So Toxic(Bad Boy Next Door Book 4)(15)
Her eyes roll. “But why would he ask you? I mean, I understand that you two grew up together or some shit, but he’s known the adult you for what—thirteen seconds? Who in their right mind wants to marry someone they’ve just reacquainted themselves with after—well, after however long it’s been? That’s fucking nuts.”
“I know. I know. But—” I push my fingers through my hair.
“But what? You aren’t actually considering this, are you?” She crosses her arms as though she dares me to say that I am.
I turn, meeting her gaze. “I owe him.”
“Owe him?”
My chin drops to my chest as my stomach sinks to the floor. “He—he did something for me when we were in high school.”
“What could he have possibly done that warrants this kind of return on investment?”
The door waits for me to dash through it—an escape from admitting my immature stupidity and the way I allowed Ty to save me from it.
Stevie clears her throat in an overt attempt to prompt me.
I massage the growing ache between my eyebrows. “Okay, so it was senior year. Senior Prank Day was a living, breathing thing at our school. People spent their entire high school careers planning their pranks.”
My mind goes to that night as I tell Stevie the story.
I’d let Tara, my so-called best friend, talk me into joining a plot to outdo all the other pranksters trying to grab that brass ring of grandeur as the most dazzling prank ever carried out, at least under the banner of the Fighting Razorbacks.
Three weeks before, three days before—hell, even three hours before go-time, it seemed a brilliant plan. But as Scott, Tara, and I snuck into the Ag barn with flashlights and buckets of sweet-feed, the plan’s shininess faded—for me, anyway.
The pungent odor of hay soaked in animal urine mingled with the sweet smell of every Ag kid’s dream of winning the blue ribbon at the State Livestock Show. Add that to the shit that waited to be cleared away at the ass-crack of dawn before school first-thing every morning,and it made for a stink that seemed to cling to my black hoodie and Goodwill jeans.
We crept between the goat and sheep pens, snuck through the maze of chicken coops and rabbit hutches, and tip-toed by the steers and heifers. The animals stared at us, their eyes glowing as they reflected the beams from our flashlights.
We herded them down the aisle between stalls. The porkers’ squeaks and squeals seemed to prod their barn mates to call out to the humans whom they must’ve thought were there to feed them.
The cacophony of farm animals grew to epic proportions as we loaded the swine into the trailer. It ratcheted up my adrenaline until my heart pounded with the knowledge that someone, somewhere, would hear the chorus of creatures and call the cops. If caught, my acceptance to college would surely be dead in the water.
Scott climbed into the cab of the truck. Tara bolted the latch on the trailer while I struggled to slide the heavy barn door closed, hoping to quiet the noise to a less worrisome level.
As JP started the engine, Tara hopped onto the trailer’s bumper. I fiddled with the barn lock as the tail lights lit, and away they went, leaving me to jog behind like an idiot. By the time I made it down to the school, the rest of the crew already had the door open with the trailer backed up to it.
Once inside, I rested with my hands on my knees, still sucking wind as the stitch in my side screamed.
JP and Scott both shook cans of spray paint. The marbles inside were louder than they should’ve been in the quiet of the school building’s dark and deserted entry hall. The sound seemed to bounce off the glass cases holding trophies and awards of the school’s past glories.
JP grabbed Tara’s arm, grinning like a maniac. “C’mon, babe, let’s leave our mark.”
They took off running down the hall toward the offices at the end of the long corridor.
Scott patted me on my back. “Count to thirty, open the gate on the trailer, then grab your bucket and dump some feed for the piggies down that way. Leave a trail for them leading to the cafeteria. That should get them to spread out a bit.”
He took off in the same direction our best friends had gone.
I held my still aching side as I fought to stand upright. “Wait! Where are you going?”
“I’m gonna leave a message for Mr. Flannery. Asshole has suspended me three times over the last two years. I’ve got a few choice words for him.”
With the three of them gone, it was on me to let the pigs into the school. I hoped none of them would escape before they were safely contained in the building. The price the students had paid for those precious pigs was steep. I knew that from all the griping my foster parents did about Melanie’s prize pig a few years before.