Page 40 of Riot House
Tom whips around like he’s just been poked up the ass with a cattle prod. “Oh, shit. Elodie! Uh…yeah, it’s Elodie. How you doing? Are you, um—” He rubs frantically at the back of his neck. “Are you enjoying the party?”
I was enjoying the party.
Now, I am not.
Now, I’m the embodiment of rage.
I’m a blistering sun, about to go supernova.
I’m eighteen different kinds of angry.
I’m mentally listing off all of the ways I could kill Tom and make it so that the authorities never find his skinny ass.
“Explain,” I growl.
“Uh, uh, well, I don’t know what you heard or anything, but—”
“You know what? Don’t bother with the explanation. Just tell me what he wants with my phone and I might not break your miserable neck.”
Tom’s pupils dilate—a panic response. Some guys might not believe a girl so small and soblondeas me could ever be violent. Tom believes me, though. He sees the murder in my eyes, and he knows, drunk though I am, that I will skin him alive. “He, I mean, I don’t know. I guess…I have no clue why he wanted it. He told me to fix it as quickly as I could and then take it over to his place. He told me to leave it on the desk in his room, and then get the fuck out of there. That’s it. That’s all I know.” He grabs the white napkin Elliot was holding his brownie in and waves it in the air. “I’m sorry, okay. Look! I surrender! I’m not good at this kind of stuff, all right? I’m used to people like you and like…likehimignoring me. I don’t exist to you people, and I wanna go back to being invisible, because this reallysucks.”
It’s taken me a beat to notice the split lip again. I see it now, though, because he’s been talking so animatedly that he’s reopened the wound, and a snake of bright red blood’s running down his chin. Wren did that to him. Beside me, Presley coughs uncomfortably. “Maybe we should go find Carina. I don’t wanna get tangled up in Riot House shit. This sounds like ayou and her kind of thing.”
I advance on Tom, pitying him and hating him in equal parts. He goes very, very pale. “What does that mean? People like me?”
“You know,” he says softly. “Popular kids. Members of the social elite. You…you’re like them.”
The fury that’s been spinning around like a ball of white, searing heat in my chest detonates, shattering my mind apart for a moment. Jem awkwardly sidles her way out of the group, slinking away, her eyes glued to the floorboards. Elliot and Clay look too stunned to move. “I’m not like them,” I hiss. “I’m nothing like them. How can you say that? You don’t know me at all.”
Tom lowers the napkin as if resigned now to his fate. He knows he’s said the wrong thing. I’m a microsecond away from throwing myself on him, when Carina arrives in a swirl of purple fabric and braids. “Hey! What’s up, guys? Jem just said a fight was about to break out in here.”
I can’t bring myself to look at her. “Tell her what you did, Tom.”
He blinks. “It isn’t like I had a choice,” he moans.
Carina’s friendly tone evaporates. “Tom Petrov.Tell me what you’ve done.”
15
ELODIE
“For the record,this is a horrible idea. You know that, right?”
I grunt, tucking my chin into the collar of my jacket. It’s freezing in Carina’s car. Her mood’s frosty, too. She’s pissed that she’s had to leave her Samberg lookalike unattended back at Oscar’s, but thiswasher choice. “I told you to stay,” I grumble. “I could have ordered an Uber.”
“Uber drivers won’t take us up the mountain,” she grouses. “Too many entitled Wolf Hall kids have thrown up in the back of their Priuses. We’re blacklisted, down to a man.”
“Well,that’sbullshit.”
“So, no, you couldn’t have ordered an Uber. I’m the only way you were getting back up this hill, and I’m telling you, categorically, that this is fuckinginsanity.”
“You said it yourself, Carrie. Those arrogant motherfuckers are in Boston tonight. They won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest. So what does it matter? They’ll never even know we were there.”
“Of course they’ll know! Wren will know as soon as he sees that your phone’s not in his room. And then what?”
“Right. And then what? He can’t exactly report it as a theft, can he? He obtained my property via means of assault for unknown, nefarious purposes. The last thing he’s gonna do is tell anyone that I went into their precious house to take back what is rightfully mine.”
“Christ,” Carina mutters through clenched teeth. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, girl. No idea what you’re gettingmeinto. You’re still drunk. Why don’t we wait until morning, have a think, and see if we can’t come up with a better pla—”
