The scent of jasmine oil floats in the air, part of my Zen routine, but even that has lost its appeal. My tear ducts have called it quits, not a single tear left. It’s that time of the month. Some girls call it having their period. I haven’t yet found a word that adequately describes my torment.
Someone knocks on the door. Mom must have changed her mind about leaving me alone.
“Go away,” I squeak. I’m too weak and hoarse from crying for my voice to be heard, but I try anyway. “Go away, please.”
The knocking gets louder. I don’t have the energy to fight her, so I just lie there, bracing myself for her impending freakout. She usually calls dad to help get me onto the bed because she can’t do it by herself, but dad isn’t home right now. I know Kindergartners bigger than my mom.
“Cooper, are you in there?”
I shut my eyes tight. The pain must be causing me to hallucinate. I haven’t seen him in two years, although we’ve kept in touch through email, calls, and text messages. My heart knows it’s him, though. Besides, he’s the only person in the world who calls me by my last name.
“Cooper, are you okay in there?”
He can’t see me like this. I want to get off the floor, but my body isn’t cooperating. I stretch my legs out, but my stomach protests. More cramping. I whimper like an injured puppy.
The door opens in slow motion and in walks Ty Whistler Rambally—the boy who knows all my secrets, things I haven’t told my girlfriends or anyone else. He’s the one who made me feel strong and fearless when Mom was away from us, in jail. The one I thought would be my first, but that turned out to be a joke. On me.
“Over here,” I say, like a flower wilting in the summer heat.
He looks down and finds me between the bed and the sofa. Yes, I have a sofa in my bedroom. It’s ivory. I was going for an elegant, classy look.
“Cooper, what’s wrong? Why are you on the floor?” He kneels over me, panic in his eyes. “Are you hurt?”
“Nothing to worry about. What are you doing here?” I try to sit up again and fail.
He slides one arm under my legs and supports my back with the other. “I’m taking you to the bed.”
“I’m fine. You don’t have to do that.”
“You’re not fine, and I’m not leaving you on the floor. End of argument.”
I don’t get the chance to continue my whining because he just scoops me up and plops me down in the middle of the bed like it was nothing. Like he just reached out and picked a leaf from a low-hanging tree branch. He leans in, both arms dipping into the mattress.
“Tell me why you were on the floor, and don’t say it’s nothing.”
The boy (now almost twenty) I’ve been in love with since freshman year of high school went off to Yale and came back with double shots of smooth, chocolate hotness. Everything about him is blatantly masculine: the way his clothes fit, the scent of him, his liquid brown eyes with green flecks that connote he knows things he shouldn’t. Naughty things. I shouldn’t think of him in this manner, not now, not ever again. He chose someone else, and I got friend-zoned. For most girls, that would suck. For me, it worked out. Ty would do anything I ask of him.
“It’s better to stay out of that storm. Shouldn’t you be on campus?”
He sits on the edge of the bed, inches from me. “After you called me last night, I had to come see you right away. I didn’t have classes today, and it’s a quick, two-hour drive. You’re in pain. What’s wrong, Cooper?”
I keep my hands firmly on my belly. I know him well enough to know he won’t let this go.
“It’s that time of the month.”
“Is it always this bad?”
“Yes. Now, can we talk about something else, please?”
“No, we can’t. What does your doctor say?”
“Are you serious? You drove all the way from New Haven to discuss my period?” I can’t believe I just asked him that. Someone should just shoot me now.
“It’s important.”
“Since when?”
“Since I walked in here and found you on the floor.”
I grimace as another wave of cramps attack. Ty disappears into the bathroom. I hear water running and have no clue what he’s up to. He returns with a small white towel and comes around the edge of the bed again.
“Tell me if this is too hot.” He rests the towel on my arm.
“It’s fine. What’s it for?”
“Take your hands off your abdomen.”
“What? No.”
“Cooper, if you don’t do it, I’ll do it for you.”
“I don’t like being bossed around.”
He chuckles. “I remember. You like to be the one doing the bossing around.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
I remove my hands from my sore midsection. He lifts up my top, and I shiver from the brief contact.
“There,” he says, placing the warm towel over my stomach. “That should help soothe the cramps.”
The warm towel is soothing, but I have to get rid of him. I’m about to throw up. My vomit all over his sweater is not a look he would go for.
“Thank you. Can you do me one last favor? Ask Mom for a cup of mint tea. She already made some this morning. Just zap it in the microwave for thirty seconds.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Once he’s out the door, I bolt from the bed and make it to the bathroom just in time to puke my guts out. When it’s over, I sit on the cold marble floor and lean up against the tub for support. I should start feeling better soon.
I drag myself off the floor and then rinse my mouth with Listerine. After I make it to the bed, I sit up with my legs tucked under me, using the pillows to prop me up. Ty walks in, balancing a teacup and saucer. He places it on the nightstand next to the bed.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better.”
“So, what did the doctor say about the cramping?” Ty asks. He perches next to me and blows out a series of short breaths.
