Back Come As You Are
Chapters (25)
  1. Copyright Notice
  2. Dedication
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Acknowledgments
  23. Also by Dahlia Adler
  24. About the Author
  25. Newsletter Sign-up

It’s tempting to speak up and remind her that it’s my turn, but I don’t think there are any answers here that I actually want. So I wait to see how Priya responds instead, but she just laughs. “As if I have any secrets you don’t know.”

“I swear,” Jenna says with a quick, cutting look at me, “none of you are any fun anymore. Take the dare, then.”

Priya grabs the flask from her hand and takes a swig. “Fine. Dare.”

Jenna grins. “Go to every guy here and ask him how big his dick is.”

“But you already know so many of the answers,” Priya says sweetly, and I can’t help snorting a laugh. Thankfully, Isabel barks one even louder, and Jenna misses mine entirely. “Are you having me do your research so you can figure out your next victim? Is the current one not satisfying?”

I expect a scathing response from Jenna, but instead, Priya receives a languid smile I’d love to twist off Jenna’s face. “The current one is deeply, deeply satisfying. Some might say enormously so.”

Isabel rolls her eyes. “Jenna would say enormously so. I have, in fact, heard her do so on way too many occasions.”

Okay, cool, I am definitely out. Even picking up a used condom beats listening to a discussion of Salem’s anatomical gifts. I scan the ground for another piece of trash, and promptly find a gum wrapper I’m 90 percent sure is Jenna’s.

I stab it with the point of my picker and move on, the girls’ laughter ringing in my ears.

I take the same van seat on the way back, but when a body slides in next to mine, it’s Isabel’s, not Salem’s. “You can go take my seat,” she tells him dismissively, as if she’s calling the shots here and not literally sending him to fool around with his girlfriend in the back.

So much for community service helping him learn how to do “good.”

“You okay?” she asks me in a low voice once the ride starts. “Jenna can be a little … Jenna.”

“She really can,” I confirm. “But it’s fine.” It’s not fine. “Anyway, we got the forest clean, and that’s the point, right?”

Her lips twitch in a smile. “Right.”

She pivots to chat with Priya for the rest of the ride while I pull out my earbuds and settle in with Blackpink. After a few minutes, Isabel nudges me to ask what I’m listening to, and I hand her one of the buds. We listen in silence the rest of the way home.