by Jo Holloway
The last couple months of school and the weeks of summer so far ran through her mind. There had been a few times back at school where she’d caught herself blushing around Jory, usually at something sweet he’d said or done. But that didn’t mean anything. Did it? This was Jory they were talking about. The same guy who’d dated three different blondes in the first two months of school before he went out with purple-haired, free-spirited Meygyn. He was her best friend. Her running buddy. It wasn’t like that between them, was it?
The phone was still in front of his face, but she had a feeling Wes was just avoiding looking at her now. She leaned over.
“No way.”
“I don’t totally get it either,” he said. “He normally goes right for the pretty girls.”
“Ouch, thanks a lot.” She sat back with a mock hurt look on her face.
“Sorry, that’s not what I meant. You’re pretty.” He lowered the phone. “I meant he usually likes someone right away and goes for it. This time, he got to know you first since we started out on bad terms with you after . . . well, everything last year.”
“Yeah. I remember.” She gave him a wry smile.
“It’s probably good it took him a while. Maybe this is a new Jory.” His smile slipped to a frown. “Sorry if I screwed things up for you.”
“Huh?” She was lost.
“If I’d cleared things up earlier, when he first made that dumb comment about me and you, maybe he would have acted differently or said something.” His voice rang with regret. “I even think you started to like him a little too, and now . . .”
Did she? They were friends, and she loved Jory that way. She’d told him so plenty of times. Same with Wes. But did she want to date Jory? Random memories floated to the surface, like blushing after he wiped a piece of clay from her face. She turned to watch him floating in the pool, his handsome face glowing in the sun.
Look at him. Every girl at school wants to date Jory.
“Wait. And now?” She whirled back to Wes. “And now what?”
He gave her a blank look.
“You said you thought I liked him a little too, and now . . .”
“Come on, Cara. We might be unobservant guys, one of us at least, but we’re not blind.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her stomach flipped over. She stared down at a bee hovering above her clothes on the ground. Crap. Was she that obvious?
“It’s probably not that obvious. But we know you, and I notice too much sometimes.” Wes shook his head at whatever he was thinking. “Jory knows me too well not to pick up on it when I noticed how you look at . . . him.”
He jerked his head toward the house. Her stomach flipped back again. Her face tightened in a grimace.
“Hey. It’s not your fault. You didn’t choose it. Jory will be fine. He’ll move on to someone new as soon as school starts, I’m sure.” He tried to smile his reassurance, and she tried to believe him.
“You think?”
He looked over to the pool where their mutual best friend was making the best of his bad situation. He sighed. “I’ve known him a long time. He knows a lot of people, he’s popular, but he doesn’t let many people past that surface layer. You got in.” He gave a little laugh. “And you’re a girl, in case you forgot.”
She scoffed. “Gee, thanks for remembering this time.”
“Between us, I do think he likes you, but I don’t think it’s as different with you as he thinks it is. He just knows you better than he’s known any other girls he liked. He’s never been this close to someone he could also be interested in dating before.”
Why was Wes so freaking observant? She knew why, obviously. The same reason she was. Plus, he was Wes. Quiet, thoughtful—all of those things. It wasn’t helpful.
“What do I do?”
He shrugged, still not being helpful.
She sat back, leaning on her hands. “Should you be telling me this? Isn’t there some bro code or something?”
Wes scoffed and set his phone down on the chair beside him. “Sure. Our code is to look out for each other. This counts.” He put an arm behind his head, turning to the side to look at her. “Don’t get me wrong. It could totally be more than that with you and him if you wanted it to be. That’s sort of up to you now . . . and whatever you feel for Rhys.” He turned his head to look up to the house, and she followed his glance.
Light flashed when the sun glinted off the glass door as it opened. The flutter in her chest raced for a couple quick heartbeats.
“I’m not sure what I feel. And it’s not like it matters,” she whispered, looking at her friend.
He said nothing.
Her eyes fixed on the house again. “He’s just being polite so we can all work together to help his sister. This front he’s putting on—this perfect host crap—it’s just him dealing with all this stuff he’s going through and us being his only hope. It doesn’t mean he suddenly likes any of us.” Her throat tightened. “Besides, he’s seventeen.”
“Oh, so what, Cara? You’re a month from turning sixteen. Who cares?” He picked up his phone again and went back to reading.
She chewed her lip. The idea of Jory liking her, or of disappointing him, or the basic fact that both her best friends knew about her stupid crush—it all jumbled together to make her insides burn. She stood and walked over to the table to grab a towel.
Halfway across the pool deck, she paused to watch Jory floating calmly in the water. She glanced over her shoulder. Bushes hid the path between the house and the pool. What did she even really feel for Rhys? Her reactions to him were strong, sure, but aside from the things he’d been through recently, and his clear bond with his sister, what else did she know about him? Her gaze drifted back to Jory. If it weren’t for this silly crush on some guy she barely knew, how would she feel? What if she could get past it? They already got along so well . . .
