“Ugh, not really,” I admitted.
He nodded. “Then I’m thinkin’ you’ll meet Zeus Garro sooner than you think. Gotta get goin’, text me when you’ve sealed the deal for me.”
“I really can’t promise anything,” I tried again, desperately. “I can’t see that guy again, Sander. And even if I did, I don’t think he’s the kinda guy to just blindly do what I ask.”
My brother hesitated then lifted his big, scarred hand to palm my cheek. I pressed myself into it, as always starved for affection.
“I need you to do it, you’ll do it. Best thing in my life, princess. I know you won’t let me down.”
I stared at him as he patted my cheek then turned and disappeared around the corner.
“Well, crap,” I huffed as I closed my eyes and hit my head against the wall.
When I opened them again, King was there.
He was on the other side of the bushes, in the narrow pathway between the Science building and the forest that bracketed the left side of the property. At first, I thought he was just leaning against the wall smoking, looking like a modern day James Dean with his worn black leather jacket shrugged on over his school uniform, the curl of smoke escaping from his lips like a white scarf lifted in the cold wind. His hair was down and chaotic even though I’d noticed over the last few weeks that he liked to harness it with a little bit of leather cord he kept tied to his right wrist. He looked like a poster child for the original bad boy.
I was startled out of staring at him by the arrival of the same hulking man from the parking lot at Mac’s Grocer that had acted as his sidekick. He approached King with a chin lift, and then they did that ultra-masculine hand-clasp back-slap thing that I’d only seen people do in movies.
“Don’t like this,” King muttered as he threw his cigarette to the ground and crushed it with his boot.
“Bro,” was the only thing his friend said, yet it seemed to convey more.
King’s shoulders were hitched to his ears, his hands in his pockets as he kicked at the grass. “I know it’s gotta be done. Don’t like this shit at EBA, just sayin’. I worked fuckin’ hard to get in here, Mute.”
Mute. Appropriate name. He grunted in response.
“I mean, fuck, I get it. No one messes with The Fallen. But doin’ this at school is sketchy,” King griped, his hands in his hair making it even messier.
“Might not come to anything,” Mute suggested but King slanted him a ‘get real’ look and even he didn’t look too convinced.
“King, my man!”
All of our eyes shot to Carson Gentry. He was by far and away the richest boy at Entrance Bay Academy, and also one of the prettiest. As in, his eyelashes got caught in his eyebrows and his irises were a golden brown so deep a girl could fall into them like molasses. He had good hair, good teeth and a body honed by endless soccer practices. The EBA girls loved him more than they loved anyone. Or they had, until King Kyle Garro showed up in his leather jacket with all that golden hair and corruptible grin.
As one, King and Mute jerked their chins at him.
It wasn’t a practiced move but it screamed cool in a way that had Carson Gentry’s rich guy arrogance wilting.
“So, ugh, you got the good stuff?” he asked them.
Adrenaline coursed through me until the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
Oh, my God.
Was I witnessing what I thought I was witnessing?
I frantically looked for a way out of the situation. If I could sneak away before I truly heard anything, I didn’t have to report it, right?
But there was no way to slide by undetected in the narrow pathway or slip unseen between the bushes by the wall. I was skinny but I wasn’t that tiny.
“Maybe. Depends on what information you got for me,” King rumbled.
His voice was octaves lower than his normal charming tones, almost always filled with laughter even when he wasn’t being funny or amused. Now, it was dark and forceful. A shudder ripped up my spine, leaving behind a tangible ache.
“What are you talking about, my man?” Carson said with an uneasy smile.
“Not your man, Carson. Heard you’ve been getting your shit from some other dealer. What’s up with that?” King questioned.
“Don’t know where you heard that, man, but it’s not true,” Carson repeated, but he shifted his weight from foot to foot uncomfortably.
I hated that one of my students was asking for drugs but I hated particularly that it was Carson. He was a bright kid with sad eyes, probably because of the bruises that he often claimed were from football practice but that the coach and his teachers knew better were from his wildly unpopular in town father.