The Thrashers(36)

“It’s Jodi,” she said, feeling awkward about walking into his room if he was expecting his mom or something.

There was a pause, and the video games quieted. “Jodi who.”

She rolled her eyes and opened the door.

He was sitting up in bed, shirt off (pants on, thankfully), running a hand through his hair and lifting his brows at her. His room was cleaner than she’d expected—no clothes on the floor, bed made and sheets tucked, no empty plates or glasses on surfaces.

She narrowed her gaze on him. “Are you … tidy?”

“What are you doing here?” he asked, ignoring her question.

She reached into her backpack and grabbed the stack of photocopies. “Anatomy notes from this week. Lucy gave me her English notes from the past few days, and I asked Becca Gardner for her precalc notes. There was a quiz today that you missed.”

She extended the stack to him. When he just stared at her, she eventually dropped them on his bed.

“Do you want a trophy?” he said drily.

She opened her mouth to snap back, but the very careful way her eyes had been avoiding his skin failed, and she saw his chest for the first time. His left side from his armpit to his waist was purple. The shoulder above was just as dark.

She bit back her comment. “Are you coming back on Monday?”

He looked away from her and unpaused his game. “That’s what they say.”

Jodi’s chest felt empty. She’d thought maybe they had something to say to each other. The sound of his screaming against her throat, or the way he’d told her to just go. The slam of her chin on the truck bed as his body covered her.

But she guessed she’d been wrong.

“’Kay. See you Monday.” She grabbed her backpack, wincing as she leaned on her right leg by accident. She was considering calling an Uber to take her home so she didn’t have to walk to the bus.

“Where’s the cut?”

Turning back, she found him watching her. She patted her right thigh.

“Where?”

“Um…” Placing her thumb on her jeans to the top of the stitch, she stretched her pinky to where the bottom was six inches lower. “Here-ish.”

He stared at her leg so hard, she felt heat rise up in her cheeks.

“Will it scar?”

She nodded. “Yeah, they say so.”

He tore his eyes from her leg and turned back to his game, his jaw set tight.

Jodi stood in his doorway, feeling untethered. Maybe he blamed her. She’d frozen as that screen came down. He could have saved his shoulder, ribs, and water polo career if she’d just flattened like the rest of them.

She left his room, shutting the door behind her, and hobbled down his stairs. It wasn’t until she was on the bus that she realized she’d started bleeding through her jeans on the walk to the bus stop.





Chapter Eleven


SEPTEMBER

Paige called her crying one evening, and Jodi’s heart stopped when she said, “I got paperwork. Me and Lucy both. Criminal harassment of Emily Mills.”

Paige sniffed, and Jodi found her breath. “What does that mean? What kind of harassment?”

“I don’t know. We have to appear in front of a judge and say we’re not guilty”—her voice broke—“and I don’t think I can do it, Jodi. What about college? What am I supposed to do?”

Jodi listened to her cry, assuring her it would be alright, and went to check the mailbox for the third time that day. Still nothing. She’d been checking the mail every afternoon, dreading the day she’d see official-looking paperwork from the district attorney’s office.

The school had only recently let go of the drive-in gossip now that Paige’s limp had faded, Lucy and Jodi’s stitches had been taken out, and Julian had started walking like normal again. This would stir up a whole other kind of drama once it got out.

“And Lucy has something weird in her papers,” Paige said. “Something about assault.”

“What do they mean by assault?” Jodi said, voice hollow.

“I don’t know. Lucy said she can’t talk about it anymore. Her dad and her lawyer are locking her down.”

Jodi let Paige talk it out, wondering what it was Lucy had done. What had Emily written about in her journal?



* * *



In the last week of September, Jodi’s dad called her on the road to Oregon.

“I just got off the phone with the DA’s office. They want to interview you. I called Miranda Perez, and she said you don’t have to say a single thing. She’ll sit in the room with you and do the ‘No comment’ thing until it’s over.”

“And that’s okay? With me being a minor?” she asked, her voice too high. Her mind was running a mile a minute.

“Miranda will be there as your guardian. Unless,” he paused, “I mean, I could call out of my Florida trip next week—”

“No. That’s okay,” Jodi said quickly.

Money was tight. Jodi was putting away every dime, and her dad was taking longer shifts, all to prepare for Miranda’s retainer to run out.

“Are court-appointed attorneys real, or is that just a TV thing?” she asked. “Like if it’s only saying ‘No comment,’ then maybe we don’t need Miranda after all—”