Notable (Smith High) (18 page)

Heroin.

I had Googled it and everything.

Except that didn’t explain why Rithisak Sovann had been so bent out of shape over reclaiming half of his shipment. Sure, nobody likes to lose a profit, but according to Wikipedia, heroin is the most common drug available in Cambodia. It didn’t make sense for Rithisak to go through the trouble and expense of paying for a private plane, bribing the police to release Neal from prison, hiring thugs to escort him every step of the way to Phnom Penh, not to mention the delay to his precious merger to regain something that he could so easily replace.

It wasn’t worth the effort.

Which led me to one sickening conclusion: I had something else entirely.

Something that could easily have been impairing my judgment ever since Houston and I sprinted out of the hotel. I had just assumed that my weird dreams were stress-induced, even though I had never experienced anything nearly as vivid as my bizarre middle school reenactment with Logan.

Even the night before my SAT test I had slept like a baby.

It was almost funny; my parents had shipped me off to another country to stop my partying ways, and I’d inadvertently started sampling the latest in Cambodian narcotics. I didn’t think they would appreciate the irony.

Houston would enjoy being right though. Nobody had slipped anything into my drink, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been drugged. I quickly tried to replay the events of the night before to figure out how I could have accidentally dosed myself. I had gotten dressed in the bathroom, but none of the others seemed affected by anything. Then I had pretended to make a phone call . . . and wiped away the white dusting of powder on my phone before I had sauntered over to the bar.

I couldn’t have inhaled more than a handful of airborne molecules of the stuff.

No wonder Rithisak was so eager to get his hands on it. A gram would probably be worth five thousand times its weight in gold.

It would also be enough to incapacitate a full-grown man.

I tossed my hair, but this time I paid close attention to the direction the slight breeze moved the short red strands. Edging forward slightly so that the wind was to my back, I nodded in Neal’s direction. “Why don’t we try this again? You let him go, and I’ll hand over the package.”

Rithisak’s scowl deepened. “You lied to me earlier.”

I reached into my purse and pulled the damn thing out. I was careful to keep my finger plugging the crack in the side so that no loose particles could blow into my face.

“I sure did. Release him. Now.”

Rithisak nodded at the bigger of his two thugs, who proceeded to shove Neal hard enough to send him sprawling across the pavement. Neal barely managed to lift his bloody face high enough to meet my gaze. No amount of swelling or bruising could disguise his panicked look of desperation—and he was still trying to look out for me. “Chelsea, don’t!”

I wanted to tell him not to worry, that I had one last move up my sleeve. But I didn’t have the chance to utter more than a single word as Rithisak strode toward me.

“Duck!” I yelled.

That’s when I either made the smartest decision or the biggest mistake of my life, as I channeled every ounce of the anger still coursing through my veins into smashing that butt-ugly statue on the cobblestones.

Right at the drug lord’s feet.

Unfortunately, it was right at my feet too—and even with my mouth and nose buried in the crook of my non-pitching arm, I knew it was too little too late. The white powder plumed the air, licking up Rithisak Sovann’s suit as if he had tried making cookies and accidentally put a blender on a high speed with nothing but baking soda and flour in the bowl. But the mysterious drug that had dragged me into this mess now coated me too.

A lethal amount of it.

I was vaguely surprised that I wasn’t already high as a freaking kite.

And I was struggling to remember why exactly it mattered. I stumbled backward and did my best to suppress a giggle as I saw the thugs’ mouths drop open in horror. As far as final moments go, it was rather satisfying to watch it sink in on Rithisak’s face that some foreign brat had just completely destroyed his shipment. It didn’t last long, only a handful of seconds, but I relished each one of them. It felt like time lengthened so that I could suck out every last drop of enjoyment from the little snippet of life that I had left on earth.

But it still ended too soon and I felt cheated, like a kid hustled back inside the house right before the Fourth of July fireworks begin their grand finale. The world tilted as I staggered once more, hoping to find Neal before the darkness creeping at the edge of my vision closed in entirely. I wanted to make sure he hadn’t experienced the full force of the blast zone. To feel his pulse beating while mine slowed . . . and then stopped.

