Dad had fun at these things. I used to, but I can’t find much joy in it tonight. Especially since the reason I’m here is because I’ve been summoned by Ricky.

In a motion so slick because I did memorize it, I meet Evie’s palm, accept her money and replace it with a joint. Places and people like this prefer premade to baggies. I don’t make as much money per person as I’m not selling in bulk, but I do nicely with how many people think they need what I have to offer and the markup I add for rolling.

I only do neighborhood parties, only sell to those I know. As always, I’m picky about who I sell to, but most everyone here has more to lose by getting busted than I do.

“Thanks, Abby,” Evie says, and I only nod in response. She disappears into the shadows of the thick crowd. Evie’s an honor student and not from this neighborhood. She was there today, at school, interviewing with colleges. Can’t help but wonder why she chooses here as her place to blow off steam.

The abandoned lot behind the strip mall and to the right of the Section 8 apartments is alive tonight. Someone even went fancy and strung up Christmas lights from metal poles crushed into the gravel. Music pounds from the open doors of a loaded-down-with-speakers Ford Explorer.

A long time ago, my father used to bring me here. I’d peruse the crowd, no fear of anyone hurting me, in search of someone else my age. I was Mozart’s daughter and no one touched me.

When I found another kid, we’d run and run...playing tag, playing hide-and-go-seek, and once I met Isaiah, he became my partner in crime.

I kick the heels of my feet against the crumbling concrete half-wall trying desperately to not miss Isaiah. Missing him is a cold feeling. Hollow. Doesn’t ache as much as losing Logan, but still, it’s not an emotion I like.

My cell pings and my soul twists at the sight of Rachel’s name: Physical therapy sucked today. My legs hurt and the therapist accused me of pushing myself too hard.

I find myself nodding, understanding why she’s texting me. Insomnia again?

Yes. A pause. I miss you.

I shouldn’t have texted Rachel back. Shouldn’t have given her the opening, but I was one of the few people she’d admit her pain to after the accident. Might be the only person she admitted her pain to at all. It’s because I told her one night when she was in the hospital when it was just the two of us that my mother was a heroin addict and that the thought of her sometimes hurts me physically. From Logan’s reaction, she never told anyone. Not that I expected Rachel to spread gossip about me. Rachel is the secret-keeping-forever type of friend.

Me: I miss you, but this is how it has to be. Don’t text me again and don’t push yourself too hard. You have time.

I don’t have time. The boys won’t bring me to you because they have all inherited the crazy gene and I need to get behind a wheel of a car so I can find you and make you see how stupid you’re acting. You need us now more than ever.

Rachel definitely owns a pair. Very few people have ever dared speak to me the way she just did and it’s reasons like this why I decided she would be my best friend. I frown and my stomach twists along with it. I’ve lost my best friend...

“I told you—people like us don’t have friends.” Linus cocks a hip against my wall and I raise an eyebrow. “So stop feeling sorry for yourself and get your fucking game face back on.”

“Don’t touch my wall.” I pocket my cell and consider the millions of ways I could push Linus into traffic.

He slow blinks once. “It’s not your wall.”

“It is. My wall. My name’s on it. Right here.” Because it is my wall, I don’t have to point to prove I’m right and Linus’s eyes automatically shift to where my father wrote my name on it when I was five. This half-wall was a present to me the first time he brought me to this place. I was to sit on this wall and wait for him because it was my wall to protect and nobody else’s.

Dragons, he told me, would storm the party if I left this wall. Princesses in Dad’s fairy tales never needed saving—a princess was strong enough to save herself.

“You’re not a kid anymore. Will you stop acting like one?”

I hop off my wall and lean into him, not caring he’s taller than me and bigger than me and doesn’t have a problem with shooting other people like me. “It’s my fucking wall and if I told you not to touch it, you don’t touch it.”

We’re in a staring contest—he and I, and I plan on winning.

He blinks first, but he kills my win-joy with. “He’s not coming back for you.”

