Drink, Slay, Love

Chapter Twenty

Pearl woke to a knock on the door. She lay still, momentarily unsure of where she was, and then it rushed back: Brad, blood, Evan's roof, his bed. On the floor, Evan sprang to his feet.

"It's me," Bethany called through the door.

Evan leaped across the room and opened the door just wide enough for Bethany to scoot in. Bethany scurried to Pearl's side. She plopped down on the bed and squeezed Pearl's hands. "Are you okay?" she asked. "What do you need? How can we help? I'm so proud of you, Pearl. You did the right thing."

Brad's face flashed into Pearl's mind. She couldn't return Bethany's smile. For one insanely long millisecond, Pearl wanted to tell Bethany everything, and then the moment passed, like indigestion. She pried her hands out of Bethany's.

"Evan!" Bethany said. "You should have told me to bring her some clothes."

"My sisters have clothes," Evan said. "She's wearing Lizzie's underwear."

Bethany levelled a look at him. For someone normally so chipper, it was a surprisingly laser-beam-like look.

"I didn't peek!" he said, a little too fast.

Bethany rolled her eyes. "Go borrow more clothes. And tell your parents we were right." She may have had problems talking to her English teacher, but she certainly didn't hesitate to boss Evan around.

Pearl asked, "Right about what?" She wondered if she should flee out the window. She'd run from her parents. She wasn't all that keen to meet Evan's.

Bethany squeezed her hand again. "That you need help! Don't worry. We're helping kind of people. Evan's whole family is. They're super nice. You'll love them. Except don't try to pet the cat. She's evil."

"She likes everyone but you," Evan said.

"She's evil and a poor judge of character."

Evan hesitated in the doorway. "Are you two going to be okay? . . ."

"Go," Bethany said. She shooed him with her hands. "The sooner we can get your family to welcome her, the sooner she'll feel safe."

He left the door cracked open. Pearl heard his footsteps retreat downstairs. Voices drifted up. Before she could distinguish the words, Bethany hopped up, crossed the room, and shut the door. The voices faded to a hum, and then they rose again as Evan and his parents began to shout. She heard a few scattered words-"reckless" and "responsibility"-and she heard Evan's voice, louder than all of them, say, "Everything was fine the entire night!"

One of them hollered, "Lizzie!"

"Don't worry," Bethany said to Pearl. "I'm sure they'll come around. They really are very nice people. They just don't like surprises."

"Neither does my family," Pearl said. "I should introduce them." She'd meant it as a joke, but even saying the words caused her mind to conjure an image of Brad's neck, torn open. She shuddered. "Or not."

She wondered what this oh-so-nice family would say if they knew about Brad. Why couldn't she banish him from her mind? She should be thinking about the Family and how she could avoid whatever fate they had planned for her. But instead she kept tasting the blood and thinking about ice cream.

"You did right to leave," Bethany said. "That was a toxic environment. Home shouldn't be like that. Home is supposed to be safe. And if it's not, then you need to find a new one. Everyone deserves to be safe."

Home was the opposite of safe and always had been. She'd made it, of course, a million times worse. How was she going to fix this? Somehow she had to find a way to prove that she didn't need to be destroyed. She was an asset, not a wild card. There had to be a way!