Just My Luck by Adele Parks (best romance books of all time txt) 📗

so, I’d like the matter confirmed. “No joy. It just says her phone is off-line.”

“She’s probably out of power.”

“She was fully charged when we left the house.”

“But she’ll have taken loads of photos and been posting on Snapchat all night. That drains the battery.” Although it’s a brand-new phone with a huge capacity, I grab the thought anyway. I quickly look at her Instagram account. She last posted when the sky was still light. I tell Logan to check Snapchat, which I don’t have and I don’t understand. He does as I ask him, and I stand by, watching intently.

“Nope, nothing,” he says.

“Most likely she’s just switched off her phone,” says Jake.

“I told her to keep her phone on tonight.” The anxiety begins to swell and solidify. It grows into a throbbing apprehension, cementing in the base of my back, pulling me to the ground. I stagger a bit, prop myself up against a bar table. Legs and hands shaking, my brain behind my body. I breathe in, deeply.

“So our teenager doesn’t want to be found,” Jake says, grinning. “That’s not exactly breaking news. My guess is she’s sneaked off with some of her new friends. Probably trying dope for the first time.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” I snap.

“Of course it bothers me. I’m just saying most likely whatever she is up to, it isn’t Armageddon.”

Jake has always taken a looser position on drugs than I have. He sees them as inevitable, experiential. I really do see them as Armageddon. I force myself not to sound too frantic, but can’t stop myself asking, “So you do think something is up?”

“I didn’t mean that. Look, have a drink. Try to enjoy yourself, Lexi.”

“I can’t enjoy myself,” I insist.

“That’s half the problem,” he sighs.

I want to ask him what the other half is. I want to tell him what it is. I shiver, despite the sticky heat in the tent. The heat is intensified by the sentences that also hang in the air, half-formed. Too lethal to commit to.

“We should call Ridley and her friends, everyone in her school year. Everyone we invited from her old school and the new one. We have the new class list. I think I have it on my phone.”

As I scramble to open contacts, Jake places his hand over my phone. “Just take a breath, Lexi. She’s just out there, drunk and sleeping it off. Let’s not make a fuss. Blow this out of proportion. What sort of first impression are we going to make on the parents at the new school if we call and say she’s missing at her own party? If we call at this time of night, they’ll all worry about their own kids, half of which have gone home with different friends, et cetera. It would cause a panic.”

I glare at Jake, but reluctantly accept he might have a point. I leave Logan in the dance tent with Jake and go outside to look for Emily. I tell myself that most likely there is nothing seriously wrong, but my years of mothering mean that I do know one thing: if a child doesn’t want to be found, they probably should be.

The weather forecast was accurate. The night air has turned cold, and rain starts to splatter on the ground, mocking the British optimism in summer. Many people abandon the outside attractions and head for shelter, others call it a night and start falling into minicabs. Like a salmon heading upstream, I walk out into the blackness, scouring the crowds and the shadows for my daughter.

CHAPTER 35

Lexi

“Emily, Emily!” My voice pierces the night, and the sounds from the party fall away into the distance—the laughing, the noise from the fair rides, the music from the DJ. I don’t hear any of it. I only hear my heart beating against my rib cage, and my ears strain as I wait for her to yell back a response. I’ve scoured the entire party site and there’s no sign of her. I’ve asked everyone I’ve bumped into if they’ve seen her recently. I’m met with nothing other than blank shrugs and vague apologies that, no, they haven’t. Most people just want to get out of the rain, and I don’t think they really give my question much thought. “She was dressed as Zendaya as she appeared in The Greatest Showman.” A shrug. “You know, purple leotard thing.” I lose patience with their glassy eyes, their dumb indifference, and rush on with my search. I start to run. I’m not as fit as I should be. I’ve spent too many long hours behind a desk. My breath never makes it to and from my lungs; instead, it harbors in my throat and I’m suffocating.

I imagine her unconscious, choking on her own alcohol-induced vomit. I imagine her cold, wet, alone. The woods loom in the background of my every thought and breath, shadowy, threatening, overpowering. She’s nowhere to be found at the party—I need to head into the woods next and search there. The trees are dense, some fat and ancient, others scrubby and slight, saplings, really. Their combined canopies block out any moonlight that the clouds haven’t already stolen. I stumble around, possibly in circles because there are no clear paths, and even if there were, I wouldn’t know how far to follow one, or in which direction. Brambles rip at the thin cotton of my costume and soon my legs and arms are scratched. I wish I was wearing jeans. I wish I’d just spot her lying asleep under a fat tree. I wish I had kept her by my side all night. I wish we’d never had a party. I wish so many things. My slashed calves are the least of my problems.

Even using the torch on my phone, it’s too dark to see anything much. I decide I need to go back to the party and rouse security. They can help me search—we need to do this systematically. I run back to