Smoke by Darcy Woods

Author:Darcy Woods [Woods, Darcy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

20

Sucking in a breath, I crush my ear harder to the door. Footsteps!

My heart flutters like a caged bird. I jump to my feet. “Help!” Pound-pound-pound. “Help! I’m locked inside! Please, I need help!”

The footfall outside redirects, moving toward me. “Hold on, I’m coming,” the muffled voice replies. Moments later a key slides into the lock and—

The door swings open, fluorescent light washing over me.

“Honor? What…what are you doing in here?”

Freed from my supply room prison, I barrel forward, throwing grateful arms around my rescuer. “Cole,” I rasp.

In this suspended heartbeat of time, I forget about the wall I’ve built between us. And as his arms hesitantly lower around me, the imagined wall crumbles down.

“Hey, what happened?” he asks. “Are you okay? God, your heart’s beating so fast.”

But his voice is as sobering as smelling salts. “Er, yeah.” I push from his arms, embarrassment singeing my cheeks.

“Are you?” Cole repeats doubtfully. “Because you just voluntarily hugged me.”

Something I haven’t done since our time in the closet. And now my traitorous body’s a riot of tingles with the memory, old and new.

Breaking from his worrisome gaze, I busy myself by brushing the hoard of dust bunnies from my clothes. “If I’m being completely honest, I’ve had better days.”

He peers inside the darkened storage room and frowns. “What is—are those bones?”

“Yeah. I, um, thought this was the office I was supposed to come to. See?” I show him the slip before sliding past to collect my bag and its scattered contents. Kneeling down, I continue my edited account. “Anyway, by the time I realized I was in the wrong place, the door had already swung shut and locked me inside. Then I couldn’t get a cell signal, so…”

I fade out somewhere between stuffing away my review notes on the War of 1812 and discovering the baggie that fell from the outer pocket of my bag.

I hold up the small white pills. My eyes widen in horror. These aren’t mine! The thought hardly comes as a comfort since they’re the exact words uttered during surprise locker checks. And how many of those students were believed? None. Sweat springs, coating my skin in a clammy sheen, as bile swirls at the base of my esophagus.

“Need a hand?” Cole asks, nudging the door all the way open so light fills the room.

“No! Uh…I—I’m fine,” I stutter, having nowhere to hide the drugs but back in my bag.

We return to the hall, where it’s so bright it hurts. My heart punches beneath my T-shirt, straining the cotton and flesh. Again, Cole asks if I’m all right, but his voice sounds distorted and stretched to my ears.

“Yeah,” I reply absently, while my mind sprays thoughts like greenhouse sprinklers. Flashing back to when I was pushed, I try to recall if there could’ve been time in the seconds before I was shoved to plant the drugs on me. Maybe. But it also could’ve happened earlier when I was distracted by Zee in the hall.

Have I miscalculated

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