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“Yeah—I gotta piss—be right back.” Darius said, and stood, leaving me alone.

“That’s insane,” Mason muttered to himself. Left to his own devices, he picked up the joint and took another drag.

I pulled my phone out. “Hey—I gotta make a call, but I don’t get any reception here.” I hit my phone against my opposite hand like it was empty. “Can I borrow yours?”

Mason blinked at me, his face dopey, his eyes a little red. “Yeah, sure.” He leaned to one side, and pulled his own phone out.

Was it…really going to be this easy?

“Heard about you and Danny.” He pulled his phone back as I reached out for it.

“You mean his lies?”

“Between him and Liam, seems like you’re working your way through the team.” He ignored me, then hovered the phone in mid-air, before landing it on his crotch. “If you want to skip ahead to me, feel free.”

My teeth grit but I kept a smile plastered high and rose up onto my knees, crawling around to face him.

“Is this what you want?” I asked, while slowly reaching my hand forward for the phone. He chuckled and leaned back, wide-pupiled eyes on me, and I reached for his phone faster than he could stop me, and yanked it back.

CHAPTER 39

Information assaulted me.

It wasn’t just Lacey—there were other girls on there—ones I knew, ones I didn’t. Bras, underwear, blurry pictures taken of unaware women, sleeping at the end of parties, drunk or drugged, crisp or blurry, ones taken with too bright of flash, with boys near them, in them, and without—but the ones that were most clear in my mind were Lacey’s.

I knew her. I loved her. And I watched Danny—over and over and over and over?—

It felt like I was on that ride at the carnival, the one that spun you around until the floor fell out, only the floor was already gone and now I was stumbling dizzily through the maze of mirrors—there weren’t an infinite number of photos, in fact I was sure I’d already seen them all, but they weren’t just here, there were some elsewhere, and others out beyond that, and even further beyond. I was seeing reflections of refractions, and each one I shattered into deletion revealed two more. How many people had he sent them too? How many more had they sent them to? It was like playing whack-a-mole, and I hated him more with every subsequent frame.

And then—the end. I was standing in a room alone, panting, with sparking pieces of code all around me. What I’d seen, all I’d seen—the horror of it caught up with me and felt like an icepick stabbing me between my eyes.

I gasped, landing back in Mason’s room, and found him leaning over me.

“Are you okay?” he asked. I was on his carpet in his bedroom. I blew breath tainted with stomach acid at him and he rocked back.

“I’m gonna thrown up,” I said, rolling to a crouch.

“Don’t puke on my phone!”

I wanted nothing more than that. To puke on his phone and everything else in his room right now, to baptize him in it until he drowned, because he wasthereand he didn’t doanythingand then he’d sent out somanypictures.

“Fuck you,” I said, throwing his phone at him, and then I ran out of his room to hurl outside.

Darius caught up to me, catching my breath against the side of his car. “You okay?”

“You’re a cunt, Jessie. Who’s going to clean that up?” Mason leaned out of his house, pointing at the mess I’d made near his driveway.

“You can’t even see it, really,” Darius said, trying to calm both of us.

I looked over at Darius. “I have to go. Now.”

He didn’t know what I’d seen, but—“It’s free.” He fished the rest of his stash out of a pocket and tossed it to Mason. “On the house. Just this once.”

Mason caught it and considered this. “All right. I’ll get a hose. Don’t bring her back here again.”

“I won’t,” Darius said, and opened up my door. I slid in and curled into a ball in the seat. I was trembling, I was crying, snot was leaking—I was not in charge of who I was—things were happening to me, while my mind just kept trying to get away from seeing Lacey. Every time I blinked though, she was there.

“I thought I was supposed to be your sober driver?” I whimpered.