Here

by Ella James

  The little hooker, I thought, fuming. I started stomping after them, but Halah grabbed my arm and handed me a beer.

  “Leia, my dear. Why don’t you try this dazzling refreshment? I think you need something to cool your temper. And your lady parts,” she hissed, and then let out a giggle.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Ding, ding, ding! Annnnd she’s done it again, ladies and gentlemen!” Halah slapped my back, and S.K. stepped between us.

  The music was so loud, she had to speak right into my ear. “Who is that guy? He’s not your cousin.”

  I nodded; what else could I do? Halah opened my beer and shoved it at me, and I took it, if just to keep her from spilling it all over me. Her pointy hat bobbed as she started dancing, and a millisecond later, The Cheater Bobby came along and yanked her to his shoulder.

  S.K. and I watched, open-mouthed, as Halah pushed her hips into his.

  “I think she took something.” That was Bree.

  S.K. nodded. She squeezed my hand and spoke into my ear. “They’re rolling!”

  Great.

  Annabelle had stolen my— my Nick, and she was probably drugging him with E.

  I handed S.K. my beer, and she took it, looking concerned. “Hang onto this for me. I’ll be back.”

  14

  I squeezed through the crowd, parting the sea of bodies with my blaster, waving distractedly at people I knew who were sober enough to know that they knew me. Annabelle’s parties had been intense before, but usually not like this. By the roasting hog, I saw men in white uniforms hauling empty kegs away. I wondered how much Mr. Monroe had to pay them to serve alcohol to high schoolers.

  As I moved, I was conscious of my pounding heart, my sweating palms. I had a vision of Nick with Annabelle, lying on a pile of cushions while she lifted her trashy Cleopatra skirt. Then I saw Nick! Right in front of me.

  He was dancing with April Dutton, a pretty senior gymnast with short black hair and brown eyes as hypnotic as Nick’s. The sight of them together made my chest squeeze. Then Nick saw me—and pulled away.

  He came over to me and grabbed my hand, looser than I’d seen him yet. “Milo. Hey.” He smiled a little ruefully. “You’ve got some persuasive friends.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Guess so.”

  For some reason, I didn’t feel grateful for his boomerang. Now that I had him back, I just felt annoyed.

  I looked up at him, so smooth and sure of himself. So hot. Then I pulled my hand from his and turned toward S.K. and Bree. “Have fun,” I said over my shoulder. He could dance with whoever he wanted.

  Before I could get two steps, Nick grabbed my wrist. “Wait. Where’re you going?”

  I shrugged, trying and failing to be casual, and before I could think of a way to spin my behavior as anything other than petty, Nick put his arms around me and pulled me close.

  I hadn’t noticed until then, but the music had gone slow and kind of quiet—some R&B song I didn’t know. I smelled alcohol on Nick, and the moment of coziness was ruined.

  “Did you have a drink?” I asked him, unnerved by the weight of his arms around my waist.

  “Annabelle,” he said. I hated the way he said her name, so melodic. So pretty.

  “She spilled on you?”

  His eyebrow arched. “Rebound, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  I waited a second, feeling his hands on my back, weighing the pros and cons of what I was about to say. Then I said it. “I think you might know this, but if Annabelle gives you anything… Like, a pill.”

  Nick pulled a tiny shamrock from his pocket. “3, 4 Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, an entactogenic drug known colloquially as E. Enhances serotonin and…” He made a circle with his hand.

  I narrowed my eyes. “I was going to say you shouldn’t take it, but it’s up to you I guess.”

  He smirked. “I think that’s the last thing we need.”

  We swayed to the music, and Nick started stroking my hip. My skin was burning; then I imagined him with Annabelle and felt a wave of misery. Then another rush of heat as he pulled me even close.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You sure?”

  What could I say? I’d gone insane. I forced a smile. “I just don’t like these things—like you said.”

  “Then we should leave.”

  “No. It’s no big deal.”

  I looked down, because I could feel that dark gaze on my face. Like I could feel his chest an inch from mine. My hands, around his neck, felt cool; his neck was hot and firm and smooth. I glanced up at his face and felt like I was on a roller coaster.

  While I took deep breaths and tried to determine when exactly I’d gotten such a stupid crush, Nick pulled me fractionally closer. His eyes, when I got the nerve to glance at them, were closing. He ran his hand up my bare neck and I forgot to breathe.

  We stood that way—entwined—until the song ended.

  *

  I had that feeling again. The weird one. About Milo.

  My head was already hurting bad enough to make my eyes water. My chest felt like a block of ice; it was hard to draw a breath. Still, it was harder to pull away from her.

  Milo was the closest thing I had to memory. Whenever I looked at her, I felt things. Hazy things. I felt purpose, one somehow at odds with myself, but at least I felt it.

