Page 10 of Sticks and Stones (Shadow Valley U)

“Oh, fuck off,” Evan calls. My best friend strides into the room. He seems healthier, like he spent the summer in the sun. He stops in front of me. “Your room is upstairs.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll, uh… I’ll show you.”

Sully chuckles behind me. I wave him off and follow Evan to the stairs. The downstairs is even bigger than it looks from the front, but we skip a tour in favor of seeing where I’m sleeping for the next ten months.

“There are six of us? Six bedrooms?”

Evan doesn’t answer.

“Dude.” I catch up to him and grab his arm, spinning him to face me. “What’s up with you? If you don’t want me here…”

“No, no. It’s not that.” He makes a face. “It’s just that we had an emergency pop up the other day…”

“An emergency like what?”

“Well, you just have a roommate, is all. It couldn’t be helped.”

I grunt and motion for him to go on. Instead of talking, though, he steps up to the first door on the left and cracks it open.

“This is yours.”

I eye him, then enter.

It’s a miniature explosion ofstuff. Not a lot of it, but what is there has been spread everywhere. Clothes, textbooks.

But more importantly,girlclothes.Makeup.

“What the fuck is this, E? You knew I was coming. We’ve planned for this since I got accepted.”

Yeah, sure, it wasn’t absolutely fucking decided until I got in my car today. My father played a large part in that. But honestly, I was going to come here whether or not I got his blessing. I would’ve paid for it myself.

Dread turns my gut over. There’s only one person Evan would do this for.

“Please don’t tell me you letherhave my room.”

“Half,” he mutters. “Half the room.”

“There’s only one fucking bed! How is that half?” I pace in a circle, kicking her clothes in the process. I stop and point at him. “I want her out.”

“Out? She’s got nowhere to go.”

“Bullshit.” Damn, I’mseething. I haven’t been this angry in…well, probably since the last time I spared a thought for Wren Davis. “Move her into your room.”

He glares at me. “How weird would that be? She’s my sister. I have a girlfriend—”

“You do not.”

“I have a girl that I hook up with on a semi-regular basis,” he corrects. “Suck it up, Foster.”

A door slams downstairs. Without a doubt, I know exactly who it is. The one person with the worst fucking timing on the face of the planet.

I plant my hands on my hips. “Does she know about this little arrangement?”

His expression turns guilty. “Well…”

“Evan?” Her voice—her sweet, melodic,evil-as-shitvoice—floats toward us. “What are you doing in my—”