“You haven’t seen them since?” I ask and the tone of my voice changes, it’s dark and deadly and sinister and?—
Harlen is racing toward the door before I can finish. I follow behind him with the same urgency though unable to grasp asimilar tempo. I ignore the way I stumble on my feet, the way my vision is still closing in on me with every beat.
I was fucked up, and badly beaten, but I was moving, and with each step, and every breath, I was coming back to myself, and heading toward them.
Frantically, we weave ourselves through every room and when we reach the last one, with no sign of Jade or Laiken or Colton in sight, a buzzing starts against my thigh. With trembling fingers, I slip them into the pocket of my ripped up black jeans.
Laiken’s name blinks on the screen.
The day's heat hadn’t fallen with the sun.
A bead of sweat trickles down the narrow path between my shoulder blades as the soles of my bare feet slap against the warm, pockmarked asphalt.
It’s one in the morning, possibly two, and black stains the sky.
My arm is looped with Jade’s. We are skipping the centerline of the desolate ribbon of road, descending Devil’s Peak mountain.
Loose rocks are digging into our skin, catching and cutting between our ravaged toes. Jade stumbles, offering over the half empty bottle of whiskey, and I take it, reaching for another sip.
Knots of laughter weave stitches in my stomach, the mixture of booze and adrenaline tugging delicately at the thin thread. My chest heats, along with my throat and cheeks.
I have always felt most alive when I did things most parents would warn their sixteen-year-old daughters not to do. I didn’t think I was invincible, yet I teetered on the reckless side of carelessness, and I was thankful my best friend had a rebellious bone too.
We are singing now, a chorus to one of our favorite Paramore songs, stumbling toward a bend in the road that hugs a tall andsharp postured corner lined with giant trees. Some deciduous, others not, their limbs curled and bent and knobby like witches fingers.
I gaze over my shoulder, allowing my eyes to wander into the darkness. I can’t see much of anything, only the canopy of old trees that reach for the sky and the moon's warm pallid glow.
“I think this was a bad idea.” Jade’s chuckle is accompanied by a hiccup. She bends at the waist and pushes her lips to the mouth of the bottle clasped with the hand still looped between my arm. She takes a reckless swig, then trips, drags my ass to the ground with her.
The sound of glass shattering rings in my ears, harmonizing with the faint hum of cicadas, and for a moment, I lay face down on top of my chuckling best friend, unmoving, thinking how nice it would be if I could go to sleep. However, when Jade flops like a fish, I take the hint.
I peel myself from her spine with a groan. “I think you’re right.” Sitting upwards, sharp rock scraping against my now torn up knees, I palm my hair from my face. “Thiswasa bad idea.”
I look at her, and she looks at me, and there’s silence as our eyes hold each other’s before our discordant laughter trills out with another one of Jade’s full-bodied hiccups.
“We’re so fucked,” I heave, hand to stomach, finding my feet.
I extend the same hand toward Jade, and when she reaches for me, my eyes catch on the bottle of crystalized whiskey glittering in pieces off the inky road behind her.
“Clumsy bitch,” I tease.
She laughs harder.
My palm connects with hers and something warm and sticky seeps between the web of my fingers as I drag her to her feet. Metal assails the entrance of my nose and I drop my chin, finding my best friend's hand torn to shreds and weeping ather side. I snort, yanking it too close to my eyes, inspecting the damage.
“You’re bleed—” I begin to say in astonishment only to be paused by another one of Jade’s violent hiccups.
“Ooops.” Jade giggles, pulling her hand from my grasp and gazing at it the same way I had. She squints, then she starts poking at it. “I don’t feel anything.” She chuckles harder, digging her nails into the crimson crater.
I reach for her, wrap my hand around her wrist and yank it away.
“Leave it alone, you’ll get a disease,” I chide, but it’s not forceful, or serious, or anything that could even come close to a scold because I’m drunk and I kind of want to poke at it too. It looks squishy, fun to play with.
Jade presses it to the front of her shorts, leaving a smear of red behind, and I think that’s good, for the both of us. She exhales theatrically, blows out her cheeks.
“Are we really going to walkallthe way—” She begins to whine only to pause when we hear the pitch of an engine in the distance.
Something close to relief settles across my chest, and I sigh out my next breath. I latch onto Jade’s messed up hand, pulling her off the road.
