Page 83 of Across His Line

“Grandma says you got a little business going,” he says. His voice is easy, almost friendly. “Up at school. Selling stuff online.”

“It’s nothing,” I say.

“How much money you got?”

I stop scrubbing. “What?”

“Come on.” He tilts his head. “How much?”

“None.”

He laughs soft through his nose. “Tess.”

I turn off the water and turn around. He’s three feet away, with his arms crossed, and his face isn’t doing anything at all. And behind him, in the kitchen doorway, the two of his friends. The one from the recliner, leaning on the frame with a beer. Another guy friend behind him, in the hall, hands in his pockets, watching. Through the gap between them, I can see the girl on the couch with her knees up, looking at her phone, not looking at the kitchen.

The kitchen’s small. The back door is behind Dylan, past the fridge. The doorway to the living room has two grown men blocking the way. The window over the sink is painted shut. It’s been painted shut since before I lived here.

“I need money,” Dylan says. “I owe a guy. It’s not a big deal. I’ll pay you back.”

He won’t. He never has. Not once, not a dollar, not ever.

“I don’t have any money, Dylan.”

“Tessa.” He sighs, like I’m being tiresome. Like I’m nine and won’t give him the remote. “Don’t make this stupid.”

Don’t make this stupid.

He used to say that. When I was ten and wouldn’t give him my birthday money from Grandma. When I was twelve and wouldn’t let him in the bathroom. When I was fourteen, and his friends were on the couch, and I wouldn’t come out of my room. Don’t make this stupid, Tess. Like I was the one doing it. Like whatever happened next was going to be my fault for not doing what he said.

I wipe my hands on the dish towel. “Let me check my account.”

Something in his face relaxes. He thinks I’m giving in. He thinks this is the old Tess, the one who says okay and blindly obeys.

“Go ahead,” he says.

I take my phone out of my back pocket. My hands are steady. I don’t know how they’re steady. I unlock it, and I don’t open my bank.

I open my messages. I don’t think. There isn’t time to think. I don’t scroll for Payton, Elsie, or Kylie. I don’t think about my grandma at the end of the hall with her TV up too loud to hear anything. My thumb goes to one name like it’s the only name in the phone.

Rafferty Waleska.

I type one word.

Me: Help.

Send.

It goes. Delivered. And for one half second, before I switch screens, I see the little map icon at the top of our thread, and under it, gray and small, the distance between his dot and mine.

Fourteen minutes.

I switch to my bank. I turn the phone around and hold it up so Dylan can see the screen.

Checking: $103.42.

“That’s all I have,” I say.

It’s the truth, mostly. Everything I make on eBay, I leave on eBay. I never move it all to my bank. I’ve done it that way since I was fifteen, since the first pair of boots, since I learned that money in a checking account is money somebody can ask you for. Money on a platform is money you can’t take out in a hurry, even if you wanted to. Even if somebody was standing in a kitchen telling you to.