CHAPTER NINE
Chloe watched Xander’s car pull out of the drive from the bedroom window. The curtain pulley slipped between her fingers. She placed the palm on her other hand against her midriff and scrunched at her shirt. The warmth of her skin waded past the fabric and crept across her belly.
The girl was catatonic. She lost focus looking past her reflection in the glass. A row of adjacent houses and a few parked cars by the curb. Two school children ran across the pavement giggling to themselves. A black teenager with a rucksack over her shoulder paced behind them.
Chloe dipped behind the curtain and went to draw the beads down, cutting her off from view. The black girl looked up at the bedroom window, to Chloe’s surprise. It was her neighbor from two doors down, Mesi Orji; she w
