dubiously effective. Long enough to ignite a spark of resentful anger at Emory for holding me there, for fighting with me, when his sister was…
I hear a wet sputter and my eyes lurch away from the screen.
Vandy’s face is screwed up in a grimace, turning away from the spray of water.
I drop the phone, falling to my knees and cupping her cold, wet cheek. “Hey, hey, look at me! Wake up, V! Come on, look at me.”
She blinks against the water, cringing away. “Huh?”
“How many,” I demand, forcing her chin toward me. “How many did you take?”
Her bleary eyes finally fix to mine, a weak hand rising to block the spray. “Reyn? What?”
“Come on, V, focus!” I give her cheek a firm tap. “How many pills did you take?”
Something in her eyes shifts, growing a little more alert. When it does, her face falls. “Fireflies,” she mumbles.
My jaw locks. “Listen to my voice, V! How many!”
“Two!” she yells back, feebly shoving my hands away. “I took two! God…”
“Two?” My eyes dart back toward the room, to the pile of pills on her bed. “Are you sure?”
She wraps her arms around herself, shivering. “It was just my normal dose. Think it knocked me out.”
Reluctantly, I reach over to turn the water off. My hands aren’t trembling any less violently. “Jesus Christ.” I slump to the floor, my back against the tub. My heart feels like I’ve been running laps all damn day. My head is pounding, lungs aching. “Jesus Christ, Vandy. You don’t have a tolerance anymore. That’s how overdoses happen.” The words are rote, mechanical. I can’t even bring myself to look back at her. If I do, she’s going to see this wild, terrified thing that’s not letting go of me.
“What are you doing here?” she curtly asks. I can hear her teeth chattering and I should do something about it, but my limbs are just numb. “Why are you all bloody and—?”
“The plans I had,” I let my elbows dig into my knees when I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, pushing against them until I saw sparks, “were that your brother wanted to kick my ass.”
There’s a loud, horrible squeaking sound from the tub when she shifts, sitting up. Her voice is flat, lifeless. “Because of what you did with Sydney.”
“No, Vandy.” I finally crane my neck to meet her glazed blue eyes. “Because of what I did with you.” She’s shivering harder now—just as hard as I am—wrapping her arms around her knees. “There is no Sydney. If you would have given me the chance to explain, I could have told you that it was all a dumb trick.”
She blinks at me lazily and I hate it. I hate the flat look in her eyes and the way her head lolls on her neck. “The picture—”
“Was completely fucking staged. And I have the video to prove it.” I lift my phone. It hadn’t been easy to convince Fiona to send it to me. It had been less easy to force her to permanently delete the copy on her phone, and then the one on ChattySnap.
She repeats a slow, teeth-chattering, “Staged.”
I try again to turn on the phone, but it suddenly dawns on me why it won’t. “Son of a bitch,” I growl, shaking the water from the case. All that rain from the roof had gone straight into my fucking pockets. I deflate, flinging it aside. “Phone’s fucked. I might need a little more time to—maybe some rice, or—”
“It’s okay.” She doesn’t look like it’s okay. She looks miserable. “Why would she do that?”
“Because she’s jealous, V.”
“Of me?”
I shrug. “Yes. And me. And the Devils, and the Playthings.” I still remember the bitterness in her eyes, and the despair hidden underneath it. “Sydney wanted to hurt us.”
“I know.” She looks away, chin dipping. “I know she did.”
“Where did you get all those pills?”
Softly, she answers, “Around. I had them stashed in… places.”
I take a second to wrap my head around that, the fact that Vandy’s been sitting on a fucking mountain of narcotics. I point to the space beside the toilet, voice accusing. “You stood there—right there—and promised me that was the last.”
I don’t hear anything for a long moment, and when I do, it’s just the wet sound of a sob. It startles me into finally turning to her, eyes landing on her shivering form, curled in on itself.
“I lied,” she says. “I didn’t want you to know that I—”