I couldn’t even manage that one final task before everything went black.

I
was dead.

And
this
was hell.

There were no flames roasting the soles of my feet, no devil cackling in the corner, no giant pustules breaking forth or anything, but there was no worse punishment than for me to open my admittedly gritty eyes and see . . . Mackenzie Wellesley.

Mackenzie
“ex-boyfriend nabbing”
Wellesley.

Oh yeah, this was hell, all right.

“Uh, Logan.” The figment of my tormented afterlife spoke warily. “I think she’s looking at me. Or . . . glaring at me. Same thing, right?”

I blinked and, sure enough, there was my ex-boyfriend, looking every bit as perfect as I remembered with those piercing gray eyes staring searchingly into mine.

“Hey, Chelsea. You always did know how to make an entrance.”

That sounded suspiciously normal considering that I was dead. I sort of expected my divine punishment would be a lot more painful than making awkward small talk. At the very least I expected to be forced into watching them make out for all of eternity.

Now
that
would make anyone start repenting their sins.

“Logan?” His name emerged as a croak from my dry mouth, and Mackenzie quickly slid a straw into my mouth. The tepid water trickling down my throat was almost enough to make me forgive her presence in my afterlife, until I realized that nothing could possibly feel this good in hell. And since I definitely hadn’t earned a spot beyond the pearly gates . . . I wasn’t dead.

Although
not dead
wasn’t all that comforting when everything else was a blank.

I tried to push myself into a sitting position, but my chest ached fiercely and my arms refused to work properly, probably because there were a million plastic tubes attached to me.

That’s when I started screaming bloody murder.

“Chelsea, calm down!” Logan ordered, cupping my face in his hands while Mackenzie darted out of sight. “You’re safe, okay! You’re in Oregon and you’re safe.”

“You don’t understand! He wanted to
kill
me, so I smashed the Buddha and—”

I trailed off because I didn’t have the foggiest idea what had happened next.
Nothing happened next
. That’s what my brain kept insisting. It went black and time stopped.

The end.

Except, apparently, I had missed something since I was definitely lying in an ugly hospital room surrounded by drab beige walls and my
ex-boyfriend.

Nothing made sense. I had accepted my death the moment I chucked the bloody statue—maybe even a little before that. Sure, I’d been pissed off about it. I hadn’t
wanted
to die. Then again, I hadn’t
wanted
to be sent to Cambodia in the first place.

I had accepted it though.

That’s why I had gone in alone—negotiating for Neal, stalling for Amy—I had wanted my death to mean something, but apparently I couldn’t even correctly pull off a grand sacrifice. Every inch of my body was aching, while the others were . . .

I didn’t know.

“Neal! Amy!”
I didn’t care if I screamed my throat raw. I rounded on Logan.
“NEAL!”

“No, Chelsea.” He looked absolutely panicked. “I’m Logan, remember?
Logan.
Just . . . take it easy, okay?”

Except I couldn’t.

Not when my last memory of Neal involved him bloody, beaten, and sprawled out like an offering near the base of the Lady Penh’s shrine. Not when Amy might still be locked away in some hotel room getting the same treatment herself.

“What happened to them, Logan?” I snapped, unable to hide the fear surging through my system. “Amy and Neal. Are they
here?
”

“Both of them are expected to make a full recovery.” Logan’s mom stood in the doorway, wearing her doctor’s coat and holding a thick chart.
My
chart, I realized slowly. “But let’s focus on you for the moment, all right? Let’s see, you’ve got a concussion, a cracked rib that was sustained during your CPR in Cambodia, and some mild dehydration. Now the next thing I’m going to say will sound really scary, but take a deep breath and hear me out, okay?”

I did as she instructed and nodded.

“The drug that was in your system is known as 3-Methylfentanyl, and it’s incredibly dangerous stuff.”

“No kidding,” I croaked.

Logan’s mom placed the straw back between my lips and waited until I sipped some more water before she continued.

