I try to pull myself up, but I can’t get leverage. I’m jumping, trying to catch his attention, waving my arms like a lunatic, but he’s locked in on his screen.
I knock on the window. Softly at first.
Z doesn’t hear.
I knock harder.
Nothing.
Fuck it.
I bang on the wall—too hard, way too hard—and Z’s head whips around. His eyes go wide when he sees me. He yanks off his headphones and runs over.
He shoves the window halfway up?—
And then Frank O’Brian bursts through Z’s bedroom door like a goddamn hurricane.
“The FUCK you think you’re doing?” Frank’s voice is a roar, and I can see it immediately—the way he’s moving, the jerky aggression, the dilated pupils even from here.
He’s high. Not just drunk.High.
Shit. Frank’s a dealer—and not for anything as benign as weed—and the nights he decides to take his own product generally end in fucking disaster.
The window catches, and Z spins around.
“Dad, I—” Z starts, but Frank’s already crossing the room.
“You think you can sneak out? You think you can justLEAVE?” Frank grabs Z by the shirt and throws him to the floor like he weighs nothing. Z hits his desk on the way down.
“No!” The scream rips out of my throat before I can stop it. “Frank, stop! FRANK!”
I’m jumping, trying to get through the window, but I can’t reach. I can’t get to him. I’m useless, screaming and jumping and completely fuckinguseless?—
And then I see him.
Caleb.
My heart drops down nearly out my asshole.
He’s standing in the hallway behind Frank, framed in Z’s bedroom doorway, and he’s holding up his phone.
No. No, no, no.
“I took photos and video of the drugs you’re clearly dealing out the front of this trailer,” Caleb says, and his voice is steady. Calm. Like he’s delivering a closing argument in debate.
You beautiful, suicidal idiot.
The one thing you don’t do—theonething—is threaten Frank O’Brian.
Frank’s entire body goes rigid. He turns away from Z, toward Caleb, and the look on his face makes my blood run cold.
“I’ll crush you and that fucking phone just like I did this little bitch’s,” Frank snarls, and he’s moving down the hallway, advancing on Caleb like a predator.
“Do it,” Caleb says, and he doesn’t move. Doesn’t back down. Just stands his ground.
I’m waving frantically at Z, screaming without sound,Get to the window, get to the fucking window?—
Z starts crawling toward me, blood on his lip from his face hitting the edge of his desk.