This Lie Will Kill You by Chelsea Pitcher

Author:Chelsea Pitcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

21.

TONGUE TIED

I need you. Ruby slipped the note into Shane’s locker, hands trembling. She needed him desperately. The two had spent twelve glorious nights together before her mother had noticed her missing and called the cops.

The cops.

Ruby had been humiliated, stumbling home in the early morning light, only to be greeted with flashing lights and a gaggle of boys in blue. Walk of shame indeed, she thought, running a hand through her hair. Of course, she and Shane hadn’t slept together slept together (yet, she thought, and blushed), but still, her hair was a mess and she was dressed in the clothes she’d worn yesterday.

It painted a certain picture.

But not to Mrs. Valentine. Ruby’s mother came charging across the yard, wrapping her daughter up in her arms. She was sobbing before Ruby could even get a word out. It took a good twenty minutes to convince her mom (and the cops and the group of “concerned citizens”) that she hadn’t been abducted by a serial killer and tortured for sport. She’d simply snuck off to a friend’s house, to offer support over a recent breakup.

“But someone called the house,” her mother sputtered, freckled hands gripping Ruby’s shoulders. “He said you were in danger.”

Ruby’s stomach tightened. There was only one person who would pull a stunt like that, but she couldn’t explain it to her mother without explaining everything else. “Mom, it was a prank. I was hanging out with Juniper.” After all, the two used to be best friends. They’d grown up together, told each other secrets, all that little-girl cutesiness. But things had gotten complicated when Ruby started dating Parker, and at the time, she’d thought Juniper was being unfair.

Parker wasn’t possessive. He was attentive. Devoted.

That was the problem with dating a boy like him. At first his possessiveness felt a lot like love, like he couldn’t stand to be apart from her. By the time she realized who he really was, she’d pushed away everyone who might help her get away from him.

That was why Shane was such a godsend. And Ruby wasn’t about to let him slip through her fingers just because her mother had become a neurotic mess. Yes, Ruby had sympathy for the woman, and yes, sometimes people did get snatched up in the night, but good God. If she couldn’t sneak over to Shane’s house, how were they supposed to plot her escape?

Ruby’s gaze trailed to her bedroom window. It sat on the side of the house, draped in shadows, even when the sun was high. If Ruby had “trouble sleeping” that night, Charlotte would sleep in their mother’s bedroom, and no one would notice Shane climbing through the window.

Hence, the note stuffed into his locker on Thursday morning. I need you, it said, without instructions, or a signature. Ruby couldn’t risk sending a text. A text could be intercepted, but that note could’ve been from anyone. And later that day, when Shane passed her in the school park, she leaned in and whispered, “The grain of sand retaliated.

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