Page 59 of Wicked Sins

I jerk at the splash she makes when she falls into the water. A moment later, her head appears, and she slaps her arms onto the edge of the dam.

“You know what?” I wave around in the dark. “I’ll stand guard.”

Haley shakes her head. The constant light of mischief that’s usually twinkling in her eyes disappears. She beckons me with a finger before swiping wet hair away from her face. I come closer hesitantly, despite knowing she can’t exactly leap out before I can get away if she’s planning on dragging me in or something.

“What?” My eyes flicker away from her as a pair of nearby girls start splashing each other and squealing. “Someone’s going to hear us.”

Haley holds out her hand. I reach up and take it. “How long have you been here?”

“Two months, give or take.” I shrug. “Why?”

She points at herself with her thumb, and her grip tightens a little. “Eleven.”

“I know.”

Her head tilts a little. “Know when I’m getting out?”

I shake my head.

“Next week.”

My chin darts back as I gape up at her. “Then why the hell are you doing this? They could make you stay—”

She laughs, but it’s a dry, bitter sound. She looks away, lets go of my hand, and tips back her head into the water, so when she straightens, her hair lies smooth against her scalp. She faces me with her mouth in a straight line. “I haven’t put a foot wrong the entire fucking time I’ve been here,” she says quietly. She starts counting on her fingers. “I’ve done all my chores, all the time, no complaints. No drugs. No boys. I did every fucking thing they asked, and more. I was a model fucking student.”

I swallow hard, and wish desperately that I could look away. Suddenly, I’m not staring up at Haley—the girl who took me under her wing and coached me through my first torturous week in this place. The one who acts like this is all some big joke that she was more than happy laughing along to, until her time was up.

“What…?” I don’t even know how to ask. But I don’t have to, because Haley hauls in a deep breath, and her smile pops back.

“Would’ve been one more week.” She purses her lips. “But apparently, I still have some unresolved issues.”

I let out a disbelieving huff of a laugh. “What? That’s ridiculous. You’re—”

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Haley shakes her head and pushes away from the dam wall, yelling out, “Addicts can’t be cured!”

She’s met with a gale of laughs and another furious barrage of splashes.

That’s…that’sbullshit. One week?

She must have done something wrong. Maybe one of her therapy sessions didn’t turn out how it should have. Those things are damn brutal—I never know what to say, and silence is construed as some kind of rebellion, so that’s off the table too.

I slip my thumbs behind the elastic of my sweat pants.

I’m not a bad girl. There’s not a smidgen of rebellion in my bones. My life’s never been great, but I’ve never felt the urge to set things on fire, or do drugs, or even disobey my mom. Even when I thought she was wrong. Even when Iknewshe was wrong.

But what good was that? I’m still here, trapped in a place where everyone thinks I’m a delinquent just like them.

No one believes otherwise, not even when I beg them to.

Why be good, when being bad is so much more fun…and I end up in the same place anyway?

I yank off my sweat pants and climb the wall. We’d all been pretending to sleep when Winona came to check on us, so I wore my usual PJs. The pale pink Minnie Mouse sleeping shirt comes halfway down my thighs.

Not the best thing to try and swim in, of course. The moment I jump into the freezing water, the shirt balloons up around my head.

I break the surface with a gasped, “Shit!” Laughter washes over me as I fight down my shirt and try not to die from cardiac arrest. “Holy shit, it’s freezing!” I yell, not giving a damn if anyone hears me or not.

Floundering, breathless and rigid from cold, I battle with my shirt until I can get it all submerged.

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