Page 69 of Science Project

Maybe being friends with her wasn’t my best idea.

I could’ve picked Sakura … but she was sleeping with Mr. Avery.

I could’ve picked Allie … but she had her stepbrother drama.

Hell, I even thought that Vera Rodriguez—one of the sweetest girls at Redwood Academy—was banging the billionaire, bad-boy punk who skateboarded around Redwood and pissed off Principal Vaughn.

Nobody in Redwood was normal.

“Imani!” I called after her as she turned a corner and stopped in an alleyway.

Fuck!

I raced toward her, my heart pounding and shoes hitting the pavement.

“You’re Poison’s friend, aren’t you?” a man’s voice asked.

“No,” Imani said.

She crossed her arms and stared down the alleyway at who, I would guess, was the burly man, though I couldn’t see him yet. But I told myself that I really needed to start working out and push myself harder.

“Yeah, you are,” he said, stepping toward her so I could see him now. Towering over her, he curled his upper lip into a snarl. “And João murdered my boss last week. It looks like it’s time to return the fucking favor.”

When the man reached for a gun in his pocket, I yanked mine out and pulled the trigger twice as fast. Imani screamed and ducked. The man dropped his gun and was clutching his bloody hand that I had shot a hole into.

I had aimed for his chest, but his hand worked too.

With her hands shaking, Imani grabbed the gun he had dropped and turned around to see me with my gun. My eyes widened because nobody was supposed to know that I even had the capability to hurt someone, never mind maybe kill them.

Imani ran toward me and pushed me to the car before any of the man’s friends could come out a back door and shoot at us.

I stared through the windshield, my eyes heavy and stinging. “I-I’m sorry. He … he was going to kill you. He had a gun. I didn’t think …” I continued rambling.

Imani sped to the Overlook, checking in her rearview mirror about a hundred times for any followers, then parked. Then, she took both our guns and shoved them into her glove box. “What the hell was that?!” she exclaimed. “Where did you get a gun?! Where did you learn how to shoot like that?!”

But I was terrified.

I had never shot anyone so quick, especially not in front of people who weren’t my family. I had never allowed anyone to see what I was capable of, especially not the one friend I had at Redwood. And for the first time, I was … thankful that Mom had forced me to go to the shooting range with her.

That was the only thing she had ever been good for.

Only problem now … I needed to make sure Imani kept her mouth shut. If word got around that I’d almost killed a man and Nicole found that out … I might lose her forever. She couldn’t know what I’d done to those assholes she’d been with.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN

NICOLE

After cheer practice, I sat in my car at the end of my street and stared at Akio’s contact. I didn’t want to go home yet. All I really wanted to do tonight—and every night—was be with him like I had been last night.

Falling asleep on his chest had made me feel so safe … and I had to ruin it.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I pressed the Call button. My heart thumped so loudly that I could hear it in my ears. I waited and waited and waited for him to answer, only for my call to go directly to voice mail.

“Hi, Akio. It’s Nicole.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “I just, um …”

I sputtered out a few more words that didn’t make sense in the same sentence, then immediately ended the call before I could embarrass myself more.

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