LISA

The apartment is full again, and I'm working on my second drink and first joint. The constant burn of liquor on my tongue and smoke in my lungs is starting to get to me. If being sober didn't hurt so fucking bad, I wouldn't touch the shit again.

"It's been two days, and this shit's already itching," I complain to whoever will listen.

"Sucks, man, but next time you won't be putting holes in walls, will you?" Mark taunts me with a smirk.

"Yes, he will," James and Janine say at the same time.

Janine holds her hand out to me. "Give me another one of your pain pills." The fucking junkie has already eaten half the bottle in less than two days. Not that I care—I don't have a use for them, and I sure as fuck don't care about what she puts into her body. At first I thought the pills would help me, get me higher than the shit James has, but they don't. They make me tired, and being tired leads to sleep, which leads to nightmares, which always involve her.

I roll my eyes and stand to my feet. "I'll just give you the damn bottle." I walk to Mark's room to get the pills from under my small pile of clothes.

It's been almost a week, and I have only changed my clothes once. Before she left, Carla, the annoying chick with a savior complex, sewed some hideous black patches over the holes in my jeans. I would have cussed her ass out if James wouldn't have kicked me out on the spot for doing so.

"Hello, Lisa Manoban. Phone!" Janine's high-pitched voice echoes from the living room.

Fuck! I left my phone on the table in the living room.

When I don't respond immediately, I hear Janine say cheekily, "Ms.

Manoban's busy at the moment; can I ask who's calling?"

"Give me the phone, now," I say, darting back into the room and tossing the pills for her to catch. I try to stay calm when she just gives me her middle finger and continues talking, letting the bottle hit the floor. I'm getting fucking tired of her shit.

"Ooohh, Jisoo sounds like a hot name. I love —"

All subtlety lost, I snatch the phone from her hand and press it to my ear. "What the hell do you want, Jisoo? Don't you think if I wanted to talk to you, I would have answered the last . . . I don't know, thirty fucking times you called?" I bark.

"You know what, Lisa?" Her voice is equally as harsh as mine. "Fuck you. You're a selfish asshole, and I should have known better than to call you. She will get through this without you, just the way she always has to."

The line goes dead.

Get through what? What the hell is she talking about? Do I even want to know?

Who am I kidding—of course I fucking do. I immediately dial her back and push past a couple of people and go into the empty hallway for some privacy. Panic rises within me, and my fucked-up mind travels to the worst possible scenario. When Janine slinks into the hallway, clearly to eavesdrop, I head out to the rental car I've been hanging on to still.

"What?" she snaps.

"What are you talking about? What happened?" She's okay, right? She has to be. "Jisoo, tell me she's okay." I have no patience for her lack of words.

"It's Richard, he's dead."

Whatever I might have been expecting to hear, that was not it. Through the haze I'm in, I feel it. I feel the sting of loss inside me, and I fucking hate it. I shouldn't feel this, I barely even knew the junk—the man.

"Where's Jennie?" This is why Jisoo called me so many times. Not to give me a lecture about leaving Jennie, but to let me know her father's dead.

"She's here at the house, but her mother is on her way to get her. She's in shock, I think; she hasn't spoken since she found him."

The last part of her sentence has me reeling and clutching my chest.

"What the fuck? She found him?"

"Yeah." Jisoo's voice breaks at the end and I know she's crying. It doesn't bother me like it usually does.

"Fuck!" Why did this happen? How could this happen to her just after I sent her away? "Where was she, where was his body?"

"Your apartment. She went there to get the last of her stuff and drop your car off."

Of course, even after that, and even after how I treated her, she's considerate enough to think of my car.

I force out the words I both want to and don't want to say: "Let me speak to her." I've wanted to hear her voice, and I've hit rock bottom, falling asleep for the last two nights to the robotic message reminding me that she has changed her number.

"Did you not hear me, Lisa?" Jisoo says, exasperated. "She hasn't spoken or moved in two days except to use the restroom, and I'm not even sure about that. I haven't seen her move at all. She won't drink anything, she won't eat."

All the shit I've been pushing back, trying to ignore, floods over me and pulls me under. I don't care what the repercussions will be, I don't care if the last shred of sanity I have left disappears: I need to talk to her. I reach the car and get in, immediately clear on what I have to do.

"Just try to put the phone to her ear. Listen to me and just do it," I tell Jisoo and start the car up, silently pleading with whoever is listening up there that I don't get pulled over on the way to the airport.

"I'm just worried that hearing your voice may make it worse," her voice sounds through the speakerphone. I turn the volume all the way up and set the phone on the center console.

"Goddammit, Jisoo!" I hit my cast against the steering wheel. It's hard enough to drive with a fucking cast as it is. "Put the phone to her ear, now, please." I try to keep my voice calm, despite the cyclone ripping me apart from the inside out.

"Fine, but don't say anything to upset her. She's already been through enough."

"Don't talk to me like you know her better than I do!" My anger toward my know-it-all stepsister has reached a new high, and I nearly run into

the median, yelling at her.

"I may not, but you know what I do know? I know that you're a freaking idiot for whatever you did to her this time, and you know what else I know? That if you weren't so damn selfish, you would have been here with her and she wouldn't be in the state she's in now," she spews. "Oh, and one more thing—"

"Enough!" I hit my cast against the steering wheel again. "Just put the phone to her ear—you being an asshole isn't going to help anything. Now give her the fucking phone."

Silence is followed by Jisoo's gentle voice: "Jennie? Can you hear me?

Of course you can." She half laughs. I can hear the pain in her voice as she tries to coax her to speak. "Lisa is on the phone, and she . . ."

Soft chanting comes through the speaker, and I lean toward the phone in an attempt to hear the noise. What is that? For the next few seconds, it continues, low and haunting, and it takes me too long to realize it's Jennie's voice repeating the same word over and over and over. "No, no, no," she says, not stopping, not slowing, "no, no, no, no, no . . ."

What was left of my heart snaps into too many pieces to count.

"No, please, no!" she cries on the end of the line.

Oh God.

"Okay, it's okay. You don't have to talk to her—"

The line goes dead, and I call back, knowing that no one is going to pick up.