  I fumbled for something to say until Milo’s friend—the one in the karate uniform—came up behind her and tugged her long, white sleeve.

  I couldn’t make out what her friend was saying. It must have been unpleasant, because the dark-haired girl’s eyes were wide, and her mouth was pulled into a worried frown.

  Milo nodded, then turned to me. “I’ve got something I need to take care of.” She hesitated. “It would probably be best if you waited here.” I could tell she didn’t like the idea. I wanted to reassure her, but all I could manage was “Ok.”

  “I’ll be back in a sec, and then we can leave.”

  I felt bad, felt like she was leaving because of me, but I was still too locked up in that feeling, that almost-understanding that I was too afraid to embrace, to say anything.

  I lifted my hands from my sides, wanting to shove them into the pockets of my tux, but of course, they didn’t have much use for pockets on Tatooine. I stepped back into the shadow of the ivy-covered wall and watched as Milo and her friend neared the other side of the deck, where the third amigo—the curly-haired girl, Halah—was slumped into an iron chair.

  A second later, something else caught my eye: our hostess, Annabelle; she was crossing the deck, toward me, in long, furious strides.

  Most people were still dancing. They moved out of her way as she passed. Something dramatic must have happened, because when she was ten feet from me (114.7 inches), her face crumpled and she started to cry.

  She wasn’t walking straight—in fact, I was pretty sure she might fall down—so I stepped into her path and held out my hand. I expected her to veer the other way, but instead she threw herself at me and buried her face in my chest.

  She said something I couldn’t understand, then started pulling me toward the door that led into the castle.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Do you wanna come and see my bedroom, Anakin?’”

  15

  As far as parties went, this one had to be the worst. First Annabelle had thrown herself at Nick. Then Halah and Annabelle had decided to roll, and in a fit of drug-fueled lust, Halah had locked onto Bobby The Cheater. Naturally, Bobby was thrilled to get attention from the girl who’d led the charge against him in paintball. The creep probably knew she was high; he didn’t care. Inevitably, Annabelle had seen the two of them together, and she’d slapped Halah in the face.

  Halah had cried, and then decided she was leaving, which was when S.K. had gotten me. We couldn’t let her drive; she’d probably wrap her car around a phone pole. Then, apparently, when I left Nick, Annabelle had swooped in and stolen
him. Now I was climbing the stairs to “The Lair.”

  There were elevators, of course, but someone had fired up a water bong on the fourth floor, and now all the elevators were jammed.

  As I hiked the narrow stone stairs, my fury simmered. Nick thought he could dance with me like that and then run off with Annabelle?

  Even better question: What did I care? He wasn’t my boyfriend. I didn’t know who the heck he was. Maybe he danced with everyone like that. Maybe wherever he was from, he had a bunch of girlfriends. Maybe he was so well liked that no one cared. The girls felt grateful when he deigned to look their way. Maybe I’d been thinking about Nick the wrong way all this time.

  By the time I reached the fifth floor, my leg muscles were trembling and my Leia boots were permanently creased at the ankles.

  As I searched for a door that looked like Annabelle’s, I told myself that it didn’t matter what I found behind it. Nick was no one to me. Nothing but a…what? A really weird coincidence. A trespasser, in fact!

  But he’d said he felt like he knew me…

  So? In the grand scheme of things, so what? He didn’t even remember his own name.

  I probably wouldn’t have found Annabelle’s room among the many huge, wooden doors on the fifth floor, but the hallway outside it smelled like perfume—the heavy, sickly sweet kind that has always reminded me of candied mosquito repellant.

  I knocked, softly at first, then so hard my knuckles ached. When I didn’t hear a sound, I felt a little sick. That could only mean one thing, right? The quiet? Then again, maybe that kind of thing was loud. Stupid me. I didn’t even know.

  I knocked again; just one more time, I told myself. Only this time, I knocked so hard, the door swung open.

  It was dark, and my heart dropped till I realized I was in a staircase. I could see a faint-light from the top.

  Twelve steps later I found myself at another door, which I eased open.

  From my vantage point, all I could see were hot pink walls. It looked like a gum-chewing hippo had thrown up in there. It wasn’t dark, just kind of dim, like maybe a lamp was on somewhere. When I didn’t hear anything, I took a tiny step inside.

  Holy crap.

  What the heck had happened here?

  Annabelle’s room looked like a round, pink department store. A store that had been ransacked. My eyes traveled over her delicate, off-white, antique furniture: makeup table, wash stand, dresser, entertainment system…bed.

  Everything, everywhere had been pulled from its rightful place and jumbled on the floor, a colorful storm of clothes, jewelry, perfume bottles, DVDs, school books, shoes, underwear, soda cans, wadded up pieces of tissue, everything. There were even things hanging from the overhead fan.

