“Or something,” he parrots me, and the way he says it ices me to the bone.
My throat tightens, swelling through the canal, suffocating me. I feel Jade’s fingers lace with mine.
I drop my chin, notice she’s still emptying her stomach and when I lift it again, flaring my gaze back to this guy I didn’t know and didn’t want to get to know—the guy I wanted to just leave us alone—I see him take a controlled step off the road.
Walking into the overgrown brush, he moves toward us, and I swallow, steel my jaw and hope thatsomethingisn’t us, but I know that in the wrong male’s gaze, women,girls, have expiration dates.
Cutting my eyes back to Jade, I watch her struggle to pull herself to her feet with the support of the tree behind her and her grip at my knee.
“We walking?” she asks, almost casually, smearing the remnants of her stomach across her forearm.
I begin to shake my head, feel tears building, our world tilting.
“Nah, J.” My voice trembles. I look from my best friend to the guy moving toward us.
Half an hour, or an hour, or two ago, we made a decision together that would alter our lives forever.
I squeeze my fingers around my best friend’s, the sister I chose.
“We have to run,” I breathe. “This guy…” Then, I’m stuttering, whimpering. “I th-think he didn’t want to just drive us home tonight.”
It is all I have to say for Jade to understand.
Being a girl was dangerous.
Everyone knew that, especially in Devil’s Peak,because of what my grandfather had done.
She nods, a tear searing down her cheek. Her eyes flick to mine. “Probably sh-shouldn’t have caught that ride, huh?” she stutters her words, her face solemn.
The sound of leaves and twigs and rocks crunching to my right has me swallowing again. The shuffling soundtrack ofhimdrawing closer.
We were almost out of time.
“Probably,” I whisper, catching her tears with my thumb, then my own in a smear across the bare skin of my shoulder.
I sniff my emotion back before speaking again, “Whatever you do, don’t let go, okay?We run together, or we don’t run at all.”
She nods, then I begin to count.
“One. Two…”
That’s when I see something gut-wrenching race through my best friend's eyes. The ring of her orbs had always been a dark blue and yet a spark of light has flecked in the center. I knew it to be hope, that maybe it would bank on our side tonight, that maybe we would make it out of this nightmare alive.
Another crunch draws closer and when I look up, away from Jade, I watch our masked driver stride quickly toward us, malice beating his every step as he mumbles beneath his breath.
I can barely focus, my legs have become numb, a violent shudder working its way through my body.
“Three.”
Our hands are interlaced as we run. Only, something crackles in my teeth, threatening my feet.
The ringing echo of a gunshot pierces my skull.
With a tarnished equilibrium, my spine turns ramrod straight. I spin around and stare at my best friend when she pulls me to a stop.
My eyes are frantic, they search every inch of her, pausing only to latch onto the one single tear that falls over the ledge of her waterline, rolling down her freckled cheek.
My best friend, the sister I never had, the one I chose, the one I’d been velcroed to since we were kids, drops to her knees.
