The Senior Pledge

Chapter 3 The Storage Room

The room was small and cold, the concrete wall sweating. Marcus had set the duffel on a card table and unzipped it. Inside were bottles, a stack of cash, and a clear plastic bag of small blue pills.

"Door," he said without looking up.

I did not close it. "You're Devin's cousin."

He looked up then, and his face was not the face of a criminal mastermind. He was nineteen, maybe, with tired eyes. A kid with a kid's bad decisions.

"You're the class president," he said. "The one who called everybody's mom last time."

"So you remember me."

"Everybody remembers you." He zipped the bag halfway. "You here to lecture me?"

"I'm here to ask you a question. Who told you to come tonight?"

He laughed. "Cassidy. She pays me. Well, she says she pays me, and then she pays me in a week or two."

"Cassidy doesn't have money."

"She has a credit card and a bad relationship with math." He shrugged. "Not my problem."

"What are the pills?"

"Party favors. Not the hard stuff. Everybody's fine, everybody has a good time." He said it like a script. "You want one?"

"No." I took a breath. "Do you know a girl named Sasha Welton?"

Something changed in his face. Small, but there. "Who?"

"Sophomore. She OD'd at a party last spring in Rockford. Same pills."

Marcus zipped the bag all the way. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You sold to her. She told her mother your first name before she went under. Her mother's been looking for you for six months."

That was a lie. Sasha Welton had never told anyone. But I had spent the last four days in my first life, after the funeral, after the roof, reading every news article I could find about parties in this county. I had read about Sasha. I had memorized her mother's name.

Marcus looked at the door behind me. "You need to leave."

"I will. After you tell me who put you up to this."

He laughed again, but it was thinner now. "Nobody put me up to anything. I'm a businessman."

"You're nineteen and selling pills to kids at a party your cousin organized. That's not a business. That's a setup. Somebody older is running this and using you as the face." I stepped closer. "You're going to take the fall when it goes wrong. You already know that."

He was quiet.

"Who bought the pills for tonight?" I asked. "Not who's selling them. Who paid for them."

And then the door opened behind me.

Devin stood in the hallway with a red cup in each hand. He looked at me, then at his cousin, then at the duffel.

"Nora," he said. "What are you doing?"