Page 41 of Caution to the Wind

Kate should have been there enjoying this moment with her family, and if she couldn’t be here, I’d enjoy it enough for the both of us.

Lin raised her camera, and the flash went off.

“Smile,” Henning said, leaning slightly into me and speaking out the corner of his mouth. “You look beautiful, Mei.”

I closed my eyes briefly, swallowing the sweet poison, and then forced myself to smile brighter.

His hand squeezed the curve of my waist. “I’m sorry Daiyu can’t be here for you, and Old Dragon has to stay with her.” He didn’t add that he was staying with her because we didn’t want her to be alone when she passed, and that could happen any day––no, moment––now. “I know it’s a poor as hell substitute, but it wouldn’t be the same for Cleo and me if we couldn’t share this with you, too.”

He was trying to kill me. Clearly.

Guilt crashed over me. Here I was lusting after Henning when I’d committed myself to taking care of him and Cleo in Kate’s stead. What kind of selfish creature was I?

“I’m sorry Kate can’t be here,” I echoed his sentiment, the words brittle and cracking to pieces on my tongue. “I know it’s a poor as hell substitute, but I wouldn’t be able to do this without you guys.”

Henning made a little noise of sympathy and understanding in the back of his throat before turning to press a kiss into my hair. Cleo poked her head around his side and grinned at me. When I stuck out my tongue at her, she giggled, and there was yet anotherflashas Lin captured the moment.

Lin peered down at the photo on the screen of the camera and grinned. “Henning and his girls.”

Henning and his girls.

And there I was, aching with the desire to be hiswoman.

Damn, I was so going to hell one day.

And maybe, if I’d been a better person, one who didn’t lust after impossible men, I’d have noticed the tinted windowed black sedan that crawled down the street a little too slowly, the glimmer of a camera lens flashing out the back window.

But I didn’t, and I wasn’t.

And that was the night everything went to hell, not just my soul.

MEI

Brian stood me up.

Cleo couldn’t believe it, and I got a little satisfaction from seeing my sweet friend so outraged. She even stomped her heeled foot in indignation and shook her fist in the air like an angry Italian.

Honestly, I didn’t give a fuck.

Brian always smelled like bong water and cigarettes. The idea of dancing with him was enough to make me gag, so I hadn’t been looking forward to it.

But the asshole was supposed to help me out with the after-party at Turner Farm. I didn’t know the first thing about dealing drugs, and truthfully, I’d just figured I’d stand by while Brian did the dirty deed. I wasn’t in it to make money. I was in it to buy enough street cred to figure out what happened to Kate.

And now, I was on my own with a backpack waiting in my locker filled with cocaine and marijuana.

I was also alone, sitting on a white-clothed table, sipping from a plastic cup of overly sweet punch while I watched Cleo and her date swirl around the dance floor. The gym was decked out in glittering streamers, blue and silver balloons, and a large banner that said Congratulations Class of 2015. It was all so cheesy and juvenile to me. I wanted to be by Daiyu’s bedside with Old Dragon. At the Axelsen house watching TV with Cleo or chatting at the kitchen table with Henning and Lin. Anywhere felt better than here. I felt like a fraud for even trying to fit in.

But Ma had encouraged me to go. She wanted me to have as many normal high school experiences as I could even though she knew, unlike Dad, that I wasn’t a typical high school girl.

You only live once, she said, and the sentiment coming from my mother lying in hospice was enough to bring me to my knees.

I felt the weight of both Daiyu and Kate with me as I sat there, like they were ghosts pressing reassuring hands to each shoulder. I wanted to live for both of them, soak up as many experiences as I could because they were both robbed of their fill too young.

A couple of brave souls had come over to ask me to dance, but they didn’t even seem surprised when I turned them down. I didn’t like to be touched, and the idea of being held close by a sweaty-palmed teenage boy wearing too much body spray was repugnant. Besides, I knew they were only attracted to the makeup and the red satin halter neck dress Ma had helped me order online.

Red, she’d insisted,for luck.

The only thing I’d need luck for tonight was drug dealing at the after-party, and I didn’t think that was what Ma had in mind, but it still made me feel good to wear it. I’d facetimed her and Old Dragon from the Axelsen house for a few minutes, and she’d cried seeing me in her favourite colour. I’d almost cried, too, because it was a rare feeling to see my parents so proud of me, and because I knew this was one of the last times she’d have the opportunity to.