Page 3
The little asshole doesn’t have a car, so he’ll be walking home this way.
“There.” Tre points out the passenger window. “That’s him.”
A quarter-mile ahead, a tiny, solitary figure slowly ambles along the dark shoulder, hands shoved deep into his coat.
I ease off the gas, pulling the car onto the gravel shoulder behind him, and roll down the window.
Noah turns and freezes in the glare of my headlights, his dark brown eyes wide and panicked.
I lean across Blaire’s body. “Get in, Noah. It’s freezing out here. Let us drive you home.”
Noah hesitates, looking at Tre and Bryan in the backseat, then Blaire before returning his gaze to me.
It’s in his eyes, he’s warring with himself on whether he can trust us or not.
I force my voice into a soft, apologetic purr. “We can talk about what you said earlier—maybe we can make a deal.”
Noah’s chest heaves against the cold air. Finally, he pulls open the door and climbs into the back.
That’s right, Mouse. Get in the mousetrap.
The door slams shut, and I feign my best fake smile and shift into drive. When I pull onto the empty highway, I notice Noah’s uneasy expression in the rearview mirror, and can’t help but smile for real, because now, the game begins.
The fluorescent lights hum above me, harsh and bright.
Blaire sits to my left, obsessively painting her nails, while Tre and Bryan whisper two rows ahead of us.
None of us has mentioned last night after leaving Noah deserted and watching him chase after the car, screaming for us to come back.
We all laughed about how pathetic he was on the way to me dropping everyone off.
The intercom crackles to life with a sharp burst of static, cutting through the homeroom morning chatter and my memory of Noah’s face in the rearview mirror—before those high beams blinded everything…
Principal Bank’s heavy voice fills the room a moment later.
“Good morning, students. I’m sorry to have to bring such deeply devastating news to you this morning. Late last night, senior Noah Miller was involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident on Blackwood Highway. His body was discovered early this morning by a passing county officer…”
Blaire’s nail polish brush freezes mid-stroke, her face draining of all color. In front of me, Bryan drops his pen with a sharp clatter.
I sit completely still, staring straight ahead at the chalkboard.
My heartbeat slows, steady, and quiet in my chest at Principal Bank’s words.
Words that will haunt me, haunt us, forever.
Noah is dead.
Hit-and-run, on the highway.
And no one will ever know that we were the last people to see him alive.
One
Dark Side of the Street
HARMONY
Present day
