Cat & Drew's Whirlwind Adventure

23. Game, Set, Match

"Oh, we had a chat alright. Always a pleasure seeing you, Cat. Here for your usual?" Troy sets his guitar aside in favor of his backpack. I observe the transactional exchange between them, both in business and personally. She puts the money in his hand, unaware that I'd been holding it no more than a minute ago, and he gives her a baggie in return. She inspects it carefully, then slips it into her back pocket.

"At least you're useful for something, Troy. Actually, I do have a question for you." She leans against the wall to study him. "Say I wanted to get my hands on something other than weed, is that something you could make happen?"

"Is this a hypothetical, because it depends." He glances at me, confused, and then back to her. "Why, what are you looking to get? I need more to go on here."

"Rohypnol, for example?" How she comes out with it, so ordinary, wouldn't justify the shocked expression that goes across Troy's face. Or mine. Again he looks to me, but I'm speechless too, leaving him to clarify on his own in disbelief.

"You mean date rape?" The word, every bit as ugly and heavy falls from his lips, hurting more than I could have expected. Why would Cat dare to drag Troy into her scheme? Why would she put him right in the middle of me and her and Chad and all the bad stuff I have busted my back to keep him and this beautiful thing separate from? Poor Troy, he has no clue the unwitting pawn she makes of him as he exclaims. "You're not serious, do you know how much trouble I could get in for something like that?"

"More trouble than if someone told your dad, or even the principal, that you're out here every morning selling weed and uppers?" She remains so placid, still no indication of the seedy connotation to her line of questioning even while she's threatening him outright.

"Cat, woah, not cool." I step in. Maybe she doesn't care what he has to say, but I expect she'll listen to me better.

"Relax, it was only a hypothetical. Right, Troy?" Cat dismisses it, beholding him snidely. It chills my bones to be confronted with the reality of her plan, cutthroat and ruthless, and how no one is safe so long as she gets what she wants. Finished with him entirely, she moves to address me. "You and I still have business to discuss though, regarding our other good friend. Meet me at my locker after school and we'll get started."

"Started with what?" Why do I bother asking? She smiles back over her shoulder at me as she goes, but that's it, leaving me to theorize what exactly she could mean. Worse, I can't discuss it with Troy, or reassure him about her blatant intimidation because the bell rings and we have to hurry to class. I'm not in first period long at all though before I get texts from the both of them, Cat gleeful at the onset of her plot and Troy worried. Strange as it is, he hardly seems worried for himself, he doesn't even mention the possibility of her outing him to his dad or otherwise, he only seems concerned with my getting involved in this mysterious project with Cat that he's out of the loop on.

When lunch rolls around I go back out to his wall, hoping to clear things up, but I don't find him there—which tracks since I can't find him anywhere else at school either, his truck isn't in the parking lot anymore. I give him a call that goes straight to voicemail, where I leave him a message apologizing for how things went down this morning. Then I do my best to put it out of mind for the time being, trying to get through the remainder of my classes until I'll have to join Cat and learn just what the true extant of my being complicit for the sake of her feelings will be.

I can't let it go any further. I won't. I decide right here and now that no matter how bad it might feel, or how upset she might be, I have to come clean about everything. I'll tell her that Troy and I are dating, and I'll tell her that I don't want to go through with getting revenge on Chad. It's the right thing to do. I'm the last one out of my classroom when the final bell rings, taking my sweet time to make my way to her locker. Yet as soon as I get to the end of the hall and turn, I run right into Troy, resurfaced and propped up against the wall with arms crossed.