“It’s Laiken, hit me.” Her giggle, then…beep!
My hands are clammy, I drag both through the top of my sweaty, blood-stained hair.
Black dots are a swarm of darkness in my vision, a cluster of something monstrous and rapacious. It was rage and panic and dissociation. It was knowing. I squeeze at my temples with my palms.
I should have kept them closer.
“Try, try…” I attempt to lay out my words, only to stop when I watch Harlen press on Jade’s contact, doing exactly what I couldn’t.
Our picture, of me and my sister, this summer at the river, appears on what was now a blank, lifeless screen. She was so happy, so…
“It’s Jade, you know what to do…”Beep!
My heart drops like a stone to the pit of my stomach.
Harlen stuffs my phone into his front pocket. He turns away, then spins back again, his light brows raised with uncertainty, his hands through his hair.
“Did she say they had been?—”
“Shot,” I say for him, fists curling around themselves, nails cutting half-moons into the flesh of my palms.
My sister and Laiken,shot.I wouldn’t think about it, couldn’t, not now, not until we got them home.
I place one foot in front of the other, moving past Harlen toward the corner of the house. I don’t bother going inside to look for Colton again, I knew he wasn’t there.
My feet beat against the forest floor when I feel Harlen run up on me, and I shove my hand into the front pocket of my shredded jeans, closing my fingers around my keys. Before I can make sense of what I’m doing, I’m running, ripping the door to the driver’s side of my truck open, hiking myself in.
My heart is pounding.
Blood racing in my ears.
I knew I shouldn’t drive.
Alcohol, and broken ribs, and whatever the fuck that bitch put in my drink had rotted me from the inside.
My vision, still blurry.
My senses, fucked.
But tonight shouldn’t and should have meant life or death.
I could handle the sore throat that came withshouldn't.I couldn’t harbor the agony that would come withshould have.
I wouldn’t lose my sister.
I wouldn’t lose Laiken.
The engine roars to life before Harlen manages to slam the passenger door closed and when I reach behind his seat to back out, I ram the ass of my truck into the car that parked us in.
Our bodies jolt forward, the crunching sound of metal loud.
“Fucking cunt,” I seethe, spinning the wheel in my palm, wrenching the truck into drive before flying forward.
I dodge gnarled tree limbs draping from thick trunks, though my front wheels catch every rut. The truck dips and sways, my body lifting from the seat, my shoulder tapping the window at my side. Harlen’s fingers are clenched around the handle overhead as I work my way through the maze of trees, screeching onto the slate-gray driveway.
“Hands In The Sky (Big Shot)” by Straylight Run is loud through the speakers and I notice the time bar of the song at 2:35. And I want to turn it off, sink into silence, but there is something about the track that adrenalizes me. Shifting gears and hammering my foot on the gas, we spin onto the road.
I didn’t know where the girls were, or where I was going, but what I did know was that I wasn’t going to sit around and do nothing.
