“I don’t know. Two or three, I guess.”
“All right.” He smiled easily. “For you, forty bucks.”
My palms were sweaty. I decided not to ask whether “for me” meant the pills were more expensive or less. I handed him the money and he handed me back a small ziplock bag with three yellow pills inside. My heart beat like a jumping bean.
Sunshine.
A few minutes passed before I was back inside my car, fishing out a pill and placing the tiny droplet on the tip of my tongue. Now all I had to do was wait.
FOUR
Marcy
One hour, thirty-three minutes, and fifteen seconds.
It had been that long since I’d first seen the boys walk into the club and it’d been just over an hour since I’d left to wait outside for them. Five faces: The short one who I knew as the watcher, the one who’d hidden behind his video camera that night like the distance made him any less guilty. The surfer with the longish hair and laid-back attitude, the boy who’d told me to relax, chill out. The sexy jock with his backward baseball cap and silver tongue, who’d pulled me in like a mosquito to a bug-zapper. The thin-lipped skull face with a cigarette hanging from his mouth, a mouth I knew was armed with cowardly taunts and cheers and encouragement to go too far. And, of course, the mean one. Vampire-toothed, crocodile-skin boots, eyes that could eat your heart out raw. Circus Master, I called him. I had nicknames for each and I checked them off mentally before returning the phone to my pocket. I traced the entry stamp on the back of my hand, a splotchy inkblot in the shape of a pair of cowboy boots.
“You know you can go back inside.” The bouncer sat on a stool opposite the glass doors. “If you’re waiting on somebody or somethin’. You’re welcome to go take a look.”
I nodded without looking over. “’Kay.” But I made no motion to leave.
Instead, I propped one foot up on the brick wall behind me and folded my arms across my chest. It was getting late.
The door swung open. I held my breath. Two girls spilled out into the night, giggling and swaying arm in arm. I relaxed against the wall again. No sooner had I, though, than a shot of laughter burst into the dark sky like a gunshot. The laugh sounded to me like a living echo of a memory.
I wrenched my shoulders from the wall and glanced sidelong at the fivesome and immediately I stiffened. There was an extra person. Six total. And that sixth person was a girl.
She wasn’t supposed to be there. I watched as Circus Master looped his arm around her shoulder and leaned in close to talk to her. I felt my mouth curve into a snarl.
The girl was young. Maybe younger than I was. She had an uncared-for look, like a stray cat, wide-eyed and with a narrow build. Clearly, she was just as lost, too.
As the boys turned left out of the club, I hiked the black hood I was wearing over my ears and followed. Over the fabric, I clutched the outline of the knife hiding underneath. Squeezed the hilt twice for comfort. It was there and it could wait, too, I reminded myself.
Only I wasn’t sure how long.
At the corner, I expected the girl to veer off. Go, I willed her mentally. Leave. But she didn’t.
I trailed a block behind. Watched the moments as they happened like snapshots. The two boys in the back—the one with the cigarettes, Lucky Strike, and the sexy piece of bait for the group, Jock Strap—jostled each other. The cigarette fell out of Lucky Strike’s mouth and he left it fuming on the sidewalk. When I passed the spot, the sweet vapor from the wafting tip made me woozy. I crushed it with the sole of my boot.
Up ahead, California, who, like Short One, wore a shirt that read Beta Psi, crept up and pinched the girl’s ass. She squealed and whipped around and I saw the fleeting look on her face change from anger to annoyance to a fake smile, like she’d been in on the joke all along.
The joke was theirs, though.
Short One jogged in front of where Circus Master still had his arm looped possessively around the girl’s shoulder. Short One pulled out a handheld camcorder. “Smile for the camera.” At least that was what I thought he said. He walked backward and panned the group. I edged sideways, out of the frame’s background.
From this angle, the girl’s face was hidden from me, but I could see as she raised a tentative hand to wave. Her shoulders pinched up to hide her neck. The boy got close. Zoomed into her face and let out another huge clap of laughter.
We passed one of the blue towers with dead siren tops scattered near campus. Big buttons begging to be pressed in the event of an emergency. But emergencies rarely happened in convenient areas.
I should know.
I’d lost track of where we were walking. I quickly collected my bearings. We’d turned off the main road onto a dark side street. They entered a parking lot, nearly empty but for an old Chrysler with a FOR SALE sign tacked in the window. I hung back in the shadows of an old apartment building.