Sugar Rush Read Free Page B

but I’m too filled with excitement to even care at this point. I turn toward Dallas and I’m beyond giddy when he takes my hand in his.
    “Come on, gorgeous,” he says as we start to walk away. “This will be a night to remember.”
    I totally know it will. Grandiose ideas fill my head of Dallas coming by my school to see me; maybe taking me to the spring dance. I swear I won’t strut too much as we walk by Bryce and his mouth hangs open in disbelief. I look over my shoulder to see Whitney chewing on her bottom lip with worry, and I wave. She doesn’t return it.
    We all exit the mall to the upper-level parking garage, Dallas holding my hand while David and Blake walk ahead of us. They lead us over to a later-model Nissan that’s got dark tinted windows, multiple stickers on the bumper, and a huge dent in the rear quarter panel. Blake takes the driver’s door, David the front passenger, and Dallas and I crawl into the backseat.
    “So, this party is supposed to be in some mansion or some shit; mostly college kids, but no one will say shit to us,” Dallas tells me. “We’re all eighteen.”
    Not me, I think, but I’m not about to tell him that. He doesn’t ask, and I’m thankful.
    Blake starts the car and a rap song I don’t recognize comes on.
    David drums his hands on the dashboard in quick succession and yells, “Yeah…spark that owl.”
    Dallas laughs and pops his hand on the back of David’s headrest. “Hand me a stick, man.”
    I’m lost already, no clue what they’re talking about. David reaches into the glove compartment, pulls something out, and hands it over his head to Dallas.
    He takes it, reaches into his front pocket, and pulls out a lighter. Then he puts a thin white joint to his mouth and lights it. I stare in fascination as his cheeks hollow and the cherry on the end glows bright. It’s not the first joint I’ve seen, because hell, the kids in my neighborhood stroll around in broad daylight smoking them, but it is the first time I’ve been in such close proximity.
    Dallas holds the smoke in his lungs and exhales slowly, before passing it over to me with a wink. “Want a hit?”
    I know I should pay attention to the warning bells going off inside my head, and the small tingle of fear in my belly, but then I think of Bryce calling me a kid and I know without a doubt I don’t want to be viewed that way.
    Besides…it’s my sixteenth birthday and I deserve to have some fun. “You’ll get me home by midnight, right?”
    “Absolutely,” he says with a broad grin.
    I can’t help it as I smile back, I take the joint from his hand, and bring it to my lips.
    —
    PRESENT TIME…
    “That will be fifty dollars,” the cab driver says, jolting me out of my memories. I turn my head to the right and see the familiar gray house of my childhood.
    I pull my one and only credit card out of my wallet and swipe it through the digital reader attached to the seat in front of me. I wait for it to process and add a 15 percent tip, realizing that for the first time in forever I can use my card without worrying that it’s going to max out.
    Thanks, Beck.
I really appreciate all the money you’ve given me to pay for school. It means I can actually afford things like a long cab ride out to Belle Haven.
    I thank the cabbie and exit the vehicle, trudging up the sidewalk. I’m weary and I’m sad and this is the only place I thought to come. My apartment is foreign to me, having left that life firmly behind when I committed to moving in with Beck. It didn’t seem right to go there, and all I could think about was crawling into my bed and sleeping away my misery.
    Tomorrow I’d look at things with a fresh eye and a clear heart, and figure out where to go from there. I suppose I’d need to go back to my apartment, and hope that Beck will quickly deliver my clothes so I can have something to wear. I also need my phone, and I have class tomorrow at one P.M ., but I’m thinking of skipping. Right now my