“It’s actually classified as a chemical weapon that’s now being widely sold on the black market. Since it’s also estimated to be between four hundred to six thousand times stronger than morphine, your survival is nothing short of a miracle, especially because of your resulting respiratory depression.”

I felt myself sinking into information overload and the room kept spinning so I squeezed my eyes shut.

“You want to say that again in English?”

“It appears that you hit your head, passed out, and then stopped breathing entirely. If you hadn’t received CPR, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

I didn’t have any idea what I should say to
that,
so I repeated the question that was most important to me. “Neal and Amy are okay?”

Logan’s mom settled her hand warmly over mine as she assured me, yet again, that everyone was going to be just fine. That we had all made it out of the nightmare alive.

I cried.

Stupid, really. I had stared down a notorious drug leader and brokered a life-or-death deal—all without shedding a tear. The entire time I was in Cambodia I had kept a tight hold over my emotions because falling apart wasn’t an option. But now that I was safely tucked away in a clean hospital, away from maniacs and firearms, I started sobbing like a baby.

Right in front of Logan.

I doubt he liked being saddled with the job of reassuring his concussed ex-girlfriend. Still, he gently stroked my hair and repeated, “You’re fine now, Chelsea. You’re safe,” as if there weren’t an airport carousel’s worth of baggage between us.

It felt like . . . home.

Of course, Mackenzie had to go and ruin it by opening the door and sticking her head inside. “Oh, uh . . . never mind! I’ll just, uh, tell the others that Chelsea’s not ready for company yet. Okay. Uh . . . ’bye!”

The girl had to be applying for sainthood or something because nobody is
that
nice when they see their nemesis bawling her eyes out. Instead of gloating or snapping a quick picture to hold over my head, she made a hasty exit while I wiped away the dampness on my cheeks with a tissue that Logan handed me. That small gesture from him nearly got the waterworks going all over again. It felt nearly impossible to process my emotions when my sturdy, dependable Logan was right freaking
there
.

So I stopped trying to process them altogether and instead I finally started telling him the truth.

“I want to hate her.”

Logan’s mouth curved into a smile, and for a second I thought he had misunderstood me. That he was so in love with Mackenzie he couldn’t fathom anyone wanting to hate her.

“I know you do.”

“No, but I
really
want to hate her, Logan. And her ability to spout useless trivia.”

“What part of this is supposed to be coming as a surprise, Chelsea? You haven’t exactly been subtle when it comes to my girlfriend.”

I nestled farther into the pillows and briefly considered keeping my mouth shut until I knew for certain that this sudden need for total honesty wasn’t some weird side effect of the drugs. Except I couldn’t seem to keep anything bottled up anymore. Not when part of me still expected that the next time I opened my eyes I would be back in Cambodia with Rithisak Sovann.

“You don’t understand, Logan. She’s too freaking nice for me to even hate her properly! It’s obnoxious.” The words tumbled out on top of one another. “And whenever she does something awkward I just feel guilty about wanting to hate her in the first place!”

Logan’s whole face sort of lit up with an open affection as he thought about Mackenzie. “I happen to love her bouts of awkwardness, so I’m not exactly impartial here.”

I ignored the increasingly loud sounds of an argument building outside my hospital room door as I grabbed Logan’s hand and concentrated solely on him.

“I miss you, Logan.”

And there it was—out in the open—the one thing I had been unable to say before leaving for Cambodia.

“Uh,” Logan said articulately. “Chelsea?”

“Just hear me out. I miss you, okay? I’ve been missing you for years.”

He cleared his throat and jerked his head over toward the hospital door, which now had an audience that included Logan’s mom, his girlfriend, his girlfriend’s best friend, his girlfriend’s best friend’s boyfriend . . . and Houston.

Oh yeah. I’ve always had impeccable timing.

“I, uh, think they need a few more minutes,” Mackenzie mumbled, before she turned around stiffly and walked straight out of the room. Jane hesitated, clearly uncertain whether she also should storm out, or if my recent trauma gave me a temporary pass for hitting on her best friend’s boyfriend. Scott solved her dilemma by nodding to me with a wry grin.