  Annabelle’s garbage can, make-up chair, and coat rack were overturned. A chest had been overturned. A canvas painting lay atop the garbage can, one of its corners punched in.

  “Hello?” I called.

  When no one answered, I looked once more at the bed, covered with a sheer, pink canopy. Then I stepped through the cracked door to my right: the bathroom.

  I saw the puddle before I saw Nick. It was still bubbling, a shimmering pool of gold nail polish that covered half the tile floor.

  The rest of the bathroom was wrecked, and in the middle of the rubble, Nick knelt with his head in both his hands.

  “Nick?”

  He moaned, curling over into himself.

  I picked my way through the mess with my heart in my knees. When I reached his side, he latched onto me and kind of fell, dropping his head onto my shoulder.

  “Milo…”

  His body trembled. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, holding him tight. “Nick, are you okay?” I spoke into his ear, while one of my hands roamed up and down his back. “C’mon,” I urged. “Tell me what happened.”

  He made another moan-ish sound—I felt his warm breath through my shirt—and my mind spun. What the hell could have happened in the five minutes—tops!—that they were up here? And how?

  I glanced down at Nick, overwhelmed by rage at Annabelle, jealousy over the same, guilt for not preventing this, concern for Nick, anger at him, and—

  Finally, Nick lifted his head, but instead of looking at me—instead of explaining—he crawled over to the toilet and got sick. I turned away to give him privacy, and my eyes landed on the puddle. It had finally cooled enough that I could tell what it was.

  Gold.

  I was stunned. The puddle on the floor— Halah had told me once about this solid gold angel Annabelle had in her bathroom.

  “Ridiculous,” Halah had called it.

  I mumbled the word as I stared at it. I couldn’t comprehend.

  I turned when I heard Nick stumble to the sink, and waited by him while he washed his face. His eyes, when he looked at me, were red.

  “Milo. I’m sorry,” he rasped.

  He looked beyond me at the puddle and took a big step back, bumping into the counter. He clutched the side of it with one hand, the other one going to his mouth.

  “Oh, God.”

  He turned back to the counter, putting both of his hands on it and leaning on his arms with his head dropped in between them.

  “God.” I thought he would keep saying that forever.

  “I think we need to leave,” I said.

  Nick turned. “I’ve got to—”

  “No, you don’t!” I grabbed his arm. “What you need to do is come with me. Where’s Annabelle?”

  Nick’s face bleached white. “I… I left her on the bed.”

  I went cold all over. I jerked him into Annabell’s room and leaned him against a wall. I had a bad feeling about Annabelle, but before I could get to her, Nick brushed past me. He yanked the curtains open and leaned over the prone form on the bed.

  Annabelle was limp and gray, and to my eyes she looked dead. I checked her pulse. No pulse. No pulse.

  “Shit!” I said, pressing my fingers into her neck. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might explode.

  “Oh, shit, Nick, we’ve got to go.”

  He stayed by her bed, actually reached down and touched her face.

  “What the hell are you doing!” I grabbed him by the wrist and led him out of the tower. We took the stairs down, both stumbling, and all I could think was that my life was ruined. Nick’s life was… over. And Annabelle? My mind refused to go there.

  By the time we reached the bike, Nick was slumped on me. I closed my eyes and prayed for Annabelle. Then we sped off—criminals, or worse.

  16

  I stopped at a dark park and text’d Sara Kate with shaking fingers.

  Nick n I left. Take care of Halah, K?

  Then I turned around to look at Nick. His arms were still around my waist. His eyes were wide, his auburn hair a mess.

  “What happened?” I asked, my voice wobbly. “You’ve gotta tell me everything.”

  People had seen Nick go upstairs with her. He was the last one to see her…okay. I couldn’t bring myself to think alive.

  Nick swallowed, his face contorting. “I don’t know,” he said; his voice cracked.

  “You have to know.”

  He looked down at his arms. “She wanted me to go upstairs. She was crying.” He inhaled. Exhaled. “I put her on her bed. I went into the other room—the bathroom— Shit.” Nick pulled his arms away from me and grabbed his head. When he looked back up, his eyes were huge. “Did you see that gold stuff?” The words trembled out. “It was a statue.”

  I nodded, then managed a raspy, “Yeah.” I wished I was good at cursing, because yeah wasn’t even close to the right word.

  “When I saw it—It was just like at the rock. I got a bad headache, and then I started seeing numbers. Before that, her room looked normal. And then you were there, and stuff was everywhere. And Annabelle was—”

  “I think she might be dead.”

  “No,” Nick whispered. “She’s not dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just
do.”

  I remembered when he touched her face. “You did something to her.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. “I did something…” Again, he swept his hands back through his hair.