Chapter 4

Vera

“I’m so dumb,” I muttered to myself, hurrying down the aisle in CVS to find the day-after pill or something so I wouldn’t get pregnant. 

I didn’t know what the hell had been going through my mind when I let Blaise come inside me—hell, when I let him push me into his car! What was I thinking?!

“Can I help you with something, sweetheart?” a young guy with a name tag fastened to his shirt asked. He smiled at me a bit too sweetly and moved closer. “Are you looking for condoms?”

I nearly choked on my own spit and gave him a tense smile. “No.”

“Well”—he stuck out his hand for me to shake—“my name is Jim if you need any help.”

After glancing down at his hand, I awkwardly shook it, so he’d go away and stop talking to me. I probably looked like a whole mess—my hair crazy as hell, my cheeks flushed, and my eyes wide as saucers.

Once he finally left—but really, he kept staring at me from the register, like I might steal something—I searched through the boxes of Plan B and read through every single label on the back of each box, wanting to find the absolute best one. There was no way in hell that I would get pregnant with Blaise Harleen’s baby.

No. Freaking. Way.

I crouched down to read the boxes on the bottom shelf and rubbed the wrinkles I was giving myself on my forehead. “Jesus Christ, Mom is going to kill me if she finds out that I’m in the middle of CVS, looking for some damn pills because I had unprotected s—”

“Are you sure I can’t help you find anything?” Jim asked, giving me a fake smile.

At first, I’d thought he was being nice and had a thing for me with that handshake, but now, I could tell that he wanted me out of his store, that he thought I was planning on stealing something somehow.

“I’m fine,” I snapped, wanting to be left alone.

“If you’re not going to buy anything, then you’ll have to leave.”

Sighing through my nose, I picked up a box and hoped that I had enough money in my wallet to pay for it. Jim guided me up to the counter to check me out and get a poor girl like me out of his store as soon as possible.

“Did you find everything you were looking for today?”

I gritted my teeth. If someone had let me look in peace … 

“Yes.”

After pressing some buttons on the register, he gave me that annoying smile. “Do you have a CVS card?”

“No.”

“Would you like to donate to children in need?”

Damn, this guy was annoying as hell.

“No,” I said, pulling out my wallet as he gave me a disappointed expression. But I didn’t have any money to spare. Plan B was more expensive than I had thought, and I didn’t even know if I had enough for it.

Once he clicked a couple more buttons on his register, he smiled at me. “Would you like a paper bag with that? It’ll be ten cents extra.”

“Oh my freaking God,” I snapped, opening my wallet and pulling out the sixty dollars that I’d earned, working at the library this past Saturday. “Put it in a damn bag and let me pay already. I want to get out of here.”

Jim placed the box into a small brown bag. “That’ll be fifty-one dollars and twenty-three cents.”

Reluctantly, I handed over the money and felt my heart drop. I had been working so many hours at the library and had even been thinking about picking up a second job to help Mom and to save up for a laptop. But things kept breaking around the house, and now, shit like this had happened because of my senseless decisions.

After Jim opened the register, he gave me my change. I counted it twice to make sure he hadn’t gypped me and then shoved it into my wallet and hurried out of the store with my pills. I felt so stupid for what I had done. So much for being invisible for the rest of the school year.

Now, one of Redwood’s baddest boys knew my secret.

“What’s in the bag?” someone said as soon as I stepped out of CVS.

I glanced over to see João leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette.

He took one last puff on it, then tossed it onto the sidewalk and stomped it out. “Fuck it. I don’t care.” He nodded toward his black Mercedes with tinted windows that he’d bought with Poison’s dirty money. “My mom’s working, and I need you to watch Ana.”

“João,” I said, glancing down at the bag and chewing on the inside of my cheek. I might’ve agreed to watch her this morning, but I really needed to get home and think about everything I had done today. “I don’t know if I can tonight. I … I need to …”

João walked toward the driver’s door. “Get in the car, Vera.”

Part of me debated on refusing and just walking home in the cold, but I now needed the money, and Ana wasn’t that bad. Usually, she wanted to bake and watch princess cartoons. She was the total opposite of João, thankfully.

“You’d better pay me,” I said, sliding into the passenger seat.

“You’ll be paid when I get back.”

“Hi, Vera!” Ana said from her car seat in the back. “Wanna make brigadeiros with me?”

“Sure,” I said.

As João drove from the good part of town toward his house in the slums, I glanced down into the paper bag and chewed on the inside of my cheek. I hadn’t thought that I would ever have to do something like this. The only women I knew who did shit this reckless were the girls that I wrote about in my stories.

When João pulled up to the side of the road, I grasped the paper bag tightly. 

João took his house key off his key ring and handed it to me. “Take this. Don’t let anyone inside the house who doesn’t have a key. You know where the ingredients for brigadeiros are in the cabinets. I’ll be back.”

Once I grabbed the key from him, I helped Ana out of the backseat and walked with her to the front door to the small, dark house. Ana took the key from me and shoved it into the lock, opening the door.

After we walked in, I locked the door, turned the lights on, and made a beeline to the kitchen to grab a glass of water. I needed to take that pill now. I couldn’t wait, nor could I forget. I didn’t want to be pregnant.

“I’ll get the cocoa powder out,” Ana said, pushing a chair to the counter. “You get the sprinkles and milk.”

Inside the bag, I ripped apart the box and pulled out the pill. After cursing to myself that I even had to do this, I popped that pill in my mouth while Ana was preoccupied and swallowed it whole. I didn’t care how much money Blaise Harleen had, how attractive he was, or how he resembled all of my dirty-mouthed love interests.

I still hated him.