Page 17 of Pride High 3: Yellow

“For what?”

“I don’t want you to freak out. Or worry all the time.”

Ricky already felt himself growing concerned. “About what?”

“I got busted selling weed.”

Ricky worked his jaw before he could get any words to come out. “But you only sell to your dad’s old friends. You said it was safe!”

“It is!” Diego glared before he seemed to reconsider. “Normally. It didn’t happen here in Pride. I was halfway to Texas. There were these guys at a gas station in Oklahoma. One of them smelled weed on me and offered to pay for a tank of gas if I hooked him up. So I did. It would have been fine if an off-duty police officer hadn’t noticed and called his buddies. They pulled me over and got me into cuffs before I decided to get the hell out of there.”

“In your car?” Ricky asked, not hiding his confusion.

Diego averted his eyes again. “Nah. I just ran for the hills.”

“And left Frankenstein behind?”

“I figured I could circle back around,” Diego said, sounding defensive. “And uh… I was kind of drunk.”

Ricky tried to bite down on his tongue. He knew that Diego had a wild streak and even liked that about him, but he cared much more about his well-being. “You smelled like weed,” he reiterated. “Which means you’d been smoking that day. And you already admitted you were drunk. While driving to Texas.”

“I was having a bad day,” Diego grumbled.

“Where were you going? To El Paso?”

“Yeah. To live with my grandma. I thought if I could lose the cops and make it there…” Diego shook his head. “I dunno.”

Ricky quietly organized the food that Diego had bought while resisting the urge to say the sort of things his mother would.You could have been hurt! How am I supposed to sleep at night when you behave like this?Not wanting to embarrass himself, he turned his thoughts to that former day in school, when he still viewed Diego as nothing more than a bully, never imagining that he’d been arrested in another state. “What happened after you ran off?”

“I tried getting out of the handcuffs, but my arms were behind my back. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Oklahoma, but once you get outside a town, there’s nothing but weird red clay. At least western Kansas has tons of cows. Anyway, all the cops had to do was hang out next to Frankenstein. They knew I’d come back for him. And I did.”

Ricky furrowed his brow. “And then what? Did they hit you? I remember the bruise on your cheek.”

Diego’s head shook. His cinnamon-brown eyes moved to the fire and became unfocused. “Like I said, I was having a bad day.”

Ricky swallowed. “You were running away from home.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Because of your mom?”

Diego’s eyes locked onto his, the fire now trapped in his gaze. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But—”

“Don’t!” Diego growled.

Ricky stared at him a moment. “You can come live with me,” he said. “If it ever gets bad again.”

Diego narrowed his eyes and his lip began to snarl. After clenching his jaw a few more times, he said, “Are you hungry?”

“Yes!” Ricky said, doing his best to set his concerns aside. For now. He knew that Diego didn’t open himself to just anyone and didn’t want to lose the privilege. Still, once they were roasting wieners over the fire, he couldn’t contain his curiosity.

“So what happened when you made it back to Frankenstein? Did you get thrown in jail?”

A dimple appeared in one of Diego’s cheeks. “They took me down to the station and just about lost it when they realized that I’m a minor.”

“You sure don’t look like one!” Ricky said, letting his eyes wander.