“Hey, Red!”I say.I can't fucking help myself.
She doesn’t blink.Just looks at me like I’m gum on her shoe and she’s deciding whether I’m even worth scraping off.Then she steps around me and keeps walking down the hall.
Lola takes a step forward.“Wow.Good chat, Romeo.”Then she trails after her.
I don’t say anything.Just watch Sam walk away, that glorious fucking red hair catching the light, the curve of her spine a middle finger carved in motion.
Chapter 3
Sam
Thehouseisalreadytoo alive by the time we arrive.
The party is in full swing.Music pulses through the walls, shaking the floorboards, bass hard enough to punch through my ribs.Laughter rings out from the back somewhere close.
The air is a fever dream, humid and buzzing, heavy with heat and hormones and that reckless, end-of-week energy that turns normal people into chaos junkies.
Every hallway’s stuffed wall-to-wall with people who look like they live for nights like this—glossed lips, sweaty necks, hands grazing hips with the kind of casual confidence that only ever happens after three drinks and a lie.
Someone has killed the living room lights and replaced them with strands of tangled fairy lights that cast everything in a soft, flickering gold.A spinning LED disco thing throws red and blue across the ceiling as if it’s recreating a crime scene in slow motion.It’s dizzying and disorienting.Which is probably the point.
The kitchen’s a mess.Red Solo cups litter the counters and the floor, one tipped sideways and still leaking onto someone’s abandoned phone.There’s a haze of burned food still clinging to the air.Maybe a frozen pizza someone forgot in the oven, or microwave popcorn nuked past the point of saving.
No one seems bothered.In fact, someone’s dancing in front of the open fridge with the door alarm blaring and a slice of cake in their hand, frosting smudged across their cheek.
Girls pass by in groups of three, trailing glitter and whispers, weaving around guys with cocky smiles and eyes that scan for someone to entertain them.
Lola grips my hand as we move further inside.Her eyes are lit with a wild, reckless spark.She loves nights like this where the music’s too loud, the hallway’s too narrow, and the tension hums as if it’s wired into the walls.
Noah’s ahead of us with Aubrey tucked against his side, cutting a clean path through the mess of bodies, parting the crowd without saying a word.
Liz trails behind, hunched small, as if shrinking might make the night less sharp.Her shoulders are pulled tight, and her arms are wrapped around herself.
She told us the news on the way here.In the driveway, before we walked in, her voice cracked in a way that makes your own throat sting in sympathy.
Liz couldn’t look at any of us when she said it.She stared at the steering wheel, fingers locked so tight around it that her knuckles went white, and turned off the engine as if she were trying to stall the moment.
Her dad’s transfer came through.Out of nowhere.Another state.Another school.End of everything.No warning.No vote.Just a conversation behind closed doors and a decision handed down like a sentence.
No choice.
Now she’s supposed to pretend everything’s fine while the ground’s already slipping out from under her feet.She’s supposed to dance in someone else’s house, fake a smile, laugh at inside jokes she won’t be around to hear for much longer—all while her whole world burns quietly in the background.
Aubrey doesn’t know yet.She rocked up with Noah, still glowing from whatever they were doing before this.Her hand’s in his back pocket, her mouth close to his ear.They missed the driveway breakdown.Missed Liz’s voice cracking and the way she kept wiping at her face when she thought we weren’t looking.
I want to say something comforting to her, but the words won’t come.
Something like… "Hey, it’ll be okay.We’ll figure something out."
But there is no figuring this out.Not when her whole life’s been rerouted by a decision she didn’t get to be a part of.And especially when everything she knows is being packed up and shipped off, and all she gets is a weak “you’ll adjust” and a deadline.
Even Lola didn’t know what to say, and she never shuts up.
She sat there in the back seat, eyes wide, mouth opening and closing, but nothing came out.For once, the girl who talks the head off anyone within a ten-foot radius, especially now that Tia’s stopped treating her like a chew toy, had nothing to say.That’s a first these days.
We end up dead center of the room, too exposed, too visible, exactly the kind of place I never used to stand.That’s the problem with hanging out with people like Noah.Once you’re part of the orbit, you can’t simply disappear.Eyes follow.Whispers chase.There’s no place to hide.
I grab a soda from a half-melted cooler.Cold bubbles rush up and bite at the back of my throat.It’s fizzy and pointless.Sugar and noise falsely appearing to be something more powerful.But it keeps my hands busy.It keeps me from folding.
