Amber Eyes

FIFTY TWO

Harley
( Present )

It smells like smoke and mint in his car.

I've been locking and unlocking the door for the past minute, the clicking sound music to my ears as I try to think. I can feel Kyle's eyes on me as he sits in the driver's seat, leaning back with his hands on the steering. We're sitting in his car because it would have been awkward to stand near the school gate awkwardly. I'm holding the keys just in case I don't trust him enough to be in a car with him yet. His idea, not mine.

He looks exactly like he was in the picture my sister mailed me earlier if we ignore the dark circles and the dullness in his eyes. His outfit makes him seem like some kind of skater boy when I know what kind of a job he really does.

It didn't take much for me to figure out the basics of Kyle's story. He comes from a family with a single father, has two siblings and back when he got into all this, he needed money. He still works under one of the biggest dealers in the area even though he's never met him and I just know that he's terrified of him just by the way he looked when I brought him up a while ago.

The details of everything aren't clear to me but if these work out alright, maybe one day he'll trust me enough to tell me that.

"For fuck's sake, Harley, stop doing that," Kyle says. More like scolds.

I stop playing with the key, staring at nothing in particular before sucking my teeth and blurting out the question that's been on my mind since I've talked to Kyle for the first time.

"Did you sleep with her?" I turn to him, meeting his eyes. "My sister?"

He's caught off guard but nods anyway. "Yeah. I did."

"How close were you?"

He waits for a couple moments. Then, after realising that there's no way out of this, he slumps back. "I don't know. I guess we were. She talked about you. She told me about the whole Redville thing." He sighs. "You know, she called me sometime in January. That was the last we talked."

January. I bite my lip. "What did she say?"

"That she doesn't want to talk to me anymore. If I contact her again, she will turn me in."

I almost choke on air. "She said what?"

Kyle smiles, glancing sideways at me. "Yeah. She thought if she talked to me again, it would be difficult for her to remain sober. I don't know what was going through her mind then."

I nod once, running a hand through my hair. "Right."

"Do you know where she is?" he asks me, unsure. "The last thing she'd said to me was that she'd run away. When I came to your place to check on her, she wasn't there anymore."

I look at him. I didn't know that. I know I should give it more thought before telling him the truth. I nod slowly, letting out a shaky breath as I look out of the window, leaning my head against the cold glass. "I do have an idea about where she is."

His gaze on me intensified. "You do?"

I hum in response.

He waits for a while, probably waiting for me to say something but I don't. When he realises that I'm not going to say anything, he exhales. He's clearly disappointed and frustrated. "You're not going to tell me that, are you?"

"Not yet," I reply quietly. I turn to him. "I will. Someday. Maybe. But just not yet."

He smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes. "Alright." He looks away, beginning to fidget with his fingers. "You know, when you told me that you're at Redville, I thought it was a prank at first. You couldn't be at Redville when you didn't like it in the first place. Especially when your parents split up and neither of them approved of this crappy school."