Ripped (Real, #5)(12)

Because everyone would have given a limb to get that attention from “Jones”—and he gave it just like that to me.

And that’s how I fell, like a ton of bricks, for Mackenna Jones.

It turns out he did wait for me after school that day. He drove me home and asked his neighbor to sit in the backseat so “Pandora” could sit up front with him. I didn’t even know he knew my name. “Why’d you do that?” I asked when he walked me up the stairs to my building.

“Why’d you let them?” he returned, those eyes of his making me feel vulnerable and naked and strangely pretty. For a goth, this is big.

Really big.

But I also noticed by his frown that he was displeased.

“I don’t stop them because I don’t give a shit,” I said as I hurried up the steps. He followed, grabbed my wrist, and spun me to face him.

“Hey! Go out with me Friday night.”

“Excuse me?” I sputtered.

“You heard me.”

“Why would you want to go out with someone like me? Your line of fans not long enough?”

“Because the girl I want is right here.”

We started going out in secret, finding hiding places where no one would see us. He told me about music, how he wanted to see the world. He worked as a DJ on the weekends. He had hopes and dreams and wishes. I told him I didn’t know what I wanted to be, and I didn’t have hopes and dreams and wishes. I guess you never feel so hopeless as when you’re with someone who’s bursting with ideas and knows he’s going to take on the world. Even so, he was drawn to me. He teased me, made me laugh, later made me forget about my father’s death and the fact that my mother considered it a betrayal if I ever cried at his loss.

He became my life. I began to wait for his eyes, silver like a wolf’s, to turn to see me. I began to quake and shiver in anticipation of him walking past my locker even if he wasn’t supposed to come over. Sometimes I dropped a pencil, a book, my bag, just so that he could hand it over with that smile of his and brush his thumb over mine. I suppose people wondered about us, but we never gave them proof. Maybe I wondered if he only wanted sex from me, but I also wanted it. I fantasized about it. When it would happen, where it would be, how it would feel, if he’d say nice things to me.

It ended up being amazing. Every time with him. Amazing. Addictive.

I only wanted him.

We fooled around for months before finally going all the way, and things got even more serious after that. I spoke about telling my overprotective mother about us, about taking care of my school grades so she had no excuse to tell me I couldn’t have a boyfriend . . . and just when I was about to say something to her . . .

His father got arrested for drug trafficking. That night, when I got home, my mother was being called by the DA’s office. Mackenna’s hopes were shattered, and I had none of my own to pull us through. I tried to tell my mother that Mackenna and I had “something,” to which she responded by immediately forbidding me to contact “the son.” And after Dad died, even as Mackenna and I planned to leave the city, she watched me like a hawk. . . .

In the end, Mackenna did leave. He left me behind.

I went back to being the goth people laughed at, except now I was not sad anymore. I was mad. I punched some of the girls, and my mother sent me to therapy and, later, to a private school, where I ended up meeting the two girls who’ve been my only friends.

Melanie and Brooke.

I never, ever mentioned his name to them.

I’d thought he’d saved me, but it turns out he’d only just started to ruin my life.

At seventeen, I had needed him.

At eighteen, I still missed him.

At nineteen, I still wanted him.

At twenty, I still thought about him.

But by the time I heard him sing about me on the radio, making light music from nights that had held me together when I’d felt lonely—that’s when I wished I’d never laid eyes on him.

? ? ?

AT DAWN, I hear my mom moving around.

“Hey,” I say when I join her in the kitchen. She smiles and nudges a cup of coffee in my direction with the back of one finger. I shake my head. “Thanks.”

“You came in late last night,” she says.

“I was with Melanie.”

“Ahh, of course. That explains it all.”

I start buttering some toast for myself so I don’t have to look her in the eye when I lie. Otherwise, she’ll know in an instant. By profession, she’s naturally inclined to immediately detect liars. You have to be really good to fool her—which, I guess, I am. “Mother, I have a business opportunity, and I need to travel out of town for a while.”

“Travel?” she repeats.

She’s a lawyer. She’s used to asking a question and staring you down until you either whimper or cave. I stare back at her and don’t respond, forcing myself not to twitch under her stare.

“Travel implies flying, Pandora.”

The mere word makes my stomach spin as if someone is twirling it with a spoon. “I just flew with Melanie and did all right with the meds I took. By the time I woke up, we’d landed. I’ll take those and try to do some stretches by land,” I lie. I have no clue how the rock band works, or if they travel by land, air, or heck, even sea. Still, I open my hand and show her the pillbox I just retrieved, three pills resting inside.