Page 21 of Toxic Hope
“Hey. Let me—” Easton’s arm is visible in the corner of my eye—he reaches down, grabbing for one of the pearls that landed in a crack in the sidewalk.
“Don’t you dare!” It’s a scream, and it comes straight from the bottom of my soul. It’s loud enough that he stands up straight again, gaping at me. “Both of you! You’re broken, and you’re diseased, and you’re evil! This was all I had! It was all… it was…”
So much for not letting them see me cry, but I don’t have it in me to be strong anymore. It turns out I have a breaking point after all, and this is it.
“Come on. Let’s go.” I hear Preston talking to his brother, but don’t care to look up. I’m still searching for the pearls, knowing I’ll probably never find all of them, but trying like hell anyway. Scrambling around on my hands and knees, blinded by tears, shaking with rage. They walk away at some point, but I don’t know when, exactly.
If only they would walk out of my life for good. Before they break what little is left of me.
11
EASTON
“Whose idea was it to work six hours tonight instead of three?” I swear, I feel like I’ve aged twenty years at least in the past week. Standing outside the hospital doors, I press my hands to my lower back and groan while stretching. Not that it helps. I’m still tight, sore after spending hours helping people into wheelchairs so they could go down and get tests run and stuff. I even had to maneuver a couple of beds in and out of rooms, which was not easy.
“Hey. You’ll be glad when we don’t have to come back on Thursday.” Preston scrubs a hand over his head with a weary sigh. “We only have to do a certain number of hours every week. There’s nothing written down about which days we absolutely have to be here.”
If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s finding loopholes.
All I care about right now is getting a shower and washing the stench of the hospital off me. I don’t know what the smell is, exactly. A special blend of sadness and despair and cleaning products and piss. Not exactly something I hope they turn into a scented candle. Let’s put it that way.
“Do you want to order a pizza when we get home?” It’s going on seven o’clock now, and I know my stomach will be roaring bythe time I’m showered and dressed. “We could order it when we get home, and it’ll be there by the time we’re cleaned up.”
“Yeah, so long as you don’t want any of your weird shit on it.”
I roll my eyes at my brother over the hood of the truck. “Since when are mushrooms weird shit?” Though really, I’m glad he’s acting normal again. He can make fun of me for liking mushrooms all he wants, so long as he’s talking to me and not pulling his wannabe-Dad bullshit like he did at the party. That’s usually how it is. Shit winds down after a little while. It usually takes us both going back to our corners and getting our shit together. It’s never really serious.
I can almost taste the fresh, cheesy goodness as I open my door—but something up ahead catches my eye and stops me before I can get inside. Something I can see through the window now that the door is hanging wide open.
“What’s wrong? Fine, have mushrooms.” Preston is snickering as he settles in the passenger seat.
“No, it’s her car.” I nod toward it—I would know it anywhere. It sticks out like a sore thumb.
In the corner of my eye, I see Preston slouching in his seat and folding his arms. “Visiting again? Good for her.”
“I wonder if she found all her pearls,” I muse, climbing in behind the wheel and slamming the door shut, remembering how she slapped my arm away yesterday when I tried to help. She wasn’t around school today—too heartbroken? Or just afraid to show her face?
“Whatever. It was an accident. She acted like we tried to kill her.” I can tell he feels a little bad about it. Even if she was hanging out with Brody—I don’t want to think about it, but it’s possible—she seemed totally broken by the time we left without ever getting the drinks we went in for to begin with.
I thought I wanted to watch her break. I craved it, didn’t I? The thing is, a small part of me might have broken along withher. Because I’ve never heard anybody wail the way she did. I’ve never seen anyone look as pitiful, either, crawling around on hands and knees, looking for little pearls like they were the only thing keeping her alive.
“Well?” he prods when all we do is sit here for a while, staring out through the windshield. “Are we going or what?”
Are we? “Let’s give it a minute,” I suggest. “I’m curious.”
“About what? Her? All we ever get is trouble.”
“Since when do you give up?”
“Give up?” He gives me a shove, scoffing. “What is this all about for you?”
“You mean you’re not interested in her anymore? Get the fuck out of here.” I shove him back harder than he shoved me—firmly enough that he knows I’m not screwing around. “What if she’s going to meet up with him?”
“She wouldn’t. Think about what we saw yesterday. They weren’t, like, hanging out.”
He’s right. When I thought about it, when we talked about it later, we agreed it was pretty obvious he was up in her face over something. She even looked relieved when we walked in, meaning he must have freaked her out. He’s good at that. We reacted without thinking, though I doubt anybody could blame us. Especially when she decided to pull her smart-ass routine again and threaten to testify against us.
“Do you think she would do it?” Preston asks now. He doesn’t need to explain what he’s talking about.
