Chapter 2
Two
Blaise
THEN
“I almost did. I might throw up.”
“You’ll be fine. We’ll go over there, see what Cam is doing and then come back. No biggie.”
Right. No biggie. It’s not her ass on the line if we get caught there. People know my dad’s car, which is why we drive around for an hour until darkness gives us the cover I need to go through with this plan.
We head across the bridge into Monroe, the town between ours and Land’s End.
The kids from Land’s End used to go to Monroe High School, but for reasons I’m not clear on, they ended up in school with us.
School got a lot more interesting once the Land’s End kids joined us freshman year, especially Dallas Rafferty.
Not that he knows I’m alive, but whatever. A girl can dream. No one knows I like him, even Sienna, who’d want to try to fix me up with him because Cam plays football with Dallas and is friends with him outside of school.
In fact, Dallas’s older brother Houston—their mom is originally from Texas, and their sister is named Austin—is the one having the party tonight.
I was surprised to hear Houston was having a big party, since his dad is the police chief in LE.
Sienna heard his parents are on a cruise and off the grid, thus the party.
Houston is a senior in college and legal, which means there’ll be plenty of beer and other booze at the party.
That’ll draw a lot of kids from Hope across the river tonight, which is all the more reason to be scared.
Someone might still recognize my dad’s car and rat me out.
So many of my friends can do whatever they want.
Their parents never ask them where they’re going, who they’re going with or when they’ll be home.
While part of me thinks that would be nice, I’m grateful that someone would care enough to ask where I was if I didn’t show up at home.
My parents would call the police if I didn’t come home.
Sienna is practically bouncing in the passenger seat. “You’re driving like my grandmother.”
She gets hyper when she’s stressed, and worrying about Cam lying to her has had her on edge for days.
“Why don’t you come right out and ask him if he’s going?”
“I don’t want him to know that I know about the party.”
“Why not?”
“He’ll think I don’t trust him.”
I don’t follow the logic. “Well, you don’t…”
“Yes, I do! It’s just a bump. We’re solid. Always have been and always will be.”
“Of course you will.” I tell her what she needs to hear even if I’m not so sure lately. I’ve noticed subtle signs of Cam pulling away from her, even if she can’t admit it.
I don’t want to be around if they break up.
I’ll have to make up an emergency trip to Siberia or something to avoid having to deal with her if that happens.
Not that I wouldn’t want to be there for my best friend, but her without Cam is unimaginable.
They’re an institution, the longest-standing couple in our entire school, the homecoming king and queen two years in a row and the couple most likely to get married.
They’re even planning to go to college together in Arizona.
Her whole life is tied up in him and vice versa.
I desperately hope we don’t catch him doing something unforgivable at this party.
The road to the Rafferty house is lined with cars.
“Where should we park? If Arlo sees the car, I’m screwed.”
“There’s a back road Cam showed me once. Go past the house. You can circle around. We can walk in from the next block over.”
I follow her directions to a street a block away and park in a dark spot between two streetlights.
The second we emerge from the SUV I can hear the party.
Music, loud voices and laughter fuel my anxiety as we walk through a thicket of trees, the noise getting louder as we get closer.
The scent of woodsmoke from a bonfire fills the air.
Houston is famous for his epic bonfires, or so I’ve been told.
I’ve never been invited to one of his parties.
Sienna takes my arm to stop me from going any farther. “We can see from here.”
The party is massive. If you ask me, every kid from Hope, Monroe and LE is there, except us.
I smack a mosquito that lands on the back of my neck. “Shit, we forgot bug spray.”
She digs through the gigantic purse she takes everywhere. “I’ve got some.”
We joke that anything we will ever need can be found in Sienna’s bag.
The smell of woodsmoke and bug spray will forever remind me of this fateful night.
“There’s Cam,” I whisper to her.
She leans in for a closer look.
He looks a lot like Ryder with lighter hair but isn’t as ripped as Ryder. Sienna says that’s because he likes pizza so much.
Shit, he’s talking to Brooke, who’s a year ahead of us with boobs twice the size of Sienna’s. “They’re just talking,” I whisper to her. “It’s no big deal.”