Soft footsteps in the grass snapped her back to the moment, and she carried on to the table. As she reached for the towel, Rhys came around from behind the bush with a tray of glasses. Ice cubes tinkled in the golden-brown tea as it sloshed around when he stopped abruptly. She froze with one hand on the pile of towels as her heart thudded. His eyes flicked across the swimsuit she’d chosen before they shifted back to the drinks he held, and he started forward again to set the tray on the table.
Her hand clenched around the soft fabric of the towel, but she couldn’t seem to pick it up. The ice cubes tinkled again as the tray met the table surface, and he turned away to pull one of the patio chairs closer, being careful not to look at her again. She looked down and bit her lip. It must be hard for him to see his sister’s clothes on someone else. Liv had been gone from this house for so long; it must bring back memories for him.
She abandoned the towels and turned to the pool instead. She jumped in feet first, startling Jory with a splash.
He rolled over and opened his eyes to see who had splashed him. A devilish grin spread across his face. “Oh, you are so going to regret that.”
By the time their water fight was over, her sides hurt from laughing and trying to tread water at the same time. Jory managed to dunk her one last time before he pushed himself under to scoop her up by the waist. He lifted her enough that she could grab the edge of the pool and haul herself up.
In the back of her mind, while they splashed in the pool, she’d been contemplating what dating Jory would mean—for her, for their friendship, for Wes. Things with Jory were comfortable when they weren’t awkward, but it didn’t feel like much more. She’d tried to picture kissing him, but his face kept changing into . . . someone else. Her eyes dropped to the water in front of her, and she wrung out her wet hair, leaning over the pool. Jory followed her out of the water, hoisting himself up on the edge and spinning around so he sat beside her. His grin was solid.
“Good to see you again, Sunshine.” She bumped against him, shoulder to shoulder. “I’ve been missing my running buddy, you know.”
�
�Yeah?”
“Yep.”
As much as she might wish she felt differently, she didn’t want anything to change between them. The risk of losing the friendship she had with him if things didn’t work out was too painful to consider. Somehow she’d have to make him see the wisdom of that. And maybe Wes was right, anyway, and it wasn’t that serious.
She checked over her sun-freckled shoulder. Wes sat behind them at the patio table, keeping a curious eye on her. He was across from Rhys, who glanced away when she met his eye. Jory stood and reached a hand down to help her to her feet. She grabbed a towel from the stack on the table and wrapped it around her waist before taking a seat at the table.
Rhys cleared his throat. “If everyone’s good now, maybe we could focus on Liv.”
Cara frowned. It wasn’t exactly fair for Rhys to sound grumpy again. It had been his idea for them to go swimming to cool off in the first place. What happened to their perfect host? Or had he been sitting here worrying about Liv the whole time?
Wes saved her from having to say anything. “Digoxin,” he said. “Or something similar.”
“What?” Rhys turned his attention to the opposite side of the table.
“Some kind of heart medication. An overdose could stop her heart. Can you get some from the hospital?”
“No. I doubt it.”
“Can your dad?”
“Not really. There’s no way I could even ask.”
Cara’s eyes darted back and forth between Rhys and her friend as they talked.
“Are you sure? Digoxin would be good. There’s an antidote for overdoses. As long as her heart can be restarted and she gets the antidote, she’d have a chance.”
“Is that what you’ve been reading about on your phone all afternoon?” Cara asked.
Wes nodded, still looking at Rhys, waiting for his answer.
“That still sounds risky. But it doesn’t matter. All the drugs are kept at the pharmacy. I’d have no way of getting to them even if I can move around most of the hospital no problem. Only the emergency stuff is on hand, which doesn’t really help us, and that’s locked up too.”
“Anything we do will be risky. That’s too bad, though. We eliminated all the physical options. Even electrocuting her isn’t practical without the right medical equipment, which we also can’t get without raising suspicion. This is the best option left.”
Cara flinched at the look on Rhys’s face while they spoke so callously about how best to kill his sister.
Jory had been leaning back in his chair across from Cara with his face raised to the warm sun. He set the chair back on all four legs. “What about other drugs?”
“I just said everything is locked up at the hospital.” Rhys scowled.
“No, other drugs. Not the hospital kind.”
Rhys stared at him. “If you’re suggesting we give my sister an OD of some street drug, you’re out of your damn mind. There’s no way we’d know what else might be in it, for starters.” He turned his face to Cara with a look that said he wanted Jory gone again.
“Of course not, right, Jory?” She glared at him until he shrugged. “What about other types, though—like something natural?”
A minute passed.
“Digitalis.” Wes broke the silence.
Cara’s brow furrowed. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“Have you been studying botany in your spare time?” Wes tilted his head at her. Her face stayed blank, so he continued. “It’s foxglove. It’s where Digoxin came from.”
“How does that help us?” Jory asked.
“Foxglove is poisonous,” Rhys said, “everyone knows that. But we can’t just feed her some foxglove and hope for the best. If it’s not enough, it’ll only make her sick, not kill her. And when people do eat it by accident, I thought it was supposed to be really unpredictable.”
“Yeah, it looks like it is.” Wes was staring at his phone again. He scrolled through several pages of text with his dark head bowed low over the screen.
Cara fidgeted in her chair. They all waited to see if he would find anything more useful. A long breath hissed out between his lips.
