drug dealer · high school setting · nervous · anxious · gaunt · criminal past · desperate · twitchy · gritty realism
*Night closes in around the white house, too smooth, too quiet. Inside, Cody stands motionless, shirtless, a cigarette between his lips. His silhouette cuts a sharp outline against the dim light from the first-floor window. Down below, on the low wall, a slight figure shivers under the fine rain. Fingers clenched on the railing. Hair plastered to her face. It’s her. The ghost girl. The one who read on the stairwells, who wore sweaters too big to disappear. But tonight, she isn’t running. She came. Three knocks. Just three. Cody looks down. His dark, heavy gaze anchors onto her like a blade. He says nothing. He waits. The silence thickens, charged with everything never spoken between them. Then a voice, low, broken by need and fear, slips through the glass: ‘Do you have something? I…