1. Penelope #2
I hear Xander shift behind me. A low sound in his throat. Not a word. A warning.
“Hey, Kole. What’s up?”
He leans back in his chair, all casual confidence. “Nothin’ much. Saw those pics you posted on GlossX over break. The concert ones? Lookin’ tight, babe. Too bad you can’t wear that shit to school, huh?”
He winks. I cringe internally but keep the smile steady. “Yeah. Uniform policy is really holding me back from my full potential.”
Xander’s voice appears at my ear. Close enough that I can feel his breath on my neck. Close enough that my entire body goes haywire—goosebumps erupting, pulse spiking, that treacherous heat pooling low in my stomach.
“What the fuck is he talking about, Penelope?”
My full name. The way he says it—low, clipped, possessive—sends a shiver through me that I do not authorize and cannot stop. I turn just enough to catch his eyes. Dark. Intense. Burning with something I can’t name and he won’t admit to.
“None of your fucking business, Xander.”
The teacher taps her pointer against the board. “Miss MacHale and Mister Anderson. Is there something you need to share with the class?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Very well. Let’s begin.”
She turns to the board. I can still feel Xander’s eyes on the back of my neck. The burn of his gaze. The weight of everything unsaid between us pressing against my spine like a hand. I grip my pen so hard the plastic creaks.
Forty minutes until break. Thirty-nine. Thirty-eight.
The countdown isn’t to the end of class. It’s to the bathroom. To the bag in my pocket. To the ninety seconds that will make the noise stop.
The bell rings and I’m out of my chair before the echo fades. I need to get to the bathroom. I need ninety seconds and a flat surface and the small zippered bag that’s been burning a hole in my blazer pocket since I moved it from my locker.
I’m two steps from the door when a hand catches my arm. Xander. Of course it’s Xander. His grip isn’t rough—it’s precise. Fingers wrapped around my forearm, pulling me toward the lockers, away from the stream of students.
His eyes are dark and his jaw is set and he looks like a boy who is about to start a fight and hasn’t decided yet with whom. “Tell me what the fuck Kole was talking about.”
“It’s none of your business, Xander. Let go of me.”
“What pictures, Penny? What did you post?”
“Photos from a concert. In clothes. Doing normal things that normal people do. Unlike you, who spends his weekends getting punched in the face in a warehouse.”
That lands. I see it hit—the flinch, microscopic, behind his eyes. But he doesn’t let go. Kaiden appears. Fresh from his appointment, still in the hallway, and the timing is either perfect or terrible depending on whose side you’re on.
“Everything good?” His voice is calm. The Kaiden calm—measured, assessing, the voice of a boy who runs this school and knows exactly how much force any situation requires.
“It’s fine,” I say. “X was just leaving. Right?”
Xander’s jaw works. His eyes flick to Kaiden, then back to me, then to his own hand on my arm. He lets go. Steps back. And the thing he says next—the thing he chooses, deliberately, from the arsenal of cruelties he’s been building since his mother died—
“Yeah. Wouldn’t want to be seen slumming it with Penny anyway.”
Cat, who has appeared behind Kaiden like she materialized from the fucking ether, gasps.
Kaiden’s expression goes cold. Xander doesn’t wait for a response—he turns and walks down the hallway, and as he goes, he reaches out and pulls a random girl into his side, his arm slung around her shoulders with the casual possession of a boy who wants me to see exactly what he’s doing.
I see it and it works.
The pain arrives like a delayed detonation—not in my chest, where I expected it, but lower.
In my stomach. In the place where his hands were two months ago when he pressed me against a wall and made me feel like the only person in a room full of people.
The contrast—between that Xander and this one, between his mouth on mine and his words just now—is so violent that my vision swims and I have to put my hand on the locker to stay upright.
Cat’s hand is on my arm. Gentle. The opposite of Xander’s grip. “What the hell was that about? Are you okay?”
“It’s nothing.”
“That was not nothing, Penny.”
“It’s X being X. It’s what he does now. I’m used to it.”
Cat’s eyes narrow. She doesn’t believe me. She shouldn’t—I’m lying, and I’m usually better at it, but the withdrawal headache is getting louder and the craving is getting meaner and I need to be in a bathroom in the next three minutes or I’m going to vibrate out of my skin.
