"Soph ..." I stumble, realizing we're moving into a new school year. "Junior."
"Are you sure?"
"I forgot for a second. Spending the last few weeks of school in juvie messed me up."
"You went to juvie?" they ask in unison.
"You've never been? Neither of you?"
They shake their heads.
"My dad picked me up at the station the night I was arrested. I was barely in the holding cell."
"Never been arrested," Brendan says.
Lance and I stare at him, calling him out on his lie. Except, unlike everyone else, I can never tell when he's lying.
"Swear." Brendan rests a hand on his heart. "My principal couldn't exactly press charges for sleeping with his wife. Maybe for accessing his hidden account and helping her take all of his money, but they never proved it was me."
I blink.
Lance starts laughing. "That's the best!"
"What were you arrested for?" Brendan asks Lance.
"Dealing," Lance says. "Charges didn't stick."
"Were you?" Brendan pushes.
"It's complicated." He looks to me briefly, like I might understand. Although I can very much understand complicated, I can't imagine how it applies to him. Then I do.
Parker.
"You covered for him?"
Lance shrugs a shoulder, not admitting or denying. I roll my eyes. Just when I'm about to trust Parker and believe he cares, he reveals another conniving, self-serving side of himself that forces me to see the truth. He doesn't care about me. He just wants to be sure that nothing that happened that night will come back to get him.
"And you?" Brendan looks to me. "What horrible thing could you have done to be sent to a juvenile detention center?"
"You went to juvie?" Ashton bursts out from the other side of the room, with Sophia behind her. Sophia stares at me with her mouth open--and maybe ju
st a little fear in her eyes.
I groan. "I'm not like you guys. I don't have parents who have a criminal lawyer on retainer."
"Or a publicist to spin a story about having the flu when their daughter is found passed out in a bathroom at an L.A. club." Ashton sits on the bench against the window.
"Or a doctor who'll write script after script of whatever drug you ask for to keep the envelopes of money coming in." Sophia smooths her skirt under her and slides onto the bench next to Ashton.
We all stare at Sophia. "What? I know we never talk about why we're here, but it happened whether we say it out loud or not."
Ashton busts out laughing and swings her arm around Sophia affectionately. "I need a drink. Sofe? Wait. Are you supposed to drink on your meds?"
"If I did what I was supposed to do, I wouldn't be here."
Ashton presses a sloppy kiss to her cheek.
While Lance pours the girls a glass of champagne from another bottle that appears out of nowhere, Ashton opens the windows behind them as far as they will go.