The Senior Pledge

Chapter 2 Harbor Street

The clubhouse sat at the end of a dead street lined with empty shipping containers and one flickering streetlight. Someone had propped the door open with a cinder block. Music leaked out like heat.

I parked two blocks away and walked the rest in my black dress and flats, the flats a decision I was proud of. Last time I had worn heels to chase teenagers in. This time I needed to move.

Inside, the room smelled like spilled vodka and cheap vanilla body spray. A DJ Cassidy had paid in cash spun behind a folding table. Kids I had known since ninth grade stood in loose circles, holding red cups and yelling over the bass.

Cassidy found me within a minute. She always did. She wore a gold slip dress and no shoes, her dark hair pulled up with a clip shaped like a butterfly.

"Nora Kellerman," she said, and smiled with teeth. "I genuinely did not think you'd show."

"I said I was coming."

"You say a lot of things." She handed me a cup. "Drink it. It's not poisoned. Yet."

I took it and did not drink. "Who's running the back room?"

Her smile faltered, just a flicker. "What back room?"

"Cassidy. I'm not here to bust you. I'm here because I want to know who's selling."

She studied me, the way she used to study teachers before lying to them. "Why do you care?"

"Because last year a girl in our grade got hurt at a party like this, and nobody ever said a name out loud." I said it calmly. I had practiced it in the mirror. "I'm not a cop. I'm just tired of pretending I don't see things."

Cassidy looked around, then leaned closer. "Upper room. Devin's cousin runs it. He's nineteen. He brings the stuff and takes forty percent." She shrugged. "That's just business. Nobody's forcing anyone."

"Devin's cousin," I repeated.

"Marcus. He's a piece of work, but he's not, like, a criminal criminal." She laughed. "Don't look at me like that. Everybody here is an adult tonight. That was the whole point."

That was the whole point. I had heard her say that last time too, in the parking lot, before the police came and before she climbed onto the roof of that garage.

"Okay," I said. "Thank you."

She blinked, surprised I hadn't argued. "That's it?"

"That's it." I set the cup down on a windowsill. "I'm going to go say hi to people."

I turned and walked into the crowd, and I felt her watching my back the whole way.

I found Priya near the bathroom line. Priya had been my lab partner for two years and had stopped talking to me after the funeral. She saw me and her face closed like a door.

"Don't," she said.

"I'm not here to fight."

"Then why are you here? To take notes for the school board?"

"Priya. The back room. Who's in there tonight?"

She looked at the hallway behind her. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because I think somebody is going to get hurt."

"Somebody always gets hurt at these things, Nora. That's not a reason to ruin the one night everyone's been waiting for." She took a sip from her cup. "You know what people say about you? They say you can't stand anyone being happy if you're not in charge of it."

The words landed the way they had landed in my chest four days after Cassidy died, standing in the circle on the roof with her photo taped to the vent pipe.

"Maybe," I said. "But I'm asking anyway."

Priya looked past me. "Marcus. Six foot two, beard, gray hoodie. He came in through the back twenty minutes ago." She turned away. "Now leave me alone."

I moved toward the back of the room, past the DJ, past two boys laughing at something on a phone, toward the narrow hallway that led to the storage room.

And then I saw him. Gray hoodie, beard, carrying a duffel bag. He stepped into the storage room and pulled the door shut behind him.

I counted to ten, then followed.