“There’s a difference between spying on you for Daddy and covering up grades for a whole program.” Dustin shrugged when I widened my eyes at him. “What?” he asked with a shrug. “It’s true.” He nudged Noah’s leg. “Tell him.”
“He has a point.”
“I prefer it when you’re on my side,” I mumbled.
Dustin stood. “This is all too heavy for me,” he declared as he stretched his arms out in front of him, laced his fingers together, tightened them, and then rolled his neck. “I can’t do anything about any of it. So...” He blew out a big breath as he sat back down and looked at Noah. “Rematch?”
Noah took the offered controller, but he was still watching me. “You good?”
“Yeah.”
“Call your sister,” Dustin reminded me. “Tell her you’re an asshole.”
“Or tell Savvy you’re an asshole,” Noah offered. “Then tell your sister you’re an asshole.”
“Why do I have to be the asshole at all?” I asked them both as I stood.
“Only you can answer that,” Dustin said. “Hey, get me a soda?”
“Me too,” Noah called as I walked to the fridge.
I did as they requested and then left them to their game and looked up a few minutes later when my bedroom door opened, and they were both there.
“What?”
Dustin held his hand out. “Hand it over.”
“Hand what over?”
“You said there’s no trace, but you have to be contacting him somehow, so hand it over.” Noah looked as grim as Dustin did.
Dustin walked farther into my room. “The phone, we know you have one. Give it to us.” There were very few times in the time I’d known him when he was deadly serious, and it didn’t involve winning a game. “The program we can’t do anything about,” he said resolutely. “Saving you from yourself, we can totally do.” He eyed my bag. “Hand it over — the pills too — or I’ll let the bloodhound here sniff it out.”
I met Noah’s half-amused, half-serious look. “Side pocket,” I said.
He walked over, rummaged through my bag, and then pulled out the small, compact burner and the orange cylinder with five pills still inside it. He handed the pills to Dustin, turned the phone over in his hand, and then, within a few moments, had the SIM card extracted.
“This is the smartest thing to do,” he said as he snapped it in half.
Is it?“I know.”
The toilet flushed, and Dustin came out of the bathroom. “Don’t be this fucking stupid again,” was his only warning before his foot came down on the cylinder, cracking it and breaking it.
“What’s the guy’s name?” Noah asked me. “The dealer.”
“Knox Ward.”
He nodded. “I’ll look into it.” He walked out of my room.
What the fuck did that mean?
The room felt quieter without the phone in the side pocket. I noticed it immediately. I got up and walked over to the trash can, staring at the two halves of the SIM card.
“Shit.”
I went back and sat on the bed, picking up my other phone, my ‘real’ phone, as I stared at the pocket where the burner used to sit.
They’d both given me the ‘we’ve got your back’ speech, and I believed them... but handing the phone and the pills over felt like cutting out a piece of my armor.
