I couldn’t help but smile. “What were you thinking?”
Before she could speak, Sam all but crashed into Kat on the couch. “Who cares about all that? It’s boring. We need to have fun.”
I frowned. “I actually like—”
Sam groaned. “Yeah, we know. You like all the artsy stuff. Your mom did too, right? She was an interior designer or something?”
I didn’t realize she remembered. “Yes, she loved what she did. So, I don’t find it boring at all. I thought that was why I was here.”
Kat frowned. “You’re here to hang out with your friends. Don’t think I haven’t heard the way you hole up in your apartment or visit your aunt when you’re not in school. Or go to that creepy ass warehouse your dad was always obsessed with. No offense, but Sophie is the last person I’d want to be around, and that warehouse is shady. You need to live your life, Del.”
“And not be a buzzkill,” Sam added.
Kat cut her a look that made Sam roll her eyes before returning to Gina. “Ignore her, she’s a mean drunk.”
“How’d you know I visit the warehouse?” It wasn’t somewhere I’d ever taken her. I felt like it was my spot alone—something I shared with my parents even if they weren’t around. My father hated when I snuck away to it on my own, but when he’d find me there, tell me stories about Mom, and everything would seem okay.
Gina snorted. “Kat is very familiar with that side of town. Aren’t you, Kat?” The girls all exchanged a look that I couldn’t decipher in time before Kat glanced at me.
“I’ve seen you around. Know some people who’ve seen you pass through. You used to tell us about it, remember? Not hard to figure out where you go.”
That wasn’t the place anybody should go, I knew that. So why was Kat there? It didn’t make any sense.
She changed the subject. “Remember when I wanted to get my room decorated to look like what I imagined the inside of a princess’s castle looked like?” She giggled, looking at me with a wide smile on her face. “I’m glad my father suggested we wait because all that pink would have made me throw up now.”
I didn’t want to let go of the last conversation, but I saw she wasn’t going to have it. So, I laughed at the memory. “He did buy you that pretty canopy bed though with the pink tulle curtains. We used to pretend we were royalty.”
“We are.”
I shook my head. “No, but it was fun to pretend for a little while. Everything was so much easier back then when school was fun and dance was enjoyable.” It made me think of what Theo told me in the warehouse when we danced. It really was easier when we were younger. Naïve. I understood now more than ever why ignorance was bliss.
“And our families weren’t caught up in corruption,” she added, downing the rest of her drink in one long swallow. “Enough of that. Memory lane is officially closed. We can be whatever the fuck we want now that we’re adults. Screw our families.”
My stomach churned. “I don’t know about—”
Sam and Gina walked over with mischievous looks on their faces. It was Gina who said, “I heard y’all wanted to start having fun. Lucky for you, I can help with that.”
Reaching for a black leather bag with a designer emblem on the front clasp, she dug through a side pocket until she produced something small. The grin she shot us wasn’t what made me dread what was coming next, it the wink as she set the tiny bag of white powder down onto the table.
“What…?” My voice cracked. I knew what it was. I’d never seen any in person before, but I’d heard it’d been circulating again. Dallas was listening to the news one day when we were in the car and I’d heard that laced cocaine was going around, and death tolls were increasing from overdoses.
“Shame, isn’t it?” Dallas asked, shaking his head as the reporter read statistics from the city. I’d told him it was, half out of it and wondering why anybody would risk their lives like that. When I realized I had no right to judge, I’d tuned out the radio.
“Don’t be a buzzkill,” Sam said again.
My eye twitched.
Kat grabbed my hand and squeezed. “It’s not so bad, Del. I’ve done it a couple times and it makes you feel good. Promise.”
She promised? “Are you kidding me, Katrina? That’s cocaine!” I hissed the last word as if there were people around to catch us. I didn’t want to be anywhere near this if something bad happened.
The two other girls laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d heard in a long time, and I wondered how much of the substance was already in their system on top of the alcohol.
Kat squeezed my fingers again. “Come on, Del. Would I ever lead you astray? Remember all the fun times we had? Our parents always said we brought the good out in each other, challenged each other.”
My heart raced in my chest as I looked at the three of them one by one. My eyes finding Kat’s again, I shook my head. “This isn’t good though. I didn’t even know you were into this kind of stuff. You weren’t before you left.”
It was Gina who cackled. “Oh, please. She was the one who got us into it. Kat was always the wild one out of all of us. Why do you think she’s on the same side of town your little warehouse is?”
I stared at my friend who was a ghost of the person I’d spent so much time with. At least I got the answer to my question from earlier. All the times we laughed, cried, gossiped, played, and everything in between seemed like nothing but a distant memory that might not have even been real because I didn’t know this version of Kat at all.
“Kat?” I wanted her to deny it, but she didn’t. Instead, she sat there looking at me for a microsecond before her gaze traveled to the powder now spread in lines on the table. Whispering her name again, I realized it was pointless. How long had she been doing drugs? Something told me the ‘couple times’ she’d mentioned was more than that.
Sam spoke up. “You of all people should really consider this, Adele. I mean, I lost twenty pounds between this and heroin. It’s not all bad, even if you hear the worst of it.”
My stomach bottomed out. The version of me who’d researched ways to lose weight would waken if tempted, and I didn’t want that. “I should go.”
Kat stood when I did, her eyes widening like she was afraid of something. I realized when she spoke that she was scared I’d rat them out. “I want you to stay. I miss my best friend. If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. But…”
But don’t tell anybody.
Jaw ticking, I reached for my bag and set it on my shoulder. “I missed you when you were away,” I admitted, ignoring the lingering gazes of the other two. “I’d felt bad when I pulled back after things with my father happened. I figured you traveling was better than being around everything that was going on here. Like maybe one of us could get out and have fun. But this? This is dangerous, Kat.”
I heard it before I saw it, but from the corner of my eye I noticed half of the first line gone with Gina hovering over the table. My eyes widened.
“If you really cared you would have reached out and acted like a friend,” Kat snapped, taking me off guard. “But you didn’t. You were stuck in your perfect little world here acting better than everybody else with Theodore West just like always. Stop pretending to be an angel, Adele.”