Idle (The Seven Deadly #4)
Fisher Amelie
TO MOM & DAD,
Thank you for showing me what it is to love and be loved. What a gift God gave me in you.
PROLOGUE
APATHY. IT’S A WONDERFUL FEELING because it releases you of all responsibility, and the best part? No one can blame you for inaction because you were just doing your own thing. You were keeping your head down. You were worrying about yourself and only yourself. You were minding your own business.
But there’s a difference between minding your own business and letting someone drown, isn’t there? Who cares, though? They shouldn’t have gotten in the water in the first place, right? It’s not your problem. You have other, no, better things you want to do instead and can’t be held accountable for another’s stupidity.
It’s a powerful drug, apathy. It allows you to hide behind computers, carelessly slinging unfounded opinions, too lazy to put yourselves in others’ shoes. It allows us to pass by the homeless man, clearly cold and starving. He should just get a job already, right? It allows you to turn your head when you hear your upstairs neighbor beat his girlfriend. She chooses to stay. It’s not your problem.
Apathy allows you to slake real responsibility toward those you share the human race with. It’s a cure-all. It’s the perfect alibi.
And when you’re drowning, cast aside in a ditch, count the shoes that walk by. Count their steps. Let them echo in your brain. You are living proof of bad decisions, and you are not their problem.
CHAPTER ONE
MY PHONE RANG AND I opened one eye, rolled on my side, and checked the name that flashed on the screen.
“What’s up?” I asked my friend Ansen.
“Are you asleep?”
I stretched my body, my bones cracking. “I was, but not now, thanks to you.”
“Lily, it’s fucking two o’clock. Wake the fuck up already. Get ready. We’re going to get something to eat.”
I rolled onto my back, my free hand splayed across my pillow. I cleared my throat of sleep. “I need my cash for weed. See you tonight, though?”
“Yeah, Ashleigh’s house tonight.”
“Fine.”
He hung up and I dropped my phone on the bed next to me. I needed to smoke. I sat up, gathered then tossed my hair over one shoulder, pulled on my jean cutoffs, and grabbed the joint on my desk. I stuck my phone in my pocket and made my way through my mom and stepdad’s house to their back deck. It was barely hanging by a thread, and I was the only one willing to risk it, but it was a great place to get high without having to listen to my mom’s complaints about the smoke.
I stuck the joint between my lips and reached into my pocket for my lighter. It wasn’t there, so I rummaged the deck to see if I’d dropped one.
“Need a light?” my neighbor yelled over the fence.
I smiled at him. “Yeah,” I answered. “Got one?”
He sauntered down his own deck, across the too tall grass, and approached the chain link separating our yards. “Can’t go any further,” he said, his forearms draped across the top of the fence, holding up a lighter in one hand.
I jumped off the back of the deck and hit hard, stood tall, and met him. “What’s up, Trace?”
Trace and I had gone to high school together. He had a kid when he was seventeen but left the baby’s mom, like, six months after the kid was born. I let my eyes roam up and down his body.
“Get a good look?” he asked with a smile.
“Not as good as I’d like,” I countered.
He held out the lighter toward me. “You hitting up Ashleigh’s later?” he asked.
“I might. You?”
“Maybe I’ll see you there?”
“Maybe you will,” I told him.
I lit my joint and took a drag. I offered it to him and he did the same. I handed the lighter back, but he refused it.
“Bring it to Ashleigh’s,” he said.
I stuck it in my pocket and nodded. “See you around, Trace,” I said, turning around and heading up the stairs of my deck.
When I reached the top and faced the backyard again, he had just reached the top of his own stairs. He nodded his head my way and I watched him go back inside. I finished my joint, pinched the roach, and stuck it in my pocket. I slid the glass door open and stepped inside.
“I wish you would stop that, Lily,” my mom pleaded for the thousandth time.
“Stop asking, Mom. It’s just who I am.”
She shook her head. “It’s not,” she whispered, feeling around in her barren pantry for food that didn’t exist. “I need to go to the store,” she said like she had money. She looked at me. “Any luck finding work?” she asked.
“Not really,” I said, tossing myself on our creaky sofa. I picked up my controller and took my game from the night before off pause. She came through the narrow kitchen and studied me, but I ignored her. She shook her head then took the short trip down our small hallway to her and Sterling’s bedroom.
I could hear them arguing when Callie and Eloise came bursting from their own shared room, laughing and carrying on, worn-out-looking Barbies in their hands. They jumped on the love seat perpendicular to the sofa I was on.
“You guys are so damn loud,” I told them.
Eloise, the older of the two, scolded me. “Don’t curse, Lily. That’s gross.”
I ignored her and sat up a little, trying to scale through a particularly hard level. I played until eight or so then decided to take a shower. I tossed my roach in the glass tray on my desk with all my others. When I had enough saved, I’d combine all the weed leftover and make one whole joint again.
After my shower, I brushed my teeth, put on a clean pair of cutoffs and a tank top, stuck my keys in my pocket, and headed toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sterling asked me when I reached the end of the hall.
“Headed out,” I answered him.
Just ignore me. Just ignore me.
“Just where the hell is out?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Watch the way you talk to me!” he yelled, the veins in his throat popping. He rushed me, wrapped his hand around my throat, and threw me against the wall. “Lazy piece of shit. Do you have a job yet?”
I swallowed before pushing him off me. “Not yet. Do you?” I countered.
His eyes narrowed. “You’re worthless, Lily. You’re trash.”
“I know this already, asshole,” I said, pushing him away.
He didn’t budge, though. He was a foot taller and had a hundred pounds on me. I tried to ignore him most of the time, but occasionally something he’d say would get through. He was a peach of a stepdad, let me tell you.
I slammed the creaky front door behind me and practically sprinted to my faded orange Scout International.
“Asshole,” I said under my breath.
Something angry blared through my speakers, so I turned it up and headed toward Ashleigh’s. When I pulled down her street, I could see Ansen and about ten others hanging out in her driveway smoking cigarettes. I came to a stop and idled next to them.
“What the fuck? It’s fucking Lily!” Ashleigh screamed, stumbling forward and opening my passenger-side door. She was drunk as shit.
“Hey, Ash,” I greeted with a smile.
“Hey, darlin’, how are you?” she asked.
“Good, want a ride?”
“Where we goin’?” she asked.
“Come with me,” I told her and she climbed in. I pulled forward, finding a vacant spot along her street.
I stuck my tongue at her and threw my car in park. “Not far, dummy,” I said, helping her out. I stuck my keys in my back pocket and put an arm around her shoulder, guiding her floundering body back to her house.
“Damn, Ashleigh, how much have you had to drink?”
“Lots,” she giggled.
We walked toward Ansen and the group he’d stood with when I’d pulled up. I bumped fists with Ansen and nodded at everyone else. Ashleigh’s house was dark, but the music was loud.
I leaned on the bumper of the car at the end of the drive.
“Where’s Paul?” I asked Ansen.
“Inside. You need something?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m running low.”