“She wants me to take birth control pills. I won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because…Because…I just don’t want to. They have side effects and—”
“Almost every drug has side effects. The birth control pills will help with the cramps and control the bleeding so you’ll have lighter periods.”
“Yes, Dr. Rambally.”
He smiles. “Not yet. Two more years at Yale, and four years of Harvard Medical School.”
Ty wants to be a cardiothoracic surgeon and has his career planned out, like me. He actually has a chart. As the only child of two successful surgeons, the pressure he feels can be overwhelming, even though he doesn’t talk about it much.
His mother, Jenny, a former Miss Bahamas, is one of the top Reproductive Endocrinologists and Fertility Specialists in the country and lectures all over the world. His dad, Bobby, a Guyanese Indian, who loves cricket, is a well-known plastic surgeon.
“So, you’ve already settled on Harvard for medical school?”
“Yep. What about you? Where are you applying?”
“Duke, Brown, Princeton, Yale, and Johns-Hopkins. I also have Cornell in the mix.”
He perks up. “I didn’t know you were applying to Yale. That’s great.”
“It would be silly not to consider Yale, especially because of their track record in medicine.”
“I’ll save all my notes for you, give you the lowdown on the professors.”
“I would have to get in first and decide to attend. Your lecture notes would give me an unfair advantage over the incoming freshman class.”
“I don’t care. I want my girl to have every advantage possible. You deserve it.”
“Thanks.”
Ty scoots off the bed and paces the length of the room. He stops in front of my homework desk, rocking the chair back and forth. “Can I see the picture? It could have been faked.”
“At first, I thought it might be. But deep down, I know it’s the real thing.�
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I crawl to the edge of the bed and stick my hand under the mattress, pulling out the envelope. Ty gives me a look as if I’m some peculiar creature.
“What? It’s a great hiding spot. Can you imagine if my brother walked in here and found it? Or my parents?”
“I’m not judging,” he says with a lopsided grin.
I place the photo in his outstretched hand. He stares at it for what seems like forever before handing it back to me.
“This is bad. If this photo gets out, the damage could be irreparable.”
“I know.”
“It looks like you’re about to snort cocaine.”
I cringe at his observation. “I crushed the pills into powder. Sometimes, I would put it in orange juice or food.”
“Do you have any idea when it was taken?”
“That was two years ago, and I’ve tried hard to forget that I ever took Adderall. I was too scared to take the pills at home, so I would get to school a few minutes early, head to the student lounge, and take it there.”
“There’s no mistaking it’s you in the photo. Whoever took it must have been highly motivated. It was snapped without you knowing.”
“I must have been careless that day.”
“It’s the spiral. When it starts to get out of control, you get careless. Why didn’t you tell me you were struggling?”
“I was ashamed. I was already leaning on you way too hard because of my mom’s legal problems. I couldn’t dump that on you too. I couldn’t tell you that Dr. Kellogg called me into his office and said in that nice way of his that I had to get my act together, or I was out of Saint Matthews, for good. I had fallen behind with most of my schoolwork because I didn’t care. Nothing mattered besides getting Mom out of jail.”
Ty starts pacing again, muttering to himself.
“Did you tell anyone at all about this? I don’t understand how the person who took the pic knew you were taking Adderall in the first place—and that the student lounge was your spot. We have to find Kyle Davidson. He’s the only one who can answer those questions.”
“I never told anyone. Not even my girlfriends. It’s illegal Ty, what I did. Purchasing a drug like that without a prescription is a felony. The funny thing is, Kyle purchased my supply for me because I didn’t want to go to the place where people bought it and be seen. That didn’t work out, did it?”
He comes to stand in front of the bed. “Stop beating yourself up. You made a mistake. You trusted someone you thought had as much to lose as you did.”
“I’m still not ready to throw the blame at him. I just don’t see him snitching on me, especially since he was known in certain circles as the go-to guy. He wouldn’t implicate himself.”
“And you have no idea why this person is blackmailing you?”
“No.”
I let Ty in on my Sidney suspicions, the texts, the note, and the failure of the surveillance footage to provide any proof of who’s behind the scheme.
“Why you? The way I figure it, if she knew you were taking Adderall, she would know about the others too.”
“I wondered the same thing. She could be blackmailing a bunch of people for all we know, but I don’t believe that’s the case.”
His eyes darken. “What makes you say that?”
“Adderall exits the system fast, ten to twelve hours maximum, depending on how you take it: slow release or the faster route. Even if she knows all who were using, that was two years ago. She can’t prove a thing.”
“Except when it comes to you. That photo is a gold mine for her plans, whatever they are.”
“A noose around my neck. With every call, every threat, every message, it gets tighter and tighter.”
He plops down next to me on the bed. Neither one of us says anything. My actions amount to a volcano no one knew existed until the day it erupts. Callie, Frances, and Christian are still at Saint Matthews. They will be the ones burned by the ashes. My parents will be angry and disappointed, but they’ll find a way to deal. I don’t have answers, but I feel relieved that I’ve shared the secret with Ty.
