I know nicotine sucks and vapes are the devil, but my gratitude for them right now is greater than my love for mezcal-based liquor.
Grace takes another puff, and I’m all too aware of time ticking away. If she’s gone missing on a shift, there’s every chance someone will come looking for her. Fuck it. I’ll punt.
“Is everything okay with you?” I ask. “You look like you’ve been crying?”
Grace rolls her eyes, and it strikes me again how young she is. I think back to the Facebook posts I saw of the Thompson Farm parties showing girls around Grace’s age holding cigarettes and cans of KGB. My tongue goes sour, and I swallow.
Grace must think I’m twitchy for the vape because she hands it back. “I’m so sorry.”
She says it effortlessly, with barely a trace of her accent. Like she’s said it many, many times before. Another chill goes down my spine.
“You’re fine,” I say, taking a quick suck before boomeranging the vape back to her. “Is everything okay?”
She shakes her head. “Alone.”
“Youmean, your family?”
“Boyfriend. Dumped me.”
“Shit.”
She nods, a ribbon of white smoke coiling around her face, then her thick lashes lower. “Daniel.”
The earth seems to tilt beneath me. “Thrasher, I mean, Daniel, was your boyfriend?”
She nods, and I see Thrasher, grinning at me across the table at Stabbies, offering me coke and trying his best to fuck me. I want to smash a glass into his face. I found those creepy party photos. I knew this was a possibility. But suspecting someone’s a gross pervert and having it confirmed firsthand hits like a truck. That lowlife, dirty fucking?—
“Don’t tell, I said about Daniel,” Grace says quickly. “Please?”
“I won’t. Not at all.”
She smiles, and my heart constricts. Not only am I lying, I’m lyingandrecording this conversation.
But I haven’t done anything with it yet, and I might not have to. I jerk my head in the direction she was looking before. “Thrasher’s a fuckhead.”
Grace laughs, her hand instantly rising to suppress the sound. “Yes.”
“And he dumped you?”
Grace nods. “Dumped me. Took my car away.”
“He gave you a car and took it away when he dumped you?”
She nods, then shakes her head. “His, uh, friend takes the car.”
“His friend? Who’s his friend?”
“Blond. Tall. Takes the car for Thrasher. That’s, uh, how I know, uh, about dumped?” She looks at me, as though willing me to understand.
I think back to my conversation with Thrasher, the people he said worked for him. Colin Wintergreen isn’t blond, neither is Xavier McColl…
The connection comes like an avalanche. If Thrasher gave Grace a car, it might have been a work car. And the person who sells Thrasher work cars, whose sister is married to his brother and who is also blond, would be?—
“Will Sharpe?”
Recognition lights up in her eyes. “Yes. Him.”
Fuck. Christ and the cross he fucking died on. I nod, praying Autism will keep my face normal. “He gave you the car? From Thrasher?”
