Page 2 of Revenge At Raleigh High
Fresh. Bright. Red.
I couldn’t find any pants…
I reach out, my hand grasping at thin air as I try to hold onto something. “I’m going to throw up.”
“Shit, let’s get you outside. You need fresh air.” Halliday wraps an arm around my shoulder, rushing me to the door. I barely make it down the front steps and to the lawn before I drop to my hands and knees and retch into the grass. Nothing really comes up. I puked at least three times in the shower before I blindly staggered down the stairs, so there’s barely even a mouthful of stomach acid to bring up this time. It burns like nothing else, though. The taste is foul.
When I sink back onto my knees, Halliday has an arm wrapped around her own body and a hand covering her mouth. Her Pacific Ocean eyes are full of tears. “Silver, what the hell happened?” she whispers.
She already knows. She suspects. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be looking at me the way she is. I’m so fucking tired, I could fall asleep right here on the lawn. “I need to go home, Hal. Can…can you find my purse?” The sound of my own voice surprises me. I sound normal. I sound sober. I sound likeme. I’m not me anymore, though. I’m a tragic, broken imposter, occupying a tragic, broken body that belongs to someone else. Three people, to be precise: Jacob Weaving. Samuel Hawthorne. Cillian Dupris. This mangled, uncomfortable shell of muscle, flesh, and bone belongs to them. They baptized themselves in my blood, and now I’m theirs…
Halliday stifles a sob. “Silver.” Her hand shakes as she reaches out, stroking a tangled strand of damp hair out of my face. “I think I should call your dad.”
I whip around, eyes finally focusing properly on her face. “No. I don’t want him here. I don’t want to talk. I just wanna go home. I need my purse, Halliday.”
My phone’s inside that Tory Birch clutch. House keys. If I don’t find my keys, I won’t be able to get inside the house without waking up Mom and Dad…
“Please. Just go inside and find it so I can leave.”
“Where…?” she whispers.
I swallow. My throat’s so raw, it feels like I’m choking down broken glass. “Upstairs. Top floor. The bathroom at the end of the hall.”
“Okay, I’ll find it. I’ll find Kacey, too. She’ll know what to do.”
I feel myself nodding.
Time passes. I start to shiver, but I don’t feel the chilly night air. I’m detached from myself, unmoored, my psyche trying to float away downstream, but no matter how hard I try to kick and swim away from the misery of my own existence, I find I’m still trapped within it. I have no idea how long I wait on my knees in the grass. Eventually, I get to my feet, wobbling like a newborn deer, and I walk to a window, peering through the glass.
It’s sheer luck that I immediately see Halliday. That she’s even in the hallway at all. My eyes catch on her red hair. She’s animated, her hands moving in the air, gesturing toward the front door. In front of her, Kacey’s tapping furiously into her phone.
My best friend looks worried. Her eyes are sharp, spearing people through as she holds her phone to her ear. The light from the screen casts a blue glow across her face. Nervously, she tucks her hair behind her ear, and—
My chest pinches tight, a sharp pain spreading like the roots of a tree across my ribcage.
Sam…
Sam’s joined them, and he’s listening to Halliday frantically speak. She points to the front door, undoubtedly telling the story of me, wearing nothing but an oversized dress shirt with blood staining my thighs, collapsed out on the front lawn.
No. No, no, no. God, please, no.
Sam turns, eyes narrowed as he heads toward the door. Towardme. My heart almost explodes in my chest.
Run! Run, Silver. Go!
I am paralyzed. I couldn’t fucking run if I tried.
The door opens, spilling warm light out into the darkness, and I pray for the sound of Halliday’s voice. She hasn’t followed behind Sam, though. He’s come out to me alone.
The soles of his shoes crunch against the gravel pathway. He’s standing right next to me. He’s less than five or six inches away. It feels as though a ten-ton weight is pushing down on the back of my head, preventing me from looking up into his face.
Sam’s bemused laughter is quiet, but it seems loud over the thumping bass of the music still playing inside. “Didn’t you wash that dirty little cunt, Parisi?”
I flinch, making myself smaller inside my head, shying away from his voice. His hand reaches out, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw. I freeze. I don’t make a sound. “Your friends are in there, rallying the troops,” he says mildly. He barely sounds interested let alone fazed by this information. “Just curious. Are you on birth control? If you wind up pregnant, that’d probably be really bad, don’t you think? You’d have to explain that you went whoring around with not one but three guys at a party. Your parents would probably be pretty disgusted, I reckon.”
My mind is a void.
My ears ring louder than ever.
