“Hey!” Beth yells.
I reach out just as Beth tackles me from behind. I slam into the soft mountain of clothes. I flail blindly, slinky silk in my eyes and cotton in my mouth. Beth’s got her arms around my waist and, tiny as she is, Beth’s shockingly strong, like WTF is going on, I can’t believe she is literally tackling me—holy shit, OUCH—I scream as pain bursts in my shoulder—did she stab—no, she BIT, she really just honest-to-god bit me—I flail wildly, knock into the tower of handbags and shoeboxes. The boxes tumble down, and suddenly it’s raining little plastic baggies.
And we stop, we stop because we’re both sobbing and Beth’s nose is bleeding, and somehow I did that, but I don’t know how, and my shoulder’s on fire and bags of cocaine or whatever the hell are all around us, and how did it come to this, really?
I stand there, panting, and look at Beth. My first friend at Draycott, the girl who took me under her wing. Sweet, studious Beth. She’s kneeling on the floor, crying, grabbing as many of the bags as she can and stuffing them back into a Prada handbag. I was right about her being the drug dealer, but this doesn’t feel at all like victory.
“Beth—”
“You don’t understand!” she cries, swiping at her nose savagely, leaving a streak of bloody snot on her sleeve.
“What don’t I understand?” I gesture around me. “Why you’re selling drugs? Why are you?” I wipe my face, take a deep breath.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be me. To grow up with all these overachievers. You don’t know how hard that is. And me, always the disappointing one. You know what my mom says to me whenever I go home for the holidays?”
“Something mean, I’m guessing?” I sneer, completely bereft of any sympathy. I can’t believe she’s trying to make me feel bad for her.
“Nothing. She says nothing. She just goes, ‘Oh, Ah Ling is back.’ And then she just goes back to doing whatever she was doing. But when my older brother comes home, she throws a party. A literal party, where she tells everyone his accomplishments. ‘My Kwang Li is a surgeon, you know. Brain surgeon, that is the hardest part of the body to be a surgeon for, you know.’”
“Okay, that sucks, but you’re selling literal drugs.”
“I know!” Beth wails. “I just wanted to prove them wrong so bad.”
“How would you being a drug dealer prove them wrong?”
“I was going to save up enough money to put myself through college, and I was going to tell them I got a full scholarship.”
“That is just so wrong, I don’t even know where to begin.” And suddenly, I’m furious. I want to shake Beth so hard that her teeth rattle in her skull. She’s selling drugs. Illegal drugs, drugs that hurt people, and all because she wants to play the role of a dutiful Asian daughter. My skin is on fire at the thought of it.
“Yeah, I know!” Beth snaps. “You don’t think I know how wrong it is?”
“No, I don’t think you do, because you’re still doing it!” I shout. “How could you? After what happened to Sophie? What the fuck, Beth!”
She blanches. “Sophie—that wasn’t me. That wasn’t my fault.”
“How the hell would you know? She died of an overdose, and you’re the campus dealer! Put two and two together, for god’s sake.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m really careful about who I sell to. When she was still—before she got expelled, when it became obvious she wasn’t doing well, I stopped selling to her. I blocked her from buying any of my stuff.”
I shake my head with a snort. “Oh wow, look at you, a drug dealer with a conscience. Woo bloody hoo. Am I supposed to be impressed by that? She could’ve easily gotten your drugs from somebody else.”
“It wasn’t my stuff!” she cries. “She didn’t overdose, she got laced drugs!”
“How do you know?”
She drops her gaze, her face red. “I—when I heard about what happened, I was so guilty. I had to know if she’d OD’ed on my stuff. I got my parents to ask her parents. They’re friends. Her parents said the coroner’s report says it wasn’t an overdose. She’d taken some MDMA cut with really bad shit. Methamphetamines, laundry detergent. The combination sent her into toxic shock.”
Grace had said as much in Vegas. I guess Beth had told Grace what happened. The thought of it is sickening. Beth is so desperate to distance herself from Sophie’s death. “Okay, so maybe she didn’t get those particular drugs from you, but still, she got into drugs while she was enrolled in Draycott, right? So she started out with your drugs.”
She glares at me for a moment, all fiery rage, then her face crumples, and she starts sobbing again. “I know. You think I haven’t thought of that? You think I’m sitting here feeling fine? I’ve felt like shit ever since Sophie died! Are you gonna turn me in? Shit.” She covers her face with both hands and sobs like a little kid.
I look around at the mess, the small mountain of drug-filled baggies, and my friend Beth, looking so fragile and broken. No more than an hour ago, I’d been so fired up. I had a plan. Find out who the drug dealer is and turn her in to get the cops off my back. Get justice for Sophie.
“No,” I say, and once I say it, I know it’s true. I can’t. Not Beth.
Beth lifts her streaming face, looks at me with naked anticipation.
“I won’t turn you in.”
“Thank you, thank—”
“But I’m taking these.” I take a handful of the little baggies.
Beth’s mouth drops open. “Hang on—”
“All of them. I’m confiscating them.”
“Wait, no, you can’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“I’ll be in such deep shit with my supplier, I’ll get cut from the business—”
“Much deeper shit than if I reported this?”
Beth’s mouth shuts tight.
“I can’t just walk away and let you keep doing this. You know that.”
She looks balefully at me. “What’re you gonna do with them? You can’t snort them all, you’ll die.”
“I don’t do drugs. Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come out so judgy.” I pause. “Wait, actually, I did mean for that to come out judgy.”
Beth rolls her eyes. “I don’t do them either.”
“No, you just sell them. It’s not that much better. In fact, it’s worse. Do you have a bag I can take all these in?”
I end up taking them in shoeboxes. There’s so much, they fill up three shoeboxes, which seems crazy. I mean, I don’t know much about drugs, but this seems like a lot.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” Beth says, as I head for the door with the shoeboxes.
“One day, you’ll thank me.”
She doesn’t say anything, just slams the door behind me.
Chapter 23