Shade Me by Jennifer Brown Page B

night when I’d first seen it, but my brain had catalogued something else about it. The silver.
    Three numbers—412. Silver, brown, pink.
    My fingers felt cold against the keys of my laptop. Were the numbers a clue?
    It seemed so unlikely, so impossible. But it made sense in a way I couldn’t explain—just like I was eight years old again and trying to tell a doctor about my colors. I couldn’t ignore it.
    Dru and I had exchanged numbers the last time we were at the hospital together, just in case. I picked up my phone and dialed.
    â€œHello?” The voice sounded gravelly with sleep. I had forgotten how early it still was.
    â€œDru?”
    â€œWho is this?”
    â€œIt’s Nikki Kill.”
    â€œOh.” There was rustling, followed by beeping that I knew all too well. “Hey,” he said after a pause. “Sorry, I’m at the hospital.”
    â€œAny changes?”
    â€œNo. She’s still unresponsive. My dad wants to have her moved. Wants some specialist he knows to look at her, but it’s too risky. The doctor said the brain swelling is not going down, either. It’s bad, Nikki.”
    Words stuck in my throat. I remembered my dad, pulling me into his lap in a special room at the hospital ten years ago, saying the same words. It’s bad, Nikki. But he hadn’t had to tell me for me to know. I’d slipped in the blood. I’d seen the crimson all over the room. I’d already known she was going to die.
    â€œHello?” Dru asked. “You still there?”
    I cleared my throat. “I’m here.”
    â€œAre you coming by today?”
    â€œI have school,” I said. “But, um, that’s actually why I was calling you.”
    His voice went grim. “I graduated a year ago, remember? You couldn’t pay me enough to go back into that place. I’d take one of my dad’s stupid acting jobs if I had to.”
    â€œNo, not that. You said Peyton moved out of the mansion, right?”
    He paused. “The mansion? What, are we royalty?”
    Just about, but I let it slide. “Sorry. But you said she moved out, right?”
    â€œYeah, why?”
    â€œAnd you don’t know where she went?” I felt a trickle of sweat run down the side of my face into the raised collar of my robe. I realized I’d been clutching the phone so tightly my fingers ached. I took a breath and eased up.
    â€œNo.” His voice took on that wary tone again. “What are you getting at, Nikki?”
    â€œI think I might know where she went.”
    There was another pause. “Where?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know if I’m right,” I said. “Do you have her keys?”
    â€œI think so,” he said. “The hospital gave them to me that night. They were the only thing she had on her, besides that phone. So I have them, I just don’t know what they unlock.”
    I stood, shook off my robe, and let it drop to the floor. I raced across my room and grabbed clothes out of the closetwithout even paying attention to what I was grabbing. Not that my closet offered a lot of variety—worn jeans, concert T-shirts, a couple of Jones’s button-downs. “Meet me at Fountain View Apartments in twenty minutes.”
    â€œWhat about school?”
    â€œI just decided I’m skipping.”
    â€œHow do you know it’s the right place?”
    I hopped on one foot, trying to get a sock on the other, almost dropping the phone in the process. I’ll explain later, I opened my mouth to say, but I knew that wasn’t true. I wasn’t in the habit of telling anyone about my dolphin blue, or any other color, and I wasn’t going to start today. “I just know,” I said, which turned out to be as close of an explanation to my synesthesia as there was anyway.
    I heard the murmur of voices. Maybe nurses. And more beeping, getting closer, as if he were walking toward Peyton again. I closed