This is really, truly wrong, and insanely hilarious. Unfortunately, it hurts my head to laugh. “Shit, John, she’s not a bum.”
He exhales and blinks slowly, his eyes squinting at her in the not-that-bright light of day—the blinds are still shut tight. “Dude, I beg to differ. She’s unconscious, somewhere she doesn’t belong, where nobody knows who she is. That’s pretty much the definition of a bum.” He leans over and tries nudging her shoulder—with his hand this time. She moans again and he recoils. “Oh for chrissake, her breath sure smells like a bum’s.”
I dig my phone out of the jeans I was wearing last night, which I find slung over the back of a nearby chair. “I’ll call a cab. You find some ID. We’ll load her in, throw some twenties at the cabbie and send her on her way.”
Holding his head, John casts around for a purse while I make the call. “Wallet!” He says finally, his hand emerging from between the sofa cushions. “Okay, who are you…”
“The taxi will be out front in five.” I collapse into the chair just as John utters a string of curse words at a much too elevated volume. “Dammit John, shut the hell up,” I hiss, pressing my palms to my temples.
“Yeah, okay. Look.” He hands me her ID.
I don’t recognize the name or address, but the taxi sure as hell won’t do any good. “Shit—San Diego? We can’t send an unconscious girl to San Diego in a cab.”
John shakes his head minutely. “No man, that’s not the problem.” He lets loose with another string of curses, softer this time, staring at her like she’s a zombie and any second she’s going to wake up and attack.
“What, then?” I ask, and he hands me another ID. I didn’t really look at the photo of the first one, or the age. I do now. The photo could be her—twenty-one year old Amber Lipscomb… Until I look at the second ID, which is clearly the girl on the sofa—seventeen-year-old April Hollingsworth. “Oh, shit.” I knew the club was a bad idea. I knew it.
“We are so screwed.” He stares at zombie girl, no longer making any effort to wake her up.
My phone launches into its ringtone, startling us both. “Yeah?” I croak, mouth parched and heart rate spiked. And I thought my head was pounding before. Ha. “Okay, thanks.” I look at John. “The taxi’s here.”
His eyes swing to me. “Put your pants on and get out of here, man.”
“Are you serious?”
He’s staring at her again, wary. “I’m nobody. She can’t prove shit about who she was with last night, and there’s only so far she can get with a damned good fake in her possession, and being in a 21-up club. We’re nineteen, which makes this a misdemeanor at worst. No one will do anything to me for such a minor offense—but someone would find a way to make you pay for it. So get out of here.”
John and I have been in tight spots before, but this is probably an all-time low. If this goes poorly, his father will torch him. I never could have imagined John throwing himself on that grenade for me. I can’t wrap my brain around it. “Look, you woke up in your room, I woke up in the guest room, and clearly she hasn’t budged from the sofa since she landed there. Maybe nothing happened.”
“Maybe,” he snorts. “Reid. Take that taxi and go home. And perform some sort of ritualistic sacrifice once you get there, man. I’ll call you later.”
*** *** ***
Emma
Derek and Emily picked me up at the airport Friday afternoon, and almost forty-eight hours later, they’re dropping me back off.
Riding in Derek’s Jeep gives me a déjà vu of my excursion to Griffith Park with Graham. I pull my hair into a ponytail and recall the pleasure of huddling together to watch the sunrise, and the feel of his mouth on my neck as he murmured you’re so beautiful. I’ve reread his note several dozen times, and only the fear of it being ripped from my grasp by a gust of wind keeps me from pulling it out now. Our three weeks are counting down.
I didn’t know, last fall, in my back-and-forth skirmishes with Reid, that this is how it’s supposed to feel. Not relentless internal questions of should I give in or am I ready yet, not a constant feeling of defending my borders—but yearning for this next step, this connection. An inherent trust that it means everything it should mean.
From the back seat, I watch Derek and Emily communicate without speaking, something they’ve probably learned to do of necessity in this open-air vehicle. Their hands are clasped over the center console—his strong, tan forearm brushing against her paler, fragile-looking skin. I can’t help but smile. Thanks to the Jeep and a host of new outdoor activities, Emily has actual tan lines. They’re the faintest tan lines ever, due to her liberal all-over use of sun block, but still.
Derek has gotten my best friend into rock-climbing recently—something that made Mrs. Watson stop speaking to him for a week except for under-her-breath asides about danger and her baby girl and imminent death. Emily says he finally made a concerted effort to explain all the details of the pulley system and the fact that as a novice Emily was always hooked up to it, in the end convincing her mother that he would allow absolutely nothing to happen to the girl he loved.
“It was all very sitcom-sappy,” Emily told me Saturday morning as we lounged in her bed. “I told Derek he wasn’t allowed to speak to my mother that way—all that mushy stuff—which of course bonded them immediately.” Her sly smile made me laugh out loud, and I wondered how Dad and Chloe would handle the news of Graham and me.