Whisper (Novella) by CRYSTAL GREEN Page B

what, okay? Even when I go back to school halfway across the country, I’m always there, Shel. I’ll wait the whole summer for you to talk if that’s what it takes.”
    â€œThanks. I’d rather not talk about it right now, though.” Or maybe not ever, if I could avoid it.
    â€œGot it. But if I have to kick the butt of every single cheerdevil over on that dock to shut them up, I’ll do
that
, too.”
    â€œLike you need a reason.”
    â€œWhat can I say? I’ve always wanted to paint their smug faces with the wrong end of one of my brushes.”
    Evie and her artsy side. “Thanks for that most of all.”
    â€œIt’s only fair that you have a fraction of the support system Rex has. And, damn, does he need it more than ever or what?”
    I squinted at her again.
    She cocked one perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. “Oh my God. You don’t know the latest, do you?”
    That tumbly feeling was going on in my stomach again—half from fear of what Evie was about to tell me and half twirling heat from hearing Rex’s name one more time. Nice.
    Evie gave a low whistle. “Wow, you’re totally in the dark. Has your head been stuck in a hole the entire time you’ve been here?”
    â€œPretty much.” I’d been working in the back of my mom’s restaurant for the past couple days, scrubbing until everything shined, until Evie had pulled me out of there when she’d gotten home from UC San Diego.
    â€œJadyn Dandritch,” Evie said, like that was all she needed to tell me.
    The name knocked at me with bladed force. Jadyn, Rex’s rebound girlfriend? The townie who’d comforted him when he’d returned home for spring break after my relationship with him had imploded? The girl he’d dated from afar for the rest of the school year?
    â€œWhat about Jadyn?” I asked tightly.
    â€œLet’s say you’re not the only one in the doghouse with Rex’s friends. She and him broke up, too, and it also wasn’t pretty . . .”
    As she trailed off, I flushed so hard that I thought my face might stay red forever.
    Evie widened her brown eyes, knowing it’d be best to move on. “Anyway, about two weeks ago, Jadyn ‘accidentally’ messed up real bad, and it was with that new guy everyone’s talking about.”
    I sat up slowly. “What?”
    â€œShe banged him,” Evie said.
    â€œThat’s what I thought you meant.” But why had my stomach spiraled again? Was it happy because Rex was available now?
    But I hadn’t come back to Aidan Falls this summer so I could see if it was possible to win Rex back or something. I was here because my mom needed more help running the café and she couldn’t accommodate any more staff. I’d thought that I could work scrub jobs for her while I figured out what to do with the rest of my life. Wherever I was going next, it sure wouldn’t be back to school on the scholarship I’d pretty much blown because I’d fallen down on my studies so hard after the breakup in March.
    â€œAre you
sure
Jadyn cheated on Rex?” I asked, still unable to grasp the news.
    â€œWhat’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? But this new guy she did it with . . . Word is that he comes on strong, and Jadyn had a little too much to drink at a party and gave in to him.” Evie frowned. “But that’s only the start of it.”
    Oh, God. I didn’t like how this sounded.
    She made a sorry-to-tell-you face. “There’s this crazy rumor. Some jerks are saying that
you
persuaded this guy to go in and seduce Jadyn so she and Rex would break up.”
    I didn’t move a muscle, couldn’t say a word.
    Evie held up a hand. “I know—stupid. So
stu
pid.” She paused, looking at me long and hard to see how I was handling the news, and then went on. “But there’s even a second