“We’re talking about this later,” Cat says. Not a suggestion. “You, me, this weekend. Girl’s weekend. No boys allowed.”
Kaiden makes a noise of protest. “What about me, Kitty Cat?”
“You’ll survive one night without me.”
“Debatable.”
She kisses him—quick, warm, the comfortable intimacy of two people who have survived something terrible together and come out holding hands on the other side. Watching them makes my chest ache in a way I can’t afford to examine right now.
“Better be ready for me, Penny.”
“You’re lucky I love you, Cat.”
“I know. See you later.”
They walk away—Cat’s hand in Kaiden’s, her head tipping toward his shoulder as they round the corner.
And I am alone in the hallway with the craving and the headache and the friendship bracelet on my wrist that I should have taken off months ago but can’t because taking it off would mean admitting that the boy who tied it there is gone and the one who replaced him handed me money for Plan B and called me “slumming it.”
I duck into the bathroom. Lock the stall. Sit on the closed lid. Pull out the bag. My hands are shaking badly enough that I nearly drop the pill. I catch it. Place it on the flat of my phone case. Use the edge of my student ID to crush it into powder. Lean down. Inhale.
The burn hits first. Then the drip. Then the slow, sweet loosening—like every muscle in my body has been clenched for twelve hours and is finally, finally being allowed to let go. The headache dims. The nausea retreats. The craving goes from a scream to a whisper to a hum to silence.
There she is. There’s my girl.
I wipe my nose. Check for residue. Flush the tissue. Wash my hands. Look at myself in the mirror—really look, for the first time today.
The girl looking back is thinner than she was in September.
The cheekbones sharper. The dark circles persistent despite the concealer.
The teal streaks in her blonde hair are fading because she hasn’t had the energy to maintain them.
She used to maintain everything—the hair, the nails, the carefully curated GlossX feed full of concerts and band merch and backstage selfies.
Now she’s maintaining one thing: the appearance that she is okay.
I adjust the smile. It fits better now. The pill makes everything fit better.
I walk out of the bathroom and back into the noise of Edgewood Prep, and nobody—not one single person in this hallway full of the richest, most privileged teenagers in Massachusetts—looks at me and sees anything other than Penny MacHale, the funny one, the music girl, the one who always has a comeback and a concert ticket and a smile.
Nobody sees the bag in my pocket. The burn in my nose. The way I’m already calculating how many pills I have left and whether they’ll last until Friday. Thirteen pills. Five days. If I keep it to two a day, I’m fine. If I slip, I’m calling Reece by Thursday.
The math of addiction. The only math I’m good at anymore.
The final bell is the best sound in the English language.
I grab my things from my locker and head for the parking lot, moving fast because the afternoon pill is wearing off and the edges are starting to come back.
My BMW X5 is parked in the student lot—the winter car, the boring one.
My real car—the white M4 with teal accents, slammed, the one I saved for by managing three local bands’ social media accounts over the summer—is locked in the garage at home, waiting for spring.
Massachusetts winters and lowered cars don’t mix.
I’m almost to the SUV when someone bumps me from behind. Not a gentle bump. A shoulder. Deliberate. I turn. Valentina.
She’s standing there with that smile—the one that’s all teeth and no warmth.
Blonde hair blown out. Full makeup over the school uniform—same plaid skirt as the rest of us, but hers is hemmed shorter than regulation and nobody’s called her on it yet.
A white Canada Goose parka thrown over the blazer.
Behind her, a bubblegum pink Mercedes sits in the lot like a piece of candy someone dropped on asphalt.
“Watch where you’re going, freak.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” She leans in. Close enough that I can smell her perfume—sweet, cloying, the olfactory equivalent of a migraine. “Better watch your back, bitch. I’d hate for something to happen to Edgewood’s favorite little junkie.”
The word hits me like a slap. My face stays neutral—the smile holds, the mask holds—but underneath it, my heart is hammering because how does she know? She can’t know. Nobody knows. I’ve been so careful—
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Valentina.”
She laughs. Light, musical, the laugh of a girl who collects secrets the way other girls collect shoes. “Sure you don’t.”
She turns and strolls to her pink Mercedes, hips swinging, not a care in the world. I watch her pull out of the lot with the efficiency of a girl who drives like she owns the road because, in Edgewood, her family probably does.
God, I hate that bitch.