Equilibrium Read Online Free

acknowledging Nick’s lame joke. The plans she and Nick had made during lunch on Monday didn’t include her best friends as chaperones, but she liked first-date protection. “Nick—this is Cam and Heather.”
    Nick nodded at her chest, as if she’d introduced him to her boobs instead of her best friends. Cam opened the side door and held the bucket seat forward for Heather. Heather did her best to avoid contact with Cam after he climbed into the backseat, angling her legs to the side.
    “ You sit next to me.” Nick looked up from her cleavage for the first time and gave her a tiny jolt when his violet eyes made contact with hers. Maybe he had promise after all.
    “Whatever.” Darcy came around to the passenger seat and grappled the shoulder strap across her body while Nick peeled out of the parking lot. Serious testosterone overload, even for a junior.
    The boys’ middle school basketball team ran down the snow-cleared sidewalk between the middle school and high school for their daily warm-up. Darcy picked Troy out from the line. Apparently brain-dead, she waved, giving her brother permission to jog backward, flailing his arms as if he were signaling a plane.
    “Where to?” Nick said.
    “The lake would be good.” She angled a glance at Nick, checked out his blond highlights, his overuse of hair products.
    “Is the park open?” At the stop sign, Nick dialed up the heat and turned on the stereo, blasting heavy metal through the vehicle.
    Darcy lowered the volume and changed the station to the rock she preferred. “Of course not. But we’re not going to the park. We’re going across from the park. Take a left.”
    “Oh, yes, ma’am. Show me the way.”
    What kind of girls was Nick used to? Darcy had heard all the rumors, of course. How he’d hooked up with a zillion girls. How he’d been kicked out of school in Nashua for dealing drugs. How he’d hit a teacher. But rumors weren’t always true. She of all people should know how stories got out of control and took on a life of their own.
    Darcy reclined in the seat, letting the lyrics for “Breathe” wash over her body. Sing it, Missy. She could relate. Life sucked, and then you died. “Got anything to drink?”
    “Cooler’s in the back. Pass my girl a beer.” His girl? Give her an eighth of a break. She wasn’t anyone’s girl, not since Daddy had died.
    Cam fished through the cooler’s ice cubes and handed Darcy a Bud.
    “Thanks.” Her two best friends in the back, a cute boy, cold beer. One more thing would rocket the afternoon into nirvana. “Got anything else in the cooler?”
    “Nope, in my pocket.” Nick grabbed her hand and held it against the herb-filled bulge on his thigh. “Enough for everyone.”
    “Good.” Darcy withdrew her hand and pretended to need two hands to open her beer. Mom would pitch a fit if she found out she sometimes partied. Since elementary school, Mom had warned her and Troy about the dangers of doing drugs and alcohol, leaving out the part Darcy had figured out on her own: their odds of getting Daddy’s bipolar disorder and how nonprescription meds would make it worse. But Daddy had listened to his shrink’s warnings, and look how well that had turned out. “Take a right at the lights, then it’s the third driveway. Says private drive .”
    “Your folks’ place?”
    Darcy popped the tab and took a sip. Beer misted from the can’s mouth, tickling her nose. “Don’t know whose house it is.”
    “Gotcha.” Nick smiled, seeming to understand their tradition of trespassing.
    “She doesn’t have folks,just a mother,” Heather said, chiming in only to save Darcy from explaining her life. Yet again.
    “Leave the car facing out, in case we have to bolt.” No movement in or around the abandoned cottage. No sign warning against unauthorized entry. No reason to obey the law. Darcy unlatched her seat belt. “Still looks empty. It’s our place now.”
    Nick cut the engine and let out a whoop, startling