Teen Hyde (High School Horror Story #2)(46)

He glanced back over his shoulder at the closed door. In the distance, I thought I could hear sirens.

“Do you have any on you?” I peered up at him, forlorn. I hadn’t taken it last night. I hadn’t taken it and it hadn’t helped. What more did I have to lose? The answer felt like a resounding nothing.

“Cassidy…” He ran his hand over his face.

“Do you?” Here was Liam, temptation staring me right in the face and I wasn’t sure I cared enough anymore to resist. He didn’t answer. I took that as a yes. “Please,” I said.

“Last night—”

“I don’t care about last night.” I shook my head. “It’s been a really shitty day. I’m asking you, as a friend.” Which was a lie because as of this moment, I didn’t have any friends.

He reached into the top of his sock and extracted a recognizable, clear plastic baggie with two pale yellow pills inside.

My heart performed a stutter step.

I licked my lips and eyed the tablets, tantalized. “I’ll pay you later, I promise.”

He shook his head. He was no longer making eye contact with me. It was like I was a beggar on the street. “Forget it,” he said. “I think you’d be doing yourself a favor if you tried to forget this whole day. Pretend it never happened and move on. Life’s long, Cass.” He flicked the plastic bag to me and it floated down into my lap. “You’ve got to stop dwelling on the past.” Tears brimmed on my lower eyelids.

Forget. That was what I’d been doing. My unconscious mind was chewing holes in my memory, leaving missing pages, the plots of which I could only guess at. In this tiny plastic bag was happiness, however temporary.

“Thanks,” I said. “I will.” He wanted me to forget because he thought that what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me, but maybe it could hurt someone else. Maybe it already had.

My nerves were worn to fraying, sparking wires. I had nothing to spare. No willpower. I thought I was a better person than this, but maybe, right now, I just wasn’t.

The ambulance screeched to a halt in the parking lot. Red and white lights flashed. Doors slammed and urgent, hurried voices riddled the night. Seconds later men in white scrubs were hustling up the walkway, carrying a stretcher between them.

I waited for Liam to leave before emptying one of the pills into my hand and popping it in my mouth. Then, I stood up, brushed past the medics on their way into the gymnasium, and waited to forget.





SIXTEEN

Marcy

Corbin College lost the baseball game 4–2. This wasn’t Brody’s lucky night.

My first thought for tonight had been California—Jessup. I knew where he lived. Now that I knew where he lived I could find a way. But then there was the baseball connection with Jock Strap. And the moment I had seen the team schedule, the opportunity had seemed too good to pass up. So I didn’t.

I had listened to the groan of the crowd from the bottom floor of the stadium, waited while the fans departed, deflated with mustard stains on their cheeks and foam fingers pointed down at the ground. I was there as the lights clicked off one by one, shutting down the top floors, the middle, and then the corridor where I stood lurking in an empty alcove.

A janitor pulled a squeaky mop bucket past, humming along to a tune that was playing in his headphones. The locker room exit swung open and I was there to watch. Suddenly interested again, I straightened. A gradual trickle of baseball players began to flow out, having changed out of their dirt-streaked uniforms into street clothes, mostly of the T-shirt and jean variety.

My fingers twitched at my sides. I felt the closeness the way one might sense subtle movement by the quiver of water in a still glass.

I first saw him in profile, walking out with his head down, punching the buttons on his phone. He was alone, though a few more players straggled out behind him.

“Brody!” I called softly from the shadows. He paused, looked around. “Pssst, Torres! Over here.” Brody backed up a few steps, narrowed his eyes, and stared into the darkness where I imagined he could see my two eyes gleaming. I stepped forward just enough so that he could see the outline of a girl.

One of the other players stopped. “Brody?”

Seeing me, he furrowed his brow, but he looked over his shoulder and waved his friend on. “Nah, man, I’m good.”

He slid his cap from his head and ran his hand through wet hair before replacing it. Brody Torres stared into my face. He had a dark beauty mark at the top of his right cheek, tan skin, and full lips that gave him the look of a Latin pop star. “Have we met?” he asked.

“Not formally,” I said, taking another step forward. The stadium was beginning to have an emptied-out feel, like a hollowed carcass. “I’m Marcy. You weren’t going to leave without giving me an autograph, were you?”

“You know we just lost in the last inning, right?” He sounded bored again. I was just a girl, after all.

Internally, my brain ticked off the reasons I hated Brody Torres. Cocky. Arrogant. Way too good-looking. Moody. I could shut my eyes and remember the way he baited me in only to drop me dead at Circus Master’s feet like a cat with a bird in its mouth. The memory of his disinterested laughter played.

I pushed my lower lip out into a pout and leaned against the side of the alcove. “Oh, come on, it’s for my little brother. He’s a big baseball fan.” I appraised Brody. Rounded muscles filled out the shoulders of his shirt. “Now I guess I can see why.”