Pain straight through my heart, but I take pride that I was able to mask that ache. “You’re just jealous you don’t have a wall. Daddy gave you a gun. He gave me wall. I gotta say, I totally won.”

A flash of something in Linus’s eyes and I feel the condescending smirk forming on my face. “You don’t like it when I call him Daddy, do you?”

He presses his lips together as if he’s willing himself to not verbally or physically tear into me.

“Which one don’t you like? That it makes him real because he felt for me or that it makes me real and not make-believe? Because let’s be honest, you don’t like feeling.”

“Ricky and I often debate whether you’re brilliant or a sociopath.”

I weigh my options. “Why can’t I be both?”

Linus shakes his head because he never gets me. “Ricky wants to see you.”

Mock jazz hands in the air. Linus ignores my reaction and tips his chin toward the parking lot. Ricky, like me, prefers to do business in cars. His car is nicer than my clients’ and he has a driver, but I’m still not giddy on this meet.

We stroll through the crowd, and I wonder what it would be like to be Evie. To have a decent home, great opportunities, yet still willingly choose to get sucked into the pit of numb.

“Can I ask you something?” I breach, when we reach that lonely place between leaving a crowd and halfway to where you’re heading.

“If it’s fucking crazy or makes no sense, then no.”

“You’re such a buzzkill.”

“Got a sane question or not?”

“What if I decline whatever it is that Ricky has to offer me?”

That causes Linus to stop so quickly that his upper body moves forward as his feet become lead. “Why would you do that?”

“Harvard wanted me today.”

His eyes laugh but not his mouth. “I’m sure Harvard wanted you. Lots of guys want you.”

I smirk, he raises his eyebrows, and I up the stakes by showing him the card. “We had interviews at school today. If I became a normal girl with normal extracurricular activities, I could possibly have a shot because he liked me. Liked. As in how I like bunnies and how you like raining on people’s parades or kicking puppies.”

Linus only reads the card, doesn’t touch it, and I find that interesting.

“You want to go to college?” Linus asks.

I shrug then nod.

“Tell Ricky. Chances are he’ll pay for it.”

“Is the five-hundred-word essay for the Gangster of the Year Scholarship due now or later? And do you think my topic of how to creatively dump a body during rush hour traffic will work or is he searching for something a little more mainstream like how to use technology to smuggle in heroin?”

Once again, no reaction. “Ricky likes smart.”

Bet he does. “That money doesn’t launder itself.”

“You said it.”

I pocket the card and a strange twinge of desperation rattles my bones. Last spring, when Isaiah was having problems with Eric, I told him that once he started down the path of illegal, there was no way out. Somehow, I had told Isaiah the truth, but lied to myself—thinking that if I stayed small-time, I’d be able to sneak out the back door.

A quick glance up at the stars and I don’t spot a thing. It’s a clear night, but we’re within the city so the stars’ light can’t compete. “What if at some point, I decide I don’t want to do this anymore?”

Linus studies me from head to toe. “You want out?”

Yes. “No.” Grams still needs me to work. “Curious is all.”

“You’re Mozart’s daughter...you’re one of our best sellers...”

It’s his pause that causes the trickle of dread.

“Unless there’s a damn good reason, Ricky isn’t going to let you go.”

I bite the inside of my mouth, just below my bottom lip and search for stabilization.

“That’s not a bad thing, Abby. It means you’re going to make a lot of money for the rest of your life.”

It means I’ll be a target for the rest of my life. It means becoming cold like Linus. It means loving nothing, knowing no one. It means one day I’ll have to sell things I don’t want to sell, do things I won’t want to do, become the unbecomable.

“If you’re scared about being shot again, don’t be. I’m moving up with you. I’ve always looked out for you, you know that, but it’s never been official. This time, it will be.”

“Never said I was scared and never said I needed a babysitter.”

“Won’t be like that. You’ll still have wide berth, but when stuff on the streets becomes unstable, it’s your side I’ll be next to.”