Ferocity Summer by Alissa Grosso Page B

invite me to? But I knew the answer. What other answer could there be? No way on earth this could be for personal consumption. Even a diehard stoner would be overwhelmed by such a bounty. As for parties, Randy had never been much of a social butterfly. If I was a member of law enforcement, I would have clearly identified this as Possession with the Intent to Distribute.
    â€œWhat are you doing up there?” Willow yelled. “Reading his diary?”
    I turned around and suddenly she was there, standing in his doorway. I couldn’t let her see this. She didn’t know it was here. I slammed the drawer closed.
    â€œWhat?” she asked. She walked into the room.
    â€œNothing,” I said. I felt jumpy and nervous. I couldn’t let her see inside that drawer.
    She started walking over to the dresser. I remembered the original reason for my foray into Randy’s bedroom. Perhaps drawer number three held T-shirts, or perhaps it too was stuffed with pot or God knew what. I didn’t dare open it. I looked around and saw something vaguely T-shirt-like on the floor a few feet away. I grabbed for it and pulled it on. It smelled like pizza, but I didn’t care.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” Willow asked. “You look like you saw a fucking ghost.”
    â€œOh, it was just, um, some porn magazines.”
    â€œWhatever floats your boat,” she said. “Midge found one once under his bed when he was thirteen, and she thought the depictions were not very tasteful so she bought him this art book of erotic photography for Christmas. My father didn’t know until Randy opened it Christmas morning, and he blew a head gasket. They had a big fight. He took the book away and donated it to the library. Under the cover of darkness. In the bookdrop.”
    â€œShe had good intentions,” I said.
    â€œYeah,” Willow said. “Yeah. She always does.”

June
    S tuck behind the counter of Johnny’s Quik Mart on a pleasantly overcast summer day, I had little better to do than ponder Randy Jenkins’ second dresser drawer. I wondered if he had a plan. If he sold it all, would he be able to buy that new life he had his eye on? Perhaps he could, in Mexico or Canada or someplace far more remote. I hated him and envied him at the same time. The bastard could have at least told me what he was cooking up.
    Who the hell did he think I was, anyway? Was I just some stupid accessory in his life’s wardrobe? I wanted to know where he was going. I wanted to go with him.
No. No, that wasn’t it. I wanted to be a million miles away from Randy Jenkins. I wanted to be a million miles away from Johnny’s Quik Mart and this whole piece-of-crap life I’d been trapped in for so long, but it wasn’t as if I was doing a damn thing about it. Working at the convenience store would never earn me enough money to buy a new life, even if I didn’t have to fork most of it over to my mom for this mysterious savings account she had for me.
    Randy knew that playing by the rules was for suckers. That’s why the Comstock Lode of marijuana was sitting in his bedroom waiting to be turned into cold hard cash. If I wanted out, if I really wanted out, then I needed to step up and do something about it.
    â€œPack of smokes.”
    The mumbling voice pierced my self-absorption. I looked up to see a young guy with tattooed arms and shifty-looking eyes. I’d never seen him before. He wore an oversized sweatshirt, which even with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows seemed like a strange choice in this heat. I noticed he had thrown down a crumpled wad of money on the counter. He was fumbling with something in the front pocket of his sweatshirt and nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He radiated unease, and I, in turn, felt very uncomfortable. My fingers lingered near the panic button; maybe he was just an underage kid with a bad habit, or maybe he was working up the