him fretfully. “N-no.” He lifts the shade and opens the window, eyeing the latch carefully. I turn to my dad. “Did something happen?”
He opens his mouth to speak but then looks down the hall. Emory comes into view, his hair sticking up from sleep and a dark, violet bruise swelling under his eye. Dad’s jaw drops. “What happened to your face?” he asks at the same time Emory says, “What’s going on here?”
“Pick-up game got rowdy,” Emory says first, waving it off. Our eyes meet. It wasn’t a pick-up game and we both know it.
Dad, distracted by the police, nods in blind acceptance before saying, “Reyn was caught this morning outside our house. Jerry says he was climbing off the roof outside Vandy’s window.”
“Jerry?” I ask in a hoarse voice. “He caught Reyn?”
Dad frowns. “He had some lockpicks and some other, uh, contraband on his person.”
Contraband.
The heavy thing that’s been wedged in my throat finally drops. I press my fists into my stomach, begging Emory with my eyes to help.
I stutter out, “Well he wasn’t in here. And I’ve certainly never seen him with drugs.” I hope my voice sounds calm, confident. “You know Jerry is obsessed with him. He stopped him that day when we had our football party. Claimed he was trespassing.”
“V’s right about that,” Emory says, surprising me. “He’s always following Reyn around, busting his balls for nothing.”
Dad makes a face at the word ‘balls’ but doesn’t argue. Jerry’s harassment of Reyn in particular is pretty well known.
“There are scratch marks on the window lock over there,” the officer says, walking over. “The kind consistent with being tampered with.” He takes a few photos with his phone and stashes it in his pocket. “You sure you haven’t noticed anything missing?”
“No.” I shake my head rapidly, stomach aflame with nerves. “Nothing.”
“Well, contact us if you can think of anything,” the deputy says, nodding at the other officer to leave.
“What’s going to happen to Reyn?” I ask. “If nothing is missing, he should be okay, right?”
He makes a sharp, amused sound. “Not with the quantity of drugs he had on him. That’ll be a possession with intent to distribute charge. That’s a felony in this state.”
“Reyn’s in a lot of trouble, sweetheart,” my dad says, wrapping his arm around me to give me a tight squeeze. I remain silent and frozen. This has to be a nightmare. “I know we all thought he’d made a lot of progress, but it doesn’t seem like it. Hopefully he can get the help he needs.” He walks the officers to the door, and I feel like a statue. Like all my blood has been drained from my body and replaced with something rigid and cold.
When I finally regain my senses—realize what I need to do—I race into the hallway. I barely get a foot out the door when Emory grabs me.
“Don’t do it, V,” he says, holding me in his arms.
“They were mine,” I gasp, struggling against his hold. “He didn’t do anything wrong! A felony? He was just…”
He was helping me.
He was saving me.
He hisses, “It’s possession, Vandy! They’re not going to give a shit why he had it on him. Just having it is enough!”
“That’s not fair!” I cry, jerking away.
He blocks the door, nostrils flaring. “We need to be smart about this. Think. The cops aren’t going to let him go, no matter what you tell them. We’re past that, got it?”
I press my palms to my cheeks, stunned. “I can’t just sit here while they take him to jail!” I’ve messed up a lot of things in my life, but this?
This takes the cake.
Emory waves at the window. “He doesn’t need you going out there, spouting off about shit, and probably incriminating him further in the process. Reyn’s not stupid! He knows how this works. He can plead his case in front of a judge. That’s his best bet.”
“This can’t be happening.” I pace around my room, but Emory is right. I need to think. I need to be smart about this. I need to take a deep breath and look at this objectively. I turn to Emory and tell him something else I need. “Go get your phone and call Hamilton.”
Emory looks at me like I’m an idiot. “What the fuck is Hamilton going to do? Glare the cops to death?”
“Hamilton,” I calmly explain, “is a Devil, just like Reyn, and he’s going to give me Gwen’s number.”
The call with Gwen Adams is weird and awkward, but