Wicked Games by Sean Olin Read Free Book Online Page B

make the mess she’d created any bigger. “Yeah. I’m . . . I’m okay,” she said. “Just, he’s not answering his phone.”
    “You know Carter,” his mom responded. “It’s Saturday. He’s not going to be awake till noon.”
    “He didn’t answer last night, either, though. I called him, like . . .” Afraid she’d said too much already, and not wanting Carter’s mom to think she was crazy, Lilahstopped herself. “I called him. And I sent him some texts. He’s, like, disappeared.”
    “I’m sure his phone just died,” said Carter’s mom. “You sure you’re all right, sweetie? You sound a little—”
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Moore. I’ve got to go. Thanks!”
    Lilah hung up before Carter’s mom could probe any further.
    In a daze, she stared at the pink walls of her room, at the line of intertwined roses her father had painted along the baseboards, at the white dresser and the white bedside table and the white carpeting on the floor. She studied the poster of Allison Schmitt—an action shot of Allison bobbing out of the water, with her arm stretched in front of her as she won her gold medal in London—that she hadn’t had the nerve to take down after her own dreams of Olympic competition had combusted.
    Then, finally, her eyes drifted to the huge, round mirror above the antique cherrywood dressing table she’d inherited from her grandmother. Among the photos she’d taped there was one she especially cherished. CARTER + LILAH carved to that bench. “Forever,” he’d said.
    But did
forever
really mean forever? Maybe not, after what Lilah had done last night. She couldn’t help but wondering if he’d taken the first steps toward leaving her—if he’d hooked up with some other girl after she’d left, it would explain why he hadn’t been answering his phone. The old familiar hurt tickled the edges of herheart, that dark hopelessness she sometimes felt when she was alone, the flip side of her manic behavior the night before. She felt herself moving across the room, sitting on the stool in front of the mirror. Staring at that photo like she was in a trance.
    Her hand reached down and opened the bottom drawer of the dressing table. It was like she was in a dream, like she was watching herself do this. She rummaged through the old lipsticks and mascara cases there, digging around until she found what she was looking for. There it was: the tiny cartridge of razor blades she’d managed to keep hidden from her mother.
    As her fingers touched them, she shuddered, horrified at herself.
    “Stop it,” she told herself. “Don’t do it.”
    She threw the cartridge back into the drawer and slammed it shut.
    Throwing on a pair of baggy gray sweatpants and a black sports bra, she slammed out of her room and stomped down the stairs and through the bright sunlit kitchen of her house.
    “Mom, I’m taking your car,” she called out.
    Then, before her parents had time to surface from wherever they were and interrogate her, she grabbed the key to her mom’s Dodge Caravan off the hook by the garage door and headed off to Jeff’s house in search of Carter.

9
    Jules took her time walking home.
    She lived on the southern side of town, in a neighborhood called the Slats because all the houses there were the same gray clapboards, perched on stilts, lined up tight next to one another. It was a three-mile walk from the ritzy opulence of Jeff’s neighborhood, but today Jules didn’t mind.
    She swung her sandals in her hand and brazenly trespassed through the five or six private beaches between Jeff’s house and the hotels, watching the perfect rows of red and blue umbrellas lined up above the sun-bleached chaise lounges grow incrementally closer. She waved at the strangers parked under these umbrellas—the fewwho were out at this early hour. She tracked the waves as they tumbled and crashed. She watched the early-morning surfers catching waves, the seagulls hopping along the shore, and a few bright-eyed