Free Growing and Kissing by Helena Newbury Page B

weed.”

 
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
    Louise
     
    The next day, after my shift at the garden store, I went to visit Kayley. I’d already decided that I wasn’t going to tell her about the plan. If she knew what I was doing she’d start talking sense into me, repeating all the things that were already keeping me awake at night: that I’d get caught, or shot, that people would find out what I’d done and hate us. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to so easily push all the protests aside, when they came from her. And even if I did ignore her and go ahead, all she’d have to do would be to threaten to go to the cops and then I’d have no choice but to shut down. She had to stay totally oblivious.
    I’d thought I was going to have to fake happiness with Kayley, but it was surprising how easy it was to slip into it. We’d spent so much of our lives together, there was a kind of inertia that the disease couldn’t stop. We talked about boys at school and getting her a new backpack; about whether she was allowed to watch that cop show, Blue & Red, on Netflix (no, way too much sex and violence); about new Ben and Jerry’s flavors we’d like to see.
    And then I made the mistake of mentioning last year’s vacation. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I tried to scrape together enough for us to go somewhere each summer: last year had been camping in the Los Padres forest. Kayley grinned excitedly. “This summer—” she started.
    And then she stopped. And her lip trembled.
    I pulled her quickly into a hug. “Hey,” I said, stroking her hair. She was starting to tremble. “ Hey! It’ll be fine. We’ll just make it fall, instead of summer.”
    She gulped and nodded. But when she eventually pulled back from me, her face was white. “Can we plan it?” she asked.
    I looked at her, thrown for a second.
    “Can we plan it?” she asked again. “Really plan it?”
    And then I understood.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Absolutely.” We got out her phone and started planning where we were going to go, once she’d recovered, and what we were going to do when we got there. Every meal. Every last detail. Because both of us needed to feel like it was really going to happen.
    While we were browsing hotels, she suddenly said out of nowhere, “This isn’t bullshit, is it?”
    For once, I didn’t pull her up on her language. “No,” I said firmly. I grabbed her hand and squeezed. “It’s not bullshit.”
    And I told myself it wasn’t.
    I’d been wavering since the talk with Sean the night before. I knew I needed his help and I was glad of it. But getting mixed up with him changed the whole feel of the thing. When it was just me doing it, in my apartment, I could almost kid myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It felt just like growing any other plant. But as soon as I started working with him, it felt like I would become part of the whole system, a drug grower connected with dealers and enforcers and God knows who else.
    I knew it made sense. I knew I couldn’t operate in a vacuum if this was going to work. I knew I’d been kidding myself that I could. But none of that made it easier. By even talking to Sean, I was getting myself—and by extension, Kayley—involved in a world I’d always swore I’d stay away from. Sean was everything my folks had warned me about when I was a kid. I’d always been a good girl and men didn’t come much worse.
    Except...sometimes, when I looked into his eyes, he didn’t seem as ruthless as everyone made out. I was still scared of him, but less than when he’d first grabbed my arm, up on the roof. I was having trouble imagining him actually hurting me. But I was having no trouble imagining him doing other things to me.
    I flushed and hoped that Kayley didn’t notice. Whenever I was around him, my mind slipped into fantasy mode. Each touch of his hands was enough to send me into a downward spiral that always ended with him on top of me...or me on top of him...or him behind me. I was