Page 7 of Secondhand Smoke
Now that was something Barrett could agree on. Anyone with eyes knew she was hot. You didn’t become as popular as she used to be if you weren’t. Not even cheap dye and a ripped jacket could change that.
She’d always been clean, put together, angelic. Now she was ragged, untamed, devilish.
Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
Barrett might’ve been more amused about her situation if she hadn’t been a perfectly pleasant human. She and her three main friends always had been. Unlike most kids, they had never stepped out of their way to smack into Barrett or call him “freak” under their breath. They’d all simply avoided him, politely. In return, he had stayed out of their way, politely, and was perfectly content watching her from across the cafeteria until he graduated.
That pleasantness was why their deaths had been such a devastation to their small community.
Except for Janelle.
Her survival had put a neon target on her back and sicced the town on her like rabid dogs. Some of them clutched their hearts and stared from a distance while whispering “poor thing”. Others had a dozen theories of what actually happened that night, despite the story the papers told.
He’d only heard secondhand the things people had said about her for the past three months, and it was enough to make his stomach twist and be glad it wasn’t him. He knew firsthand what it was like to have the town against you.
Seeing her like that . . . he empathized.
Damn.
Never thought that would happen.
“What are you gonna do with that anyways?” Toni pointed at the dripping bike.
“Don’t know yet.” He looked it over and grinned. Barrett rang the bell on the handle, and the cardboard boxes around them muffled the satisfying ding. “Maybe ride it home.”
Toni huffed, amused, and put his hand on the bell to stop Barrett from ringing it again. “Yeah, let me know how that goes in this storm.”
Another bell rang, this time out on the sales floor that they’d both abandoned. Toni turned and left Barrett alone in the storage room with the bike.
His grin faltered slightly as he thought about the girl who was most likely still out there in the storm. Now, without a bike.
Oh well.
She wouldn’t want to see him, and getting involved with her was bad news. Chances were, he would never interact with Janelle Duncan again.
3 - Nell
By the time Nell was walking up her driveway, she barely had the energy to move anymore.
Dropping the bike had been stupid. But it was only going to hold her back if she’d tried to run with it, and she wouldn’t have been able to ride it—not in the rain, and certainly not in this hellish storm.
She flinched as a car passed her on the street. Its headlights flashed her, causing her to shake harder than she already was. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to hold it together as the drops pounded on the back of her neck.
Rain and roads and her didnotmix. In any way. On foot or not.
Any minute now she was going to shatter; she could feel it.
The familiar sense of dread filled her gut like a kettle. Any minute now it would boil over, and the steam of panic would make its shrill scream through her spout. She was on the brink of screaming herself.
This rain, the possibility of Barrett calling the police, and those red and blue lights flashing through her window…
She shook harder and fumbled up the concrete stairs to her doorway, her hands slipping on the knob as she opened it and stumbled into the dry house.
“Janelle.” A yelp greeted her, and she managed to lift her heavy head enough to notice the audience.
All the dinner guests she’d forgotten about had a direct line of sight to her entrance. Her mother was already out of her seat and rushing down the hallway with a horrified twist to her face. Her dad looked as startled, but the guests, whom she recognized from church, glanced at each other from the corners of their eyes.
She had to look drunk, tripping over her feet the way she was.
