Chapter Seven

Jensen

"S orry, we didn't mean to startle you," Cash says, sounding super friendly.

If you told me that he'd happily beat someone within an inch of their life and has done so regularly, I wouldn't even believe you right now.

"Th-that's okay," one of the girls stutters.

"We heard about your friend Aurora and just wanted to say we're sorry," I add, keeping my voice as soft as I can and smiling too and hoping that I'm putting them at ease and not making them even more wary of us. Or at least me; they seem to be fine with Cash.

The way they all stiffen at the mention of Aurora is unmistakable, and I know right then that they know something.

"Erm, thanks," one of them says, "we're still waiting for news. Hopefully, she's going to be okay."

Cash nods and smiles sympathetically before asking, "Do you know what she took?"

They share a look before all of them apart from one stood in the back shakes their heads, and the one that spoke before says, "No, we don't know. We went to the party together, but she disappeared for a while; when we realized she'd gone, we searched for her, and that's when we found her and called for help."

"You didn't see who she was hanging out with?" I ask, speaking for the first time.

"No, like I said, she disappeared." The first one replies again.

The girl in the back frowns, and I get the feeling that if her other friends weren't here, then she'd be willing to talk to us; I try to commit her face to memory so I can try to find her later and ask her about it without her friends around.

"Are you sure there isn't anything that you can tell us?" Cash asks gently, "Aurora is the second person in three months to OD, and we're trying to figure out if there's something different about what they're taking or if it's a coincidence."

We know it's not; we know that they're pushing a new product because Trev has said so, and he knows his shit when it comes to things like this. If you need to know anything about anything, you ask Trev; if he doesn't know, he'll have the answers by the end of the day.

"Sorry, we don't know anything," the same girl replies. The thing is, these girls obviously aren't used to lying as regularly as we do; I mean, I can lie better than I can tell the truth. It's as easy as breathing, although it probably shouldn't be; with the way that we live and the things that we do, it became very necessary to lie regularly, and we had to get very good at it very quickly.

I sometimes wonder if we would have still ended up doing the things that we do if Ever were still around, and I can't help but think that although we most likely wouldn't be doing the more illegal side of things and certainly not the jobs that we occasionally do, we would still be doing other things, I think it's just who we are and one way or another I think we would have ended up here, in some way at least.

Besides, it's not like our only trauma is Ever disappearing. We've all had our share of shit, from before she went and after too. I know that some of the others are glad that she wasn't around for some of the shit that they've gone through, Riot and Luc especially.

As always, thinking of Ever makes my heart pang in a way that pisses me off. I hate not knowing if she's okay or not, and I hate that even when Atlas was helping us, we still couldn't find her. We should have been able to, his contacts were vast, and even he was starting to get confused about why they couldn't find her. I hate that now he's gone, we have even less of a chance to find her because we're back to using the contacts that we have that have been looking for even longer that Atlas's contacts and still haven't located her.

I also hate that we don't know for sure if Atlas is okay and where he is. We've had no more communication from him since that message we got up at his cabin, and it's driving me slightly crazy. If he's in trouble or, more likely, if something from his past has caught up to him, I want to know. I want to help, and he knows full well that we are all capable of helping him with whatever it is that's going on. The only reason I can see why he wouldn't want to involve us is that he's trying to protect us and keep us safe, which I understand I probably would do the same, but it doesn't make it any easier.

"Alright, well, thank you anyway. I hope Aurora makes a full recovery," Cash says, his words bringing me back to the present and away from the thoughts that are making me angry.

"Thanks, girls," I say, although it comes out slightly rougher than I intended it to, and honestly, I think I probably just ended up scaring them.

Cash and I walk away in the opposite direction to the cafeteria, which is fine since the bell for the start of lessons is going to go any minute now anyway.

"Alright dude, you've got your, ‘I'm going to stab someone', face on, what's up?" Cash asks as soon as we're out of earshot from the girls.

"Ever and Atlas," I reply bluntly, knowing that I don't need to give him any more information.

"Got it," Cash replies immediately. The situation affects us all in different ways; he internalizes everything and checks in with our contacts daily, not that he knows that I know he does that; I get mad, and I can't hide it. In fact, when I get like this, I usually end up in a fight.

"Get anything from them?" I ask, changing the subject and trying to distract myself from thoughts of Ever and Atlas.

"Well, they definitely know more than they're letting on. What I can't tell is if they're not telling us because they're trying to protect Aurora or themselves." Cash says, frowning.

"I'm going to guess that they're more trying to protect themselves than they are her," I reply, somewhat harshly but we've seen it before. In these situations, when something illegal is involved, most of the time, the so-called friends protect themselves before they protect their friend who is in trouble or being questioned. I continue, "Which means they most likely took whatever she took and are fucking lucky that they aren't in the hospital with their friend."

Cash sighs and swipes his hand through his hair, "You're right. I'm not sure if we could maybe get them to talk individually or . . ."

"Excuse me," a worried voice interrupts Cash's sentence.

We both turn around, and I'm actually unsurprised to see the girl who was frowning and standing behind her friends.

"Hey, sorry I didn't catch your name before; you're one of Aurora's friends, right?" Cash asks, his charming smile back on his face.

"Yes, and it's Rachel," she replies; she's extremely softly spoken and obviously cautious about talking to us, but her shoulders are drawn back, and there's a fire in her eyes that none of her friends had. She's got a backbone, and I instantly like her for that.

"How can we help?" I ask, sensing that she needs a little bit of a prompt before she's ready to talk to us, but also aware that we're on somewhat of a time crunch since the hallways are soon going to be full of people wanting to get to class and it's going to make talking without being seen or listened to a lot more difficult.

I'm assuming that she'd like to talk to us without anyone else realizing that she's talking to us. Otherwise, she would've spoken to us in front of her friends.

"They lied to you before, they've been lying since she went in the ambulance, and it's not fucking helping anyone," she spits, with more fire than I thought she had.

"Tell us then, all we want to do is help," Cash replies honestly.

She nods, "Everyone knows what you do, what you're capable of, that's why I'm telling you. You'll fix it, right? You'll stop more kids from taking this drug? I'm not against having a joint or something at a party, but this drug is fucking dangerous, really fucking dangerous. The other two girls that were with me a minute ago took exactly the same thing, the same amount and everything, and they're here and not in the hospital. I don't know if she had a bad reaction or a bad pill or what, but it was fucking terrifying. Almost as soon as she took it she dropped to the floor and started convulsing, and those two fucking idiots didn't want to call for help, fortunately, I've never been one to listen to other people and something didn't sit right with me, so I didn't take it like they did."