I follow him to the trailhead, swatting at mosquitoes. He takes my hand as we walk and reaches back to steady me when we cross a stream, my sandals slipping off a wet rock. “Those aren’t quite trail shoes,” he tells me, and I swat at another mosquito.
“You didn’t exactly tell me we would be hiking,” I shoot back, and his eyebrows come together. Patrick doesn’t like girls who talk back. I make a note, filing it away. He’s still got ahold of my hand when we come around the corner, and there’s Tress Montor. I drop it, backing away like we’ve crossed paths with a bear.
Funny thing, I reflexively put him in between me and her.
“Tress, what’s up? You got my girl covered?” Patrick says, and I close my eyes. Despite all of Brynn’s warnings, I did end up acting like a fucking idiot. Maybe not last night, but definitely today. Tress isn’t a wild animal about to kill me on the trail, and she’s not here by accident, either. Tress is Patrick’s dealer.
“Your girl, huh?” she asks, eyes on me. I try to shake my head, try to show her I’d never be with a guy like that. Try to be the Felicity I used to be.
Instead, I just stand there.
Tress has no use for me; her attention is entirely on Patrick as she produces a baggie of weed, and he opens his wallet for cash. My head is spinning as I watch Tress count it off—twice—before trading him.
This is how Tress makes money.
I didn’t know.
I mean, I’d overheard plenty, Mom and Dad wondering aloud how Cecil kept the lights on and the water running up at the zoo, because everyone around here who wants to see it has already gone, and nobody outside of Amontillado comes here. My parents had their own ideas about the Montor income and hadn’t had too much compunction about telling me it’s an open secret that Cecil grows weed out there. But they never said he was using Tress to sell, and I truly am a huge fucking idiot because it never occurred to me that she was.
Because that kind of thing would never happen in my world.
I step forward. “Tress, I . . .”
Her eyes come to mine, green and hard. Unblinking. “What do you need?”
I need to tell her to stop this. I need to tell her to come with me. I need to tell her to ditch the drugs and I’ll ditch Patrick and we’ll walk out of the woods together, and everything will be the same again.
But it won’t. I may be an idiot, but I’m not completely stupid. It can’t be the same again. Her parents are still gone, and I still don’t know what happened, and I can’t do anything to help her except . . .
I’m digging in my jeans, pulling out a wad of cash that Mom handed me when I went out the door with Patrick.
“Oxy,” I say, handing her the whole roll. “Whatever you’ve got.”
Chapter 59
Tress
Sophomore Year
Felicity cleaned me out. I’ve got customers coming and nothing to give them, but I can’t pass up ready cash. Not with Cecil’s medical bills piling up.
The cat took his eye about a week ago. He’d been due for worming, and I’d shot the cat in the upper shoulder with the tranq, just like usual. The cat had screamed at me for it, tore the dart out with his teeth and climbed his tree, only to fall out seconds later. I’d winced when he hit the ground, a puff of dirt landing on his glossy coat.
I don’t trust that animal, but it doesn’t mean I don’t respect him.
Cecil had approached him with the wormer vial, cautious, ready to bolt if he needed to. The cat had twitched when he shoved the tube down his throat, gagged when he pushed the depressor. But the job was done, and the cat was still down when Cecil turned his back. And then it had changed.
The cat was up. Not as fast as normal, no, but not exactly slow, either. Maybe I shouldn’t have yelled. Maybe it would’ve been better if the cat just got a swipe across his back, but I did. I yelled Cecil’s name, reloading my tranq gun at the same time. Cecil had turned—catching a slash right across the face. Luckily, the cat had been too wonked to calculate his leap correctly, and that’s all Cecil got . . . if lucky is the word for it.
Now he’s laid up in the trailer, a swath of bandages covering half his face. He’s drinking against the pain, half-thrilled some days because with that injury our Oxy supply just went through the roof, half-pissed the rest of the time because I won’t let him have as much as he wants.
I can’t. We need the money.
Insurance doesn’t cover wild-animal attacks when you actively make the choice to live with one. So, we’re kind of fucked. The one thing Cecil is real serious about is paying bills on time, because the last thing we need is people poking around the property, looking to see what we’ve got of value.
The answer is—just the one thing.
That one thing is half an acre of marijuana, and that’s not exactly something a collection agency is interested in. But the sheriff sure would be.
The Oxy has been a nice sideline, a decent enough trickle coming in through what Cecil calls his guys. Cecil has always got a guy. It’s how we procured Dee and Zee, and of course, the cat. Now the little pickup brings bottles, and the cage in the back has been replaced with a shotgun rack.
But not enough bottles.
Because now I’m the one who’s got a guy. He’s coming down the trail with some buddies, and I’ve got nothing to sell him because I wasn’t planning on Felicity Turnado needing to get high and handing over money to make it happen.
Shit. That’s the other thing. I slip off my backpack and tuck the wad of cash inside. These guys aren’t going to be happy. Neither will Cecil, if they decide to jump me and take the day’s earnings instead of the pills they came for.
If that’s all they do to me.
I straighten my shoulders and stick out my chin, ready for the response when my usual customer shows up, two guys I don’t know alongside him.
“Tress,” he says, giving me an up-nod, and I give it back.
“Bad news,” I tell him. “Store’s closed, unless you want weed.”
“Weed?” He gives half a laugh, looking at his friends, who follow suit. “We’re not after weed, you know that.”
“I do,” I say, keeping it as agreeable as I can. “But I can’t sell you what I don’t have.”
“Well, that’s some bullshit,” one of his friends says, and I nod, still trying to keep it on the up-and-up.
“I know it,” I tell them. “But I got cleaned out. Would you turn somebody away who wants to hand over their cash?”
I hold up my hands, like What’re you gonna do? It makes me look like I’m with them, that I totally get where they’re coming from, and maybe we were all in the same place to begin with—just a bunch of people scrambling for money. It also lifts my jacket enough to display the butt of the tranq gun jammed into my jeans.
One of his buddies sees it, and his eyes flick off it, nervously.
It looks enough like a real gun to do the trick. And acts enough like one, too, in a pinch. But it can only hold one dart at a time, and there’s three of them.
“So you want some weed, or what?” I ask, trying to push them toward a decision. If I don’t give them enough time to get angry, they might forget that they are, and settle for something less than what they came for.