Page 22 of Ecstasy
Anger blooms in my chest, and I clench my jaw for a second. “Right. Well. I’ll be down fall weekend for the beach party, if we still decide to throw it. I’ll stop by then.” I press my foot on the brake and put the car in reverseto pull out of my parking spot. “Talk to you later, Dad.”
“Love you, Alex.”
I end the call, toss the phone in the passenger seat and pull out of my spot, turning up the music playing through my speakers.
FEEL NOTHINGby The Plot In You.
Rihanna probably fell in that pool all on her own. She probably didn’t need any help drowning herself, as drunk as she was. Her friends saw her downing shots back-to-back after she saw Eli and me with Zara. She’s always been a little fucking dramatic. She should’ve known Eli doesn’t date.He was into her pussy. Not her.
But the last person to see her alive was me, and Eli himself.
Zara, though.
She didn’t see shit.
4
Zara
When the alarmon my phone goes off, my first instinct is to throw it across the fucking room.
So, I do.
Unfortunately, it keeps going off, some techno beat that usually gets me pepped up, but this morning just makes me want to scream.
I groan, flinging my covers off and stumbling over to the wall I threw the phone against, picking it up and silencing it as I rub my eyes with my fist. I’ve got one hour until class starts and the last thing I want to do is set foot out of this room.
The past three days have gone by in a haze of cops, questions, accusations, and fending off frantic messages from my mother. Not to mention the other texts from concerned citizens sending me links to the short video clip that’s spread around campus like wildfire. The one of my fucking ex flashing my tits in his house.
In light of a dead girl at the bottom of his pool, it would seem my tits would be the least of anyone’s concern. However, I’ve seen them on my phone screen more times than I’d like to count in the past three days, so apparently, people are as equally fascinated with nudity as they are death.
There’s a knock on my bedroom door and I tense, opening my mouth to tell Kylie that I’m fine, but the door bursts open anyway because I didn’t have the sense to lock it after I got back from my dealer, Jax’s, house last night.
Kylie stares at me, looking a little dumbfounded, one hand still on the knob.
I arch a brow. “Yes?”
She opens her mouth. Closes it. Clears her throat and looks at the floor. She’s in loose linen pants and a white T-shirt. Her pajamas. Her silky black hair is in a topknot, and she tucks a stray lock of it behind her ear before she looks up and meets my gaze again. Kylie Jones is like five feet tall and about as wide as my pinky finger.
She’s as quiet as she looks like she’d be, which is why I’m surprised she’s at my door right now. I know her even less than I know Rihanna Martinson, the dead cheerleader, as she’s come to be known by now, despite the fact we’ve lived together since spring, when Mom agreed to let me get an apartment at Caven after the ECU-Narcan-rehab incident.
Kylie and I interact daily, but we don’tconnect.
Which is entirely my fault. I’m usually too high to do things like connect.
“I didn’t think you’d be up,” Kylie admits.
I would take it personally, but since I’ve been doped up on benzos for approximately seventy-two hours, she’s got a point. I figured skipping two days of classes was okay, since I was the one that found Rihanna’s body in the pool.
My stomach churns. I don’t want to think about it.
“Surprise.” I throw up my hands, phone in one. I’ve got more messages from numbers I don’t know, which is not very surprising at this point. It seems my phone number spread around campus as fast as my tit video. I deleted all of my social media accounts and the apps on my phone, but people are still really into those tits.
I know it’ll die down. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Nudes get leaked every other week in college. It’s not a big deal. But then again, I found the fucking body, and Alex Cardi was the one that flashed my boobs. Also, I’m still considered a source of fascination around Caven because I was dating their quarterback. And probablyalsobecause I was transferred straight from rehab, and people love a good overdose/rehab story.
I finished half a semester in the spring, and fall classes have been in session for three weeks now, but it seems still the only thing people really know about me is my love of drugs and Alex.
I’m not so sure about the last one anymore though.
