Page 144 of Shattered Veil

The ringing through Cassie’s speakerphone was akin to a ticking timebomb. All six seats were filled as we gathered at the dining table—Luke and I at the heads with Claire and Cassie on our sides and Liam and Zoey on the other—and our breath was bated as it rang.

And rang.

And rang.

One would think that deciding to wait overnight to discreetly contact Skylar for an update would have been hard enough. While that period of time wasn’t great, the majority of us—save for Claire, who appeared to be nearly sick—were clearly able to compartmentalize these particular emotions until the time came. Now that the time was upon us, though, those twenty or so seconds in which we were left in limbo were oddly torturous.

Skylar finally answered, “Hey,” and we collectively perched on the edges of our seats.

Rapidly speaking, Cassie greeted her with, “Sky—how are you, what’s going on, how’s—”

“Who ya talkin’ to?”

The voice from the background was deep but also somehow lilting in a sing-song manner, and it made us all deflate into our seats in massive relief because it was clear who it belonged to.

Luke leaned close to murmur to Claire, “See? It’s okay,” rubbing her shoulders while she held her face in her hands.

“Cassie,” Skylar seemingly replied to Colton, her voice muffled as if she had covered the speaker.

We were still able to hear his shocked, “And company?!”

She exhaled heavily. “I don’t know. Let me at least—”

“Are they checkin’ up on me?”

“Colton,” she replied calmly, as if she were speaking to a child, “I. Don’t. Know. You have to give me a second to talk here—”

“I knew it,” he boasted. “Tell them my knee’s fuckin’ shot.” Colton hesitated, and then giggled in a high-pitched tone that made us all squint toward Cassie’s phone in the center of the table. “Which is funny! ’Cause it was shot!”

Skylar grumbled, “Oh, goodness.”

“And I almost. Fuckin’. Died!”

“Colton, they know that—”

“Great drugs here, though,” he simpered. “Y’know what’s awesome? Ketamine.”

Luke mumbled, “Oh, dear God.”

“Alrighty,” Skylar sighed. “Colton, I’ll be right back—”

He cooed, “Your hair’s pretty.”

“Bye-byeee,” she sang in a soothing tone as the sound of a door shutting emitted through the speaker, and then she groaned loudly. “If you heard all that and are somehow still on the line, you can tell that he’s…so high. Fine now, but high as a kite off pain meds.”

“Aren’t those supposed to keep him level?” Luke questioned more to himself than anyone else. “You’d think he’d be knocked out instead of, ah…wired?”

She huffed out a single, “Ha,” before saying, “You’d think so. I swear I saw a doctor note in his file, ‘wild on ketamine,’ but they closed the screen so quickly that I couldn’t tell for sure. Anyway—no more ketamine for Colton.”

We all had a brief moment of silent amusement, peeking at each other with raised eyebrows before Cassie asked, “And you?”

“Me?” Skylar asked as if she weren’t sure why Cassie would say such a thing. “Oh. Er—one stitch above my eye.”

“You’re alright?” Cassie pressed.

“For the most part,” she remarked. “Um…Jay?”

It was quiet for a beat before I told her, “I’m okay, Sky.”

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