Page 45 of Amethyst Flame
She was dressed all in ill-fitting black, heavy eyeliner smudged around her coffee-brown eyes, dark red lipstick only slightly more contained. Streaks of black dye still stained her scalp, and I caught a whiff of dye clinging to her. Hoo boy, her father was gonna be pissed to get her back like this.
Or maybe he wouldn’t be too surprised considering the sullen glare in those eyes was exactly the same as her various mug shots.
I held out my wrists to flash the bracelets. “Check it out. Want one?”
She rolled her eyes but held out her hand. When I put the bracelet across her palm, she waggled her fingers. “And the rest?” She glared at me. “You promised.”
I laughed. “You believed me?”
She gave me one incredulous blink that knocked off clumps of mascara, then pivoted on her Doc Martins—black, scuffed, too big to be hers—and clomped away.
“Hey, hey.” I took a few long steps after her. “Chill out. Let’s get something to eat first, then I’ll pay you.”
She glanced over her shoulder at me through lank strands of hair. “You still lying?”
I shrugged as I strode past her. “I never lie about soft pretzels.”
She followed me to the food court, just like any stray. She ended up with pizza while I got my pretzel and frozen lemonade. We settled across from each other like wary chess masters battling for Cold War bragging rights—or like half-sisters who’d never met before.
She chowed into the pizza with a fifteen-year-old’s gusto but not a starving one. Her hands were clean, not marked with dye, so either she’d used a kit with gloves or someone had helped her. Wherever she was staying and whoever she was with, she didn’t seem desperate, at least not yet.
“One question?” I slurped at my lemonade, watching her.
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not being sex trafficked or anything like that. No meth, no heroin, no more weed.”
Doing everything I could not to laugh at the “no more” part, I rolled my eyes back at her. “It’s not a question aboutyou.”
“Oh.” After a moment, she nodded.
“So how bad is your dad? Should I be falling to my knees and praising the lord he skipped out on me? Or just, like, shrug emoji?”
Her brows came together in an angry dash. “I dunno. I’d say you dodged a bullet.”
“Go on.” I’d been waiting to hear this my whole life. Gimme. What would life have been like with my dear old dad?
“Lessee…he’s been searching my room, and that’s okay because, you know, it’s ‘his house’ and anything he doesn’t approve of, he confiscates because everything has been bought with his money…that he gave me…but is still somehow his. He won’t let me wear what I want, he hates my friends andforbade”—her voice got ominous there—“me from seeing them. Like, I’ve known them since grade school. And he did something to my phone to track me because, you know…”
“…he’s paying for your phone?”
“Yup. My friend got that shit off, obviously. And then when he started talking about ‘making some real changes,’ I freaked out because it was all bad enough already, and what was he going to do? Move? Change my school? Anyway, I bolted.”
“And where’s your mom in all this?”
“Probably fucking her new husband. She doesn’t care about meat all. She hasn’t texted me once. Or called. I could be dead, and she wouldn’t know.”
“Shit.” I sat back. I didn’t know if Bri was exaggerating for effect—I mean, of course she was—but life with her dad sounded pretty sucky. Maybe Iwaslucky. That was a weird feeling for me. “Sooo, your plan is…?”
Her trash panda gaze jerked back to me. “I could live with you.”
Shocked, I was held hostage by her focus. “Um…”
“You’re my only other family,andyou’re an adult.”
She had it all figured out. I understood now why she’d called me in the midst of this family drama. She thought I was her ace in the hole.
“Look,” I told her, “I live with my mom still.” Then there was the superpowers issue…
“We could put our money together and get our own place.”
