Laiken shuffles in her seat, drawing her feet closer toward her. She licks her lips, stares out the window.
“We were really drunk, thought we’d walk back to town.” She pauses to pull on air, wraps her arms around herself tighter. “Took a bottle of Jack on our way out, drank it all, had a f-fall.” She swallows her words, her gaze never shifting from the window. And I don’t know if she couldn’t, orwouldn’tlet herself look at us.
But the thought…terrifies me.
She trembles, palming tears from her cheeks.
“Jade’s hand was all cut up. We thought it was fucking hilarious.” She makes an unusual noise, something that sits between a laugh and a cry, and I want to smile at that, not that my sister had been hurt, but because she’d laughed it off.
Cuts were something she had never cried about, not even when she sliced the top of her hand open, chopping an apple when she was ten.
Laiken continues speaking, “We were kind of all over the place. Jade worse than me.” She presses her eyes closed, more tears spilling out. “I fucked up. I could have…shouldhave…stopped us from getting in that car.”
A shiver chases through me.
What car? Who’s car? Did you know them?I had so many questions, but I didn’t want to rush her. I had to let her do this at her own pace.
Laiken bites into her bottom lip when it trembles, curls her fingers tighter around the edge of the blanket. “We heard the engine in the distance. We flagged it.”
Harlen butts in. “Do you remember what type of car it was?”
Laiken’s brow furrows at the question, and she clenches her toes, eyes still out the window, trying to remember.
“A sedan, gray, or white, maybe black. I can’t remember.” This time, she looks up at Harlen and whispers, “I’m sorry. Ugh. I’m so stupid.” She slams her palm to her forehead.
“Don’t do that, Laik—” Harlen begins, only for me to push in.
“The driver, you recognize him? How many?”
I try to keep my voice as light as possible, but Laiken feels the weight of it because her head snaps in my direction and she answers my questions as if she is squeezing the trigger on a revolver. Answer after answer.Pop, pop, pop.
“No. And one,” she breathes.
This time, she doesn’t take her eyes from me.
“What did he look?—”
She is talking before I am finished.
“Black ski mask; I figured he came from the same party. Didn’t recognize his voice, though. It sounded weird, like he was putting it on.” She rubs her hand over her stomach, holds it.
I swallow, then ask the question that had been burning around in my skull sincehisfather conveniently threw me in lockup the same night my sister was brutally murdered.
“Colton?”
It all fit, I just had to make sure I wasn’t missing the center piece.
Laiken squeezes her eyes, a solo rivulet descends her tear-stained cheek.
“I have no idea.” She exhales, shaking her head. “So fucking stupid.”
I watch another tear fall. This time she is quick to palm it away, to sit up, to straighten her spine. She whimpers, and then, she’s slamming the back of her head against the painted brick wall, screaming in agony.
I am quick to reach for her, even quicker to wrench her into me.
We went too hard.
Laiken’s torn up shins press to my chest.
