She hesitates. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Go.”
She squeezes my shoulder, then turns and heads back inside.
I start walking.
Away from the party, away from the noise, away from everything.
The sidewalk stretches ahead of me, empty and dark. I shove my hands in my pockets and walk faster, my breath fogging in the cold.
Twenty minutes pass. My feet ache. My chest hurts. I can’t believe my brother and the shit he said. Yeah, I called the cops on his drug dealer and got him busted, but that’s not what I was doing with Koa. No, I wanted to do much worse. It’s because of money-hungry fuckers like Koa that people like my mom die. My chest aches at the reminder.
Then I hear a car engine. Behind me.
I glance over my shoulder.
Headlights. Black car. I can’t tell the model yet, but it’s coming closer.
My heart starts to race.
The car slows. The streetlight catches the body—a black Charger.
Fuck.
I start running.
The car speeds up, pulls alongside me. All the windows roll down.
Axel’s in the backseat. Gagged. Hands tied behind his back. Eyes wide with panic.
I stop, chest heaving. “What the hell are you doing, Koa? We had a deal.”
Koa leans out the driver’s window. “I thought we had a deal too. So either get in the car, or it’s off.”
I stare at Axel. At the gag. At the terror in his eyes.
Fuck.
I yank open the back door and slide in next to my brother.
“If you untie him,” Koa says, eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror, “things get worse.”
I glare at him but don’t move. Just sit there, hands clenched in my lap, as he drives.
We leave campus. The streetlights disappear. Buildings give way to trees, then nothing.
Finally, we pull into a trailer park. The kind with rusted-out homes and overgrown lawns and broken windows.
Koa parks in front of an empty trailer. Oxy gets out, opens my door, and pulls me out. Koa does the same with Axel, dragging him by the arm.
We walk inside.
The trailer smells like mold and cigarettes. The furniture is old, stained, falling apart. There’s a couch in the center, springs poking through the fabric.
Koa shoves me toward it. “Sit.”
I sit.