His jaw is set tight. Part of me feels guilty for dumping my problems on him, again. I can’t stand the tension in him, so I change the subject to distract him.
“So how’s you love life? Do you have a girlfriend?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Come on, Cooper,” he says, and then he scurries off the bed.
“What?” I ask innocently. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Ty. You’re a smart, handsome college sophomore at a huge university with lots of intelligent, beautiful women. Don’t tell me you haven’t sampled the candy. I won’t believe you.”
“We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“We should. We’ve discussed my period and a mysterious stalker since you’ve been here. Spill your guts. Who are you seeing? Are you using protection every time? You can’t be too careful these days.”
“Stop it, Cooper!”
He stands next to the dresser across from the bed, stiff as a board. I won’t relent.
“Your mother deals with the female reproductive system for a living, and you’re going to be a doctor one day. Please tell me you’re not afraid to talk about s-e-x.”
“That’s not it. I just don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss with you.”
“Oh,” I say, offended. “I didn’t realize we were only sort of friends. Spell it out for me like I’m a simpleton so I don’t get confused in the future.”
I know I sound mean. Blame it on hormones or the anger that rears its head because someone is out to get me. Whatever.
“You know that’s not true,” he says, edging closer to the bed. “You’re still my best friend.”
“Then stop treating me like a kid. If you’re going to behave this way, I suggest you tell me what the rules of this friendship are. A list of topics that are safe to discuss and the ones that are off limits. I thought we could talk about anything.”
“I’m sorry. I know you’re not a kid. It’s just awkward talking to you about it.”
“Because?”
“Okay, I was seeing someone, but not anymore. It was only for a couple of months.”
“Tell me about her.”
He tells me about Vanessa Miller, a BioMed engineering major from Brooklyn. Her family is Jamaican, and they bonded over having West Indian parents who push them hard. Soon, the very thing they had in common got in the way. They were both ambitious and quickly realized it wasn’t going to work.
“Now, did that kill you?”
He blushes. “I guess not.”
“Your turn.”
“For what?”
“Not fair. You have to talk about who you’re dating. Last time I checked, you weren’t, but things could have changed. Did they?”
I think of Christian. How he’s chipping away at my inhibitions and doubt. How he’s a great kisser and a smooth talker, and I don’t have to censor myself when I’m around him. How he makes my hands clammy, and my heart beat faster.
“Look at that smile. You are seeing someone,” Ty says as if accusing me of some grave crime. “You’ve been holding out on me, Cooper. This is big news. Who is he?”
“Christian Wheeler.”
I notice his hands twitch and his nostrils flare. “Oh, wow. Wow. That’s great. Surprising, but great.”
“What’s wrong with Christian?”
“Nothing. I just didn’t think you would go for someone like him.”
“Someone like him? Care to explain?”
“Entitled, arrogant, treats women like disposable toys.”
“Tell me how you feel, Ty.”
“I’m just saying I thought you would go for someone more wholesome, safe, and kind. Someone who would treat you like a princess and not another name to be entered onto some list of conquests.”
“You mean someone like you?”
He fiddles with the sleeves of his sweater. “Christian could hurt you
, badly. If that happens, it will upset me for a long time.”
I touch his forearm. “I can handle myself. There’s a lot more to him than rumors. This is unexpected for me too, Ty. Christian goes after what he wants, no hesitation, and no ambivalence. With him, I don’t have to wonder where I stand because he holds nothing back. He’s funny and charming. He makes me feel like no one else compares to me.”
“You and how many others?”
“Don’t be like that, Ty. I’m not stupid. Just be happy for me that I have fun with someone I really like.”
“Watch yourself. I don’t want to have to punch him in the face.”
“What am I going to do with you?”
“I mean it. I’ll hurt him if he hurts you.”
“It won’t come to that.”
CHAPTER 14
I return to school the next day, on edge. The Avenger said something would be waiting for me, proof that the photo wasn’t fake. It’s been forty-eight hours since we had that conversation. The bell will ring in ten minutes. The hallway is bustling with the usual morning routine. I snake my way through the crowd. I have to make it to my locker, grab the note before Christian shows up, and make it to class on time.
My heart beats faster. Is my stress showing? I remove a lock of hair from my face and tuck it behind my ears. My text message ringtone goes off. I shouldn’t check to see who it’s from, but I’m wound up and can’t help it.
BLOCKED NUMBER
Does Christian know you’re a drug addict? Someone should warn him.
Justice will be served.
The Avenger
“Hey, Abbie.”
I spin around too fast and catch a major case of whiplash. I rub my neck. It’s Trevor.
“Hey, Trevor, what’s up?” I say, dropping the phone into my pocket.
“Are you okay?” he asks, falling into step with me. “You look terrible. Your eyes, they’re all wild and crazy.”
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