’t.”
“You do too,” she protests. “Because that’s why you spent the better part of last two years drunk and oblivious. So much so that you worried me.”
I did – for a little while there – and I will never forgive myself for that.
As I said, she’s my little sister. I’m supposed to take care of her and not the other way around.
Even so, I tighten my muscles. I absolutely refuse to give in to her, to my sister’s demands. It’s exactly what she does when she wants me to do something for her.
“Reed? Promise me,” she prods.
I clench my eyes shut. “Fine.”
Looks like I’m seeing her again tomorrow.
Even though I made another promise to myself that I never would.
Chapter Five
It’s Saturday.
Meaning, today we get to go out. Legally, with permission, without having to sneak out.
Well, only me and Wyn.
Poe can’t go because her privileges were recently revoked by one Mrs. Miller, her guidance counselor. And Salem can’t go either because she’s new and she needs a certain amount of good girl points before she can earn the privilege for a day outing.
Their plan is to spend their precious free but still imprisoned time at the library because we have a big trigonometry assignment, which I’ve already done. I’ve been telling them to do it for days now but they haven’t listened. So now they’ll suffer.
Our day passes are good for six hours or up to five o’clock in the evening, whichever comes first.
And I don’t want to waste even a single second of that on the wrong side of the iron gates. So Wyn and me are off as soon as we can, catching the same bus that I do Thursday nights. Although this time of day, it’s full of people, most of them St. Mary’s girls.
Our first stop is what used to be my most favorite place in the world. These days I don’t like going there but I do anyway because it’s important: Buttery Blossoms.
“You sure you don’t want it?” Wyn asks, referring to the cupcake she’s currently eating, scooping out the silky chocolate frosting with her little plastic spoon and offering it to me.
Of course I want it.
It’s a cupcake, for God’s sake. And a Peanut Butter Blossom at that.
But I can’t have it.