“Good to see you, Chelsea. Things were getting dull around here. Now if you’ll excuse us—” He didn’t bother even finishing the sentence as he took Jane’s hand and left in pursuit of Mackenzie.

Somehow, I’d managed to make a complete mess of things without leaving my freaking
hospital bed.

And yet my mom didn’t think I had any natural talents. Go figure.

“I’ll come back later too,” Mrs. Beckett informed me, scooping up my charts as she aimed one last parting look at her son that said clearly,
If you toss aside Mackenzie for your ex-girlfriend, you will be making a mistake. A
huge
mistake.

She closed the door behind her, leaving me alone in the room with my stunned-looking ex-boyfriend and one seriously rumpled Houston, who must have spent the entire plane ride doing his stressed-hair-raking thing with his fingers because it had reached a whole new height.

He looked absolutely wonderful.

“I’m glad to see you’re okay,
prin . . .
Chelsea. I’ll just let you”—he waved a hand to indicate me and Logan—“get back to your regularly scheduled programming. Don’t worry, I get it. What happens in Cambodia stays in Cambodia.”

He didn’t slam the door behind him. Oh no, that would be too much of an emotional display for Houston. Instead, he shut it decisively behind him with a resounding
click,
while Logan struggled to process my ill-timed confession.

“No offense, Chelsea, but you’ve got a nasty habit of destroying my life. I should probably go check on my
girlfriend
now.” Logan put an extra emphasis on the term, as if he thought the concept of a committed relationship might be foreign to me. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

“She has nothing to worry about from me,” I told him honestly.

Logan laughed, but there was little real amusement in the sound. “Oh, I know that, and usually, so does she. But sometimes I think she expects me to realize I’m dating the biggest . . . how did you put it, Chelsea? Geek. That I’m dating the biggest geek at school and dump her. Well, it isn’t going to happen. Not for you. Not for
anyone!
”

“Wow, simmer down there, Romeo. I didn’t ask you to
date
me. I told you I
missed
you. Two very different things.”

He looked at me skeptically. “Uh huh,
sure,
Chelsea.”

“You were my
best friend,
you idiot! And, yeah, I screwed up. I hurt you. And I’m sorry about that—more than you know. But I want my best friend back. The one who was there for me when my parents were yelling and . . . well, I’ve missed you.” I glared at him and couldn’t stop myself from adding,
“Dumb-ass.”

His lips twitched into a grin, in spite of himself. And then he reached out to deliver a soft punch to my shoulder, careful not to disturb any of the tubes in my arm.

“I can do friends, Chelsea.
Just
friends. If that’s all you’re looking for, we can give it a shot. But if you’re messing with me, I swear—”

I rolled my eyes and cut him off before he could come up with a threat. “Yeah, no ulterior motive here. I have my sights set higher this time. No offense.”

“None taken.” He looked at the door again, as if weighing whether my battered physical condition obligated him to stay with me when we both knew he wanted to be chasing after the geek of his dreams.

“I know half a dozen guys who will happily comfort Mackenzie if you don’t go after her.”

Logan instantly started moving toward the door, pausing only briefly when it was half opened. “I’ve missed you too, Chelsea. Now let’s see how long you can make it without pissing someone off.”

I closed my eyes sleepily, as once more the darkness threatened to pull me under. “I make no promises.”

Logan’s laughter was the last thing I heard before slipping back into a dreamless sleep that was only disturbed when I heard two very familiar voices bickering in my room that weren’t going to be lowered just because they were in a hospital.

“It was
your
idea, Paul!
You’re
the one who thought it was a good idea to send her to Cambodia! This never would’ve happened if you had even considered the all-girls’ boarding school I showed you.”

Wow. I didn’t know it was possible to make me
grateful
I’d been shipped off to Cambodia, but I was willing to believe the popular girls who ruled the undoubtedly prestigious boarding school my mom had looked at could have given Rithisak Sovann a lesson in how to terrorize people.