Narc by Crissa-Jean Chappell Read Free Book Online Page A

after a smoking accessory?”
    “It’s the perfect name. Not to mention, the classic design of the nineties.”
    “I prefer Circle of Hell,” said Morgan.
    “Hey. Did you hear about the hole they dug in Siberia?”
    “Who’s ‘they’?”
    “I don’t know. These scientists or something. They dropped a microphone into the hole and they heard people screaming down there, like an entrance to hell.”
    Morgan fiddled with the radio, clicking past static. She settled on 90.5, “our local college station,” The Voice. “Why would they drop a microphone into the hole?”
    “No idea. I looked it up online. It doesn’t really sound like hell, though,” I told her. “More like Dadeland Mall on a Saturday afternoon.”
    “Now that is the seventh circle of hell.”
    Both of us giggled over this for a while. We could’ve talked about the most random shit and that was cool with me. I’d never felt like that before. This was majorly weird because: number one, I could be myself with Morgan. But on the other hand, I wasn’t being myself at all. I was nervous and not nervous at the same time. Weird.
    She revved the engine, and we punched through a red light. My pulse was beating everywhere, in my throat and fingertips, and although I wasn’t driving or smoking, I was the one who felt guilty.

6 : The Party House
    The party house was the real deal. According to Morgan, some big-shot architect designed it for Skully’s rich parents. The triple-decker building overlooked Biscayne Bay. You’d think they wouldn’t need a pool, but they had that, too—Olympic-sized, heated, and filled with salt water.
    We pulled around the corner, past the D EAD E ND S TREET signs. Headlights speared the palm leaves. A million cars had parked on the grass, long rows of tank-sized SUVs and sharklike convertibles. People scattered into the street, clutching bottles, smoking cigarettes.
    “There’s Danica Stone,” I said, pointing to a girl in a sparkly tube top, remembering her nails on my arm last year.
    Morgan made a face. “That skank freaks me out. Why is she here?”
    “Everyone is here,” I said.
    And it was true. Man, I was already starting to shake.
    I climbed out and started walking with the crowd.
    “It’s like trick-or-treating,” Morgan said.
    “That explains your costume.”
    “Shut up, Mr. Abercrombie,” she said. “This dress is not a costume. It’s vintage.”
    I wanted to tell her that everyone was in costume, whether they knew it or not. Me most of all.
    Skully’s driveway was paved with gravel. My sneakers crunched as I made my way across it.
    “Sounds like somebody eating a bowl of cereal.” Morgan laughed and I laughed, too.
    “Where’s the front door?” I asked.
    Up close, the house was even more confusing, like an abstract painting. Or a prison. Only a single row of windows stretches across the middle of the place, up on the second floor.
    “At the top of those stairs,” she said, pointing toward the other end of the building. “But nobody goes that way.”
    The steps were hidden by a wall. At the bottom, a skinny strip of concrete extended parallel to the driveway, narrow as a sidewalk. A couple of skaters were taking turns rattling across it and jumping off a plastic milk crate.
    Morgan called out to an older dude with a bucket hat and a mustache so long, it curled at the edges. “Hey, Finch. Want me to teach you how to skate?”
    “Bite me,” he said, not looking.
    But when he noticed it was Morgan talking, he collapsed into a grin. She kissed him on the cheek—the standard Miami greeting. I twisted the rubber band tighter around my wrist.
    He looked me up and down. “Nice bracelet.”
    I stopped messing with the rubber band. “Thanks. It was a present.”
    He laughed as if I’d told an especially funny joke. I just stared at the ground, at the cigarette butts swimming in the gravel.
    Morgan kept talking as we filed through the front door. Or was it the back door?
    “Finch is like, the