I venture a glance at Sienna’s face and see that it’s a very big deal to her. I’ve wanted to ask her how things are between them when they’re alone, but I’ve been afraid to. From the outside looking in, something has changed. If I can see that, surely she can, too.
My stomach hurts like it did earlier as I pray Cam doesn’t do anything that can’t be undone—or unseen. The very fact that we’re spying on him like this should be the biggest red flag ever for their relationship, but I’m not about to say that to her.
I see Arlo mixing with the other kids, holding court the way he always does.
Everyone likes him. He’s tall, dark-haired, handsome and easy going.
I aspire to be more like him and less of an anxiety-ridden mess of insecurities.
I’m a work in progress, and he’s already arrived at his final destination.
I’d hate him for that if I didn’t love him so much.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Sienna whispers.
At first I’m not sure who she’s talking about.
And then I see her—the new girl, Denise Sutton, who goes by Neisy.
The boys are crazy about her. The girls hate her because she’s stunning, with big boobs, long sun-kissed hair and bee-stung lips.
She arrived at our school last September, at the beginning of our junior year, touching down with the impact of an F5 tornado and completely upending the social order.
Even the most popular girls in our class have nothing on her, and they know it, which is why they despise her.
They treat her like she’s radioactive, crossing the hallway to avoid her, getting up and moving away from any table she sits at in the lunchroom and spreading vicious rumors about her, like how she fucked the entire football team after a game last fall and how someone from her old school said she had an abortion freshman year.
I’ve been surprised and ashamed at how girls I’ve known my whole life have treated her.
It’s hard to know what to believe. Everyday it’s something else. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the girls are making shit up just to undercut her. The boys are too dazzled to care what anyone says about her.
Oh shit. Cam’s talking to Neisy now.
Sienna vibrates with outrage next to me.
He leans in closer to hear what Neisy is saying, and then his big laugh rings out so loudly, it’s like he’s standing right next to us.
“I’m going to fucking stab him,” Sienna mutters.
“He’s not doing anything wrong talking to other girls.”
“He knows how I feel about her.”
It’s news to me that she has an opinion about Neisy. “How do you feel about her?”
“She’s a slut.”
“What? You don’t know that.”
“You’ve heard the rumors same as I have.”
“It doesn’t mean they’re true!”
“Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on your side,” I tell her. “Always.” We’ve been best friends since third grade. “But we don’t know her well enough to call her that.”
“From what Cam says, the whole football team knows her.”
“Including him?”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
I’m not so sure, but I keep that to myself, too. Ever since they finally had sex last winter, Sienna has been extra possessive of him.
Minutes pass as Cam makes the rounds, seemingly talking to everyone as Sienna goes silent. That’s never a good thing.
My legs are starting to cramp from squatting.
“Here comes Ryder,” Sienna whispers. “Don’t move or he’ll see us.”
I’ve thought Ryder Elliott is hot for as long as I’ve known what hot meant.
With dark wavy hair, dreamy blue eyes and a muscular body, he’s like a god in our school, revered by everyone, scouted by colleges that want him for football and track.
Every girl wants to be his girlfriend, but he’s been dating Louisa Davies since ninth grade.
Ryder and Louisa will be our class couple, and it’s understood they’ll get married as soon as they finish college—if she lives that long.
Louisa has been fighting Hodgkin’s Disease since she was fourteen.
Ryder has been by her side through it all, hosting fundraisers for her family and making sure she has everything she needs.
They recently celebrated her remission after grueling treatments that had her out of school for most of our sophomore year and again the last half of our junior year.
Everything was looking up until recently when we heard she’d relapsed again.
She’s back in treatment, and her immune system is fragile, so she’s not allowed out of her house.
I heard how Ryder leaves flowers outside her door every morning.
She’s the sweetest girl, and we’re all praying for her recovery. No one more so than Ryder.
We’re about six feet from where he stops and turns to speak to someone.
Neisy.
Shock ricochets through me. No way. What’s she doing with him? By now she must know he has a longtime girlfriend. Maybe the things people say about her are true.
I want to tell Sienna that we should go, but I can’t get the words out.
I’ve asked myself over and over what would’ve been worse—what we saw or no one knowing what he did to her.
At first, all they do is talk.
We can hear everything they say.