“Haze, I’m not sure this is a good idea. Maybe we should go.”
He doesn’t reply, frowning. His gaze rapidly shifts from the pool to me.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. But before we go, can I use your phone for a second? I need to make a call, and I left mine in the car.”
“Sure.”
I get my phone out of my pocket and hand it to him. He captures Kass’s prehistoric phone in his large hand and briskly drops it on the grass surrounding the pool.
“What are you d—”
Before I have time to comprehend the events unraveling before my eyes, he runs toward me, picks me up like I’m weightless, and throws me into the freezing water.
Bastard.
He jumps, too, making sure to create a splash as big and obnoxious as humanly possible. How could I not see that coming? I gave him my phone like a freaking idiot. At least he thought about protecting it.
The water is freezing. I hold back a scream, goose bumps erupting over my skin. I come back up to the surface, gasping for air and trying my best not think about all the kid pee I probably just swallowed. I didn’t even have time to close my mouth.
“You piece of sh—” I cut myself off, coughing.
No words can explain how grateful I am that I wasn’t wearing makeup.
“I can’t believe you just did that.”
He laughs. “I can’t believe that you thought I wouldn’t.”
“I hate you.” I splash him again.
He splashes me right back, and thanks to his considerably stronger and wider arms, I’m practically hit by a tsunami. We keep on splashing each other, struggling to hold back our laughter as our clothes go from wet to soaked.
“Hey! You!” a man’s voice screeches in the distance. A glimmering light catches my eye. It’s a flashlight. It has to be.
“Shit,” Haze growls. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Security.
We hurry out of the pool as fast as lightning. I scoop my phone off the ground.
“Come on, we have to go. Now!”
Jumping the fence suddenly seems like the easiest thing I’ve ever had to do. As soon as our feet hit the ground, he traps my hand in his and starts running.
I always hated exercise. In gym class, the teacher would find great pleasure in threatening to fail me because I refused to do anything that required running. News flash: almost every sport does. But now that it’s the only way to not end up in jail tonight, I’ll run for two hours straight if I have to.
The man screams to stop, but we don’t look back, dodging everything that dares stand in our way. Haze is a fast runner. We’re very different in that department. Anyone who sees me running should start running, too.
After a never-ending five minutes of cardio, Haze pulls me behind a trash bin next to a store and motions to stay silent, his finger pressed to his lips.
We see the flashlight wandering around the darkness of the smelly alley for a couple of minutes.
“Damn it,” we hear the man curse.
The footsteps decrease, gradually becoming more and more distant until they disappear altogether. We catch our breath, our eyes colliding.
Then, we can’t stop ourselves.
We break into laughter, holding on to our stomachs while our shoulders shake uncontrollably. I can’t believe I’m laughing at this. It could’ve gone extremely wrong. We could’ve gotten arrested. We could’ve gotten hurt. We could’ve died.