Page 98 of Distortion
If she suspects anything and she goes to my father, that’s it. I’ll be financially dependent on that asshole until his dying day, and if there’s anything I know, it’s that the people who deserve to die live to ripe old ages and good people pass away too soon. People like my mom and April.
But it’s not just me. Mav and Blake don’t come frommoney. If this goes badly, neither of them have the funds for Grad School. Blake is here on a wrestling scholarship, for God’s sake. He hates it, but it’s the only way for him.
If John Novelle finds out anything before we’re ready for him to, my best friends will end up as high school science teachers or working in some obscure lab testingwater. This is their only ticket to the big leagues.
I pull up to the house and go inside.
The nights are creeping in. There’s no one in the kitchen, but I hear someone shooting pool. There’s low talking coming from the other room and I know the pledges will be waiting like I told them to be.
I grab a beer and go in. All twenty of them are in there. They straighten as I go in.
‘Good, you’re all here. You know you’ve all been trailing Daisy around. Have any of you seen anyone saying mean stuff to her, following her, throwing stuff at her?’
The guys look around at each other.
‘Nope,’ one of them says. ‘We’ve been doing exactly what you said, Admiral. I haven’t noticed anything like that.’
Others mutter the same.
‘Okay,’ I mutter, cursing the drama queen friend. ‘You’re all to keep an eye on her and let us know if that changes.’
I leave to a chorus of, ‘Yes, sirs’ with a roll of my eyes.
I head upstairs and hear the guys in Mav’s room, talking in low voices. My foot makes a board creek and their chatter stops immediately.
I frown in the darkness of the hall. The bathroom door is closed, and I hear the shower.
I walk into my friend’s room. ‘You turned the hot water back on, huh? I thought we agreed to leave it off until next week.’
‘It’s getting cold out. We all need hot water,’ Mav says with a shrug.
‘Plus, Marcus and those two other assholes left her outside for a half hour in the rain the other night.’
Mav’s look is sharp. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’
‘I dealt with it,’ he mutters.
My frown deepens. Since when do they care about the guys locking Daisy out? They’ve been doing it all month.
‘You added her keycard to the system?’ Mav asks.
Blake nods. ‘She won’t be stuck out there again.’
‘Why bother?’ I ask, looking from one to the other and trying to figure out what I’ve missed. ‘She’s leaving as soon as we can make it happen. And who gives a shit if they leave her on the doorstep and she gets a little cold?’
‘She was shivering when I let her in,’ Blake says, standing up and looking a little pissed off. ‘Her skin was freezing. It took her at least an hour to warm up. She’s gonna get sick.’
With every sentence Blake utters, I feel my eyebrows lifting. ‘So, you let her in, and you stayed with her for over an hour and you were touching her.’
What is that feeling deep inside me? No. It is NOT jealousy.
They look at each other and I feel my fists clenching hard.
‘We need to talk,’ Mav says. ‘About Daisy.’
‘What about her?’ I grind out.
Why does everyone want to talk to me about FreakingDaisyall of a sudden? What’s this about? Jesus, what if she attacked someone again? Is there another kid lying in a pool of their own blood somewhere?
