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“I gotta take this,” I tell Dad, standing and ducking out through the back door, onto the big wooden deck with a bar. Sometimes we sit at the table where I sat with Lo, but we never use the back. The old outdoor furniture still points toward the fireplace, like we’re expecting guests. The chairs are empty and faded by the summer sun, the cushions and pillows stored somewhere and forgotten.
“Hey, Teeny,” I say, sliding the French doors closed behind me.
Harper says she needs my help finding Royal, who took off somewhere and is in danger. That puts me in a place I really don’t want to be—anywhere in connection with the guy who bashed in my skull. But Harper’s a friend, and those are hard to come by in my world. She’s all business on the phone, but I know she must be scared if she called me. And I know a thing or two about losing people, about people disappearing without a word, without a trace. I know how loss sneaks in slow and never leaves.
At first you tell yourself it’s fine, and they’ll turn up. It eats at you, though, and you can’t think about anything else, even though you keep thinking that when they show up, you’ll laugh at yourself for being so paranoid. And then they don’t show up, and you think they ran away, and the police get involved. It isn’t until their car washes up miles downstream that you know they’re not coming back.
I know the dull thud when it hits you that you weren’t worrying for nothing, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, let alone a friend. So I drive down to the Slaughterpen warehouse, then touch base to tell her he’s not there. Magnolia is with her, and since I’m supposed to be looking out for her while Preston is out of town, I go to meet them at the abandoned mall, where they’re organizing a search party.
I pull up at the same time as Gloria Walton, who hops out of her Mustang looking beautiful and defiant, her blonde hair whipping in the December wind, bright under the bruise-dark storm clouds overhead. I hate that she’s so fucking gorgeous I can’t see anything else. The fall from the throne didn’t destroy her. If anything, it looks good on her.
“Surprised to see you here,” she says, looking me up and down. “Are you just hoping to find Royal injured so you can finish him off?”
“Could you blame me?” I ask.
“Ugh, go home,” she says. “This search is for people who actually want to find Royal alive. Not people so ugly it makes him want to kill himself if his dad hasn’t already done it.”
“You didn’t seem to mind my face when we were on that roof during Bye Week. Or on my back deck after that. I think you like my face, Butterfly.”
Her mouth drops open in indignation. “It wasBye Week,” she says, like I’ve failed to grasp the meaning of the words. She conveniently doesn’t mention the deck incident, when the ‘anything goes’ rule was definitely not in effect. She lowers her voice, casting a nervous glance at the others. “And you’re not supposed to talk about what happens that week after it’s over.”
“Hmm, must have forgotten that rule,” I say, smirking at her and tapping my temple. “The brain damage and all.”
“Well, remember,” she hisses. “It’s already bad enough at school without you bringing that up.”
It’s true. Dixie posted a few more scathing blogs about Gloria in the past few weeks, and coupled with her sitting at the Dolces feet at lunch and chasing after them like an addict looking for a fix the rest of the day, everyone thinks she’s beyond pathetic.
That’s just how it works at our school, how it’s always worked, though. No one is queen forever. Even if they usually just break up, and the girl leaves the inner circle instead of being labeled a whore, the position is never permanent. And Gloria deserves whatever happens to her. Whether it’s karma—the kind she believes in—or the consequences of her actions, she’s getting what she had coming.
Still, having been on that throne and knowing how unforgiving the ground is when you fall, it’s hard to watch.
“I just have one question,” I say, stepping closer and dropping my voice. The wind blows a strand of hair across her cheek, and I reach up and wind it behind her ear. Instead of slapping me away like I expect, her eyelids flutter closed as she draws a shaky breath.
Fuck, what is she doing to me?
“Did you obey me that morning?” I ask quietly.
“What?” she whispers, her sparkling blue eyes snapping open.
Before I can elaborate, a guy who climbed out of Duke’s Hummer with Harper and their crew walks into my line of sight. Every artery leaving my heart is suddenly flooded, and I can’t seem to see straight. For one fraction of a second, I think I know how Mom must feel, with her body living but nothing left of her mind. There’s a flash of blind nothingness, and then he steps toward me, and my thoughts fill back in, thoughts about how I must be hallucinating from brain damage or maybe I took one too many pills today.
Thoughts that he looks exactly like Devlin, even though he’s wearing glasses and has dark hair instead of blond. I blink, but he’s still there, still in front of me, still wrapping his arms around me.
I stand there, and I don’t know when I move, but my arms are around him too. We don’t say anything. There’s too much to say, and at the same time, there’s nothing to say.
Over his shoulder I see Crystal Dolce.
The girl who died. The girl who took my brother with her. The girl whose death the Dolces blamed on my family. That’s why they did all this. She’s the reason I have nine fingers. The reason my arm is burned. My brain is broken. My father is broken. My mom is gone. My sister is gone.
She stands awkwardly, staring up at the clouds so as not to look at me. Caramel colored hair hangs in loose waves around her shoulders instead of the straight, dark-chocolate ponytail she used to drape over her shoulder to her waist, and she’s thicker than she used to be, but it’s unmistakably her.
Another vehicle roars up, and Walker and Gideon Delacroix get out. Devlin starts to pull away, but I grab his neck and hold on, just looking at him. Trying to comprehend.
It’s Devlin.
He’s alive.
My cousin and half-brother, Devlin was my hero and best friend and everything I wanted to be growing up, even though he was only two years older than me.