“What?”
“Maybe if we can extract the glycosides . . .” He read on. “Maybe . . . then we might be able to actually figure out a dose. It won’t be perfectly accurate. But if we could . . . Hm.”
“What is he talking about?” Rhys looked to her for answers again.
She sat up a little straighter and adjusted the towel across her legs. “Wes?”
He held up a finger and kept reading, muttering words like “purify” and “dilution” under his breath as his eyes scanned the screen.
“This sounds like chemistry homework,” Cara said.
Wes looked up. “Basically.”
“That’s crazy.” Rhys leaned forward on the table. His face disagreed with his words. He was at least somewhat interested in what Wes was saying.
“It’s not crazy,” Jory said. “If Wes thinks he can do something, he can. Especially if it’s chemistry homework.”
Cara leaned forward to look Rhys in the eye. She wanted to reassure him. “It’s true. Wes is top of our class in pretty much everything at school. If there’s a way to do something, he’ll figure it out.”
She caught the little crinkle beside Wes’s eyes before Jory chimed in again. “You’re right behind him, don’t forget.” He grinned at her.
She shrugged one shoulder and glanced over to Jenner lying in the grass. The sun had moved across the sky, and his patch of shade was retreating. Dappled spots of sun shone through the top of the long hedge, making patterns across his head. It reminded her of Delaney’s portrait of him hanging on her bedroom wall, with her style of patterns somehow still looking exactly like Jenner. She smiled to herself. It would be good to see Delaney again in a couple weeks.
“Oh. Digitalis!” Her head whipped back around to the table where three surprised faces met her gaze. “Sorry, I just remembered. Delaney’s painting had the scientific name at the bottom. You know—the one she did of the foxglove I brought her back from . . . the mansion.” She realized what she was saying as the words came out.
Good one, Cara. Tell him you’ve been visiting his house like a stalker, why don’t you?
The shifting sun couldn’t account for the heat in her face.
Fortunately, Rhys didn’t notice. “I remember my mom warning us about foxglove when we were little. Yeah, there might be some growing around the meadow.”
“So is this the plan?” Jory asked.
Cara watched Rhys. Jory looked between her and Wes. They all waited patiently to see what Rhys would decide. His tall form leaned back from the table, and he studied his knees.
His eyes closed. “I hope this is the right thing to do.”
She exhaled and turned to Jenner again. “Jenyx, were you listening?”
“I was.”
“What do you think? Will this work?”
“In my time, I have seen humans use many different methods to kill one another. I have also known all manner of species to develop defenses as this plant has done, and other creatures to have succumbed to them. Deliberate poisoning, however, is not something with which I have extensive experience. So long as it stops her heart, so long as the body dies, then yes. Livyx will be liberated from her imprisonment and will be forced to move to a nearby living host.”
“Should we be worried that thing might jump into one of us in the room?” Rhys raised a good point.
“Unlikely. I imagine the past year and a half has been a difficult time for Livyx. She will be likely to choose a safer option if given the choice.”
“She’ll go into the frog,” Cara said.
“Precisely.”
Jory sat forward and filled in the blanks for himself. “So we get the drug out of the flower and give it to her. We get the Pyx out of her into the frog. Then there’s an antidote, so Liv might survive if we can revive her and give it to her. Sounds like a plan. What’s next?”
Cara wanted to kick Jory for his nonchalant tone, even though what he said was technically right. Given the look on Rhys’s face, she wasn’t alone. It was probably time to leave.
“We’ll have to do some more research on how to extract the drug from the plant, and on the dose to use, right, Wes?” She waited for his confirming nod. “And I guess we need to gather some foxglove.”
“Even if it sounds like our only plan right now, I still want to do some more checking. I’m going out to the manor tomorrow to check some of my dad’s medical texts,” Rhys said. Cara pushed her chair back to stand but stopped when he cleared his throat again. “You all could come out with me, if you want.”
Sweat prickled under her arms at the idea of riding in a car with him for an hour and a half each way. A few dormant butterflies woke up in her belly. She stood and swept her mostly dry hair back from her shoulder to lift it off her neck.
“Guys?” She checked their faces. Jory gave a casual shrug. Wes’s eyes shone a little brighter, probably imagining getting his hands on the library full of books. She was mostly looking forward to going back to see the beautiful stone mansion again.
That’s right, Cara. Nothing to do with the car ride.
“Sure. We’re in,” she said.
“Okay. I can pick up Jory first, since I know where that is now, and then he can tell me how to get to your houses. Sound okay?” Rhys asked the question of all of them, but he looked to Cara for an answer again. Apparently he’d decided she was their leader.
Her throat went dry under his gaze. Fortunately, Wes spoke up. “I’ll stay at Jory’s again. Then you only have one other stop at Cara’s house.”
She relaxed a little knowing Jory wouldn’t be alone with Rhys. The boys stood.
“I should go change out of this,” Cara said, looking down at the swimsuit she wore. It was mostly dry already.
Rhys gave her a look she couldn’t read. “Keep it,” he said. “She’ll never miss it.”
He turned away and started gathering their empty glasses onto the tray again. Good host mode was back.