Page 91 of Until the Ribbon Breaks

As soon as I got my cell phone back, I called Brent to come pick me up. I didn’t want to risk him seeing the monstrosity inside, but I had to get out of there, so I just waited for him at the end of our long, wooded drive. I’ve spent every day with him this week, but have managed to avoid Emily. The fact that I’ve been ghosting her best friend all week is surely going to get me an ass-beating.

“Seriously, though,” he continues, “what gives with you and Kassi?”

“Just not into her anymore.”

“You ever going to tell her or do you get a kick out of having a chick blow up your phone non-stop?”

I shrug as I reload and duck out of the enemy’s way before another text alert dings my phone. Any sane person would turn it off, but I never know when Harlow is going to call and I don’t want to miss it when she does.

“You know you’re going to see her tomorrow at school. There’s no way you can avoid it,” he says, and he’s right.

Everyone has to go up for prep day to get their class schedules, parking tags, and everything else. We will most likely run into each other, so I should just call and end things, but damn, I’m not up for dealing with her reaction. As much crap as she put up with from me, I’m shocked she hasn’t been the one to end things.

“You picking me up tomorrow?”

“I’m supposed to be going with Emily.”

I tap the button on my controller that makes my avatar pull the pin before he tosses the grenade. It lands right in front of Brent’s avatar and blows it into mangled pieces.

“Dude!” He’s pissed, and I laugh to myself before he asks, “How long am I going to have to carpool your ass around town?”

“I have a court date in two weeks and then I’ll know for sure.”

“You think you’ll go to juvie?”

“I hope not.” My phone starts ringing, and when I check the screen, it reads: Hopewell Recovery. “I gotta take this,” I tell him as I get up and head out of the room. “Hey,” I answer, closing the door behind me when I step into the hall.

“Hi,” she says, but I can barely hear her with all the commotion on her end.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Jeremy is freaking out.”

“Why?”

“After you left, they discovered he’d been cheeking his pills and giving them to Kevin.”

“I thought he hated Kevin.”

“He does. Kevin bullied him into it, so Jeremy hasn’t been taking his meds, and his delusions are off-the-rails bad right now.”

Jeremy creeped me out when I first met him, but being his roommate was a trip, and I actually wound up liking the guy. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, I feel bad for him,” she says as things quiet down enough for me to hear her.

“So, how are you?”

“Ehh. I have a session with Dr. Benson and my parents later today.”

Leaning against the wall, I release a deep breath as I think about how upset she tends to get after family sessions. She almost always has to go to one of the small rooms with a nurse to calm down, and it sucks to think that the only real support she has left in there is Max.

“You want to call me afterward?”

“I feel like I call you too much as it is.”

“You can call me as much as you want, you know that, right?”

There’s a long pause on her end, and when I’m just about to say something to break the silence, she gives a somber, “I miss you.”

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