When Jayden returned to the house at around six o’clock that evening, there was a hideous sports car in violent yellow parked on the pavement outside. Rachel’s car was gone—Jayden vaguely remembered something about spending the weekend at her sister’s, but in the wake of Darren’s improvement this morning, he hadn’t paid too much attention.
The TV was on pretty loud when he let himself in, and Scott cheered a greeting at him, raising a can of lager in his direction. “There you are!” he said. “And there’s the food!”
Jayden dropped off a pizza box in Scott’s lap. He was stretching out across the sofa, lankier than ever and with his head, as it had apparently been at Christmas, shaved bald. It looked…kind of really totally weird, actually, but Jayden decided to hold his tongue. Darren was cr
