Sketchy Read Online Free PDF

here, fast.”
    We scrambled, throwing on our wet clothes as we heard approaching walkie-talkie voices and dogs panting and barking.
    “Shit. Run,” Marcus ordered.
    “But we didn’t do anything.”
    “I’m holding, Bea! I have a drop scheduled today.”
    We sprinted through the knee-high alfalfa grass again, but this time it was wet and muddy, and I tripped over rotten, felled trees. Burrs tangled in my hair.
    We stopped at a two-lane road, saw police cars approaching. Marcus pushed me down into a ditch of wet leaves and mud, and I fell on a jagged rock. My jeans ripped, and I scraped my knee, drawing blood.
    “Bea, come on, get up!” Marcus pulled me across the road and onto a side street to his parked car. I brushed the dirt off my top and torn jeans and dabbed a used tissue on my bleeding knee.
    Marcus started his car and sped off.

    I read every report of her rape and murder in the days and weeks that followed. Her name was Veronica, and she was an eighteen-year-old senior at a high school in Ypsilanti. Her arms and legs were tied. She was blindfolded, and wet leaves covered her face. A black garbage bag was wrapped around her legs. The only thing exposed was her bruised and battered torso. They said she was strangled after she was beaten and raped. And they had no leads, no answers—nothing.
    I never came forward, never had the guts to tell anyone that I thought I was there when she was still alive, still fighting for her life—that I thought I had heard her—and if I did, if it was her voice, I could have saved her. But I was too messed up to help. And too ashamed to admit it. So I got messed up even more after that.
    But her voice, calling for help, never left me. No drug, nothing I took, could erase it from my head.
    And now he may have struck again, with Willa.
    I look at Marcus, present time, hand him back the pills, throw my shoulders back, and sip the water. “No thanks, Marcus. I can’t.”
    “Okay. I won’t force you.” He drops them into a tiny envelope and backs away, trips on my purse, swears, and places my bag on his desk.
    “Marcus, the reason I came here was to ask you about a girl named Willa… Willa Pressman.”
    He swings around, facing me. “Why?”
    “Do you… know her?”
    He laughs. “You came here to ask me if I know the strung-out chick who was raped?”
    “Strung out? What are you talking about, Marcus? She’s like a goddess to everyone at that school.”
    “Yeah, that may be, but she’s a strung-out goddess.”
    “Seriously? She uses?” I sit down on his desk chair, stunned.
    “Oh, come on, an addict can recognize another a mile away. Don’t act so surprised. How do you know her, anyway?”
    “I just met her today. I go to her school now.”
    “Ah, Packard High, know it well. A frequent stop for me. Those kids there keep me busy.”
    “So you supply her?”
    He laughs. “Ah, I think a few of us do—her appetite is insatiable.”
    “Wow. Really. Well, I heard her bring your name up in the lunchroom, and I wondered—”
    Marcus panics. “She’s not, like, talking shit about me, ratting me out, is she?”
    “No, no. It’s not like that. I was sort of surprised she knew you.” I scramble. “And it got me wondering about you—how you’re doing.”
    He kneels, eye level with me, rolls my chair closer to him. “I’m doing just fine… especially now. I’ve missed you, baby. I’m glad you came.” He leans in and kisses me, and I taste him, succumb to his sweet, warm mouth—and realizeit wasn’t just his drugs I was addicted to.
    The words fly out of my mouth before I can think. “Oh, Marcus, I’ve missed you, too… so much.”
    He pulls me up off the chair and backs us onto his bed. Whistler hisses as he is forced off the pillow. Marcus, lying above me, starts to unbutton my cardigan, kissing the skin underneath.
    The door suddenly slams wide open, and Aggie stands above us. Agatha Rand, my ex-best friend from Athena Day.
    “Aggie!” Marcus sits