Rebel, Bully, Geek, Pariah (6 page)

I lost the fight.

It wasn't a laugh that escaped so much as a gasping snort, like a giant face fart that echoed through the trees all around us.

The response was instantaneous.

“Who's down there?” The megaphone blared behind us.

It was followed by the much quieter but more chilling sound of a gun being cocked.

Now
that
killed the laughter.

The three faces around me were murderous. Yes, obviously, this whole scenario was my fault. Never mind that at least one of us had been drinking and another was a thief—my laughter was the real crime. I scowled back at them, then squared my shoulders, making a decision.

I marched out of our cluster of trees with my hands up, because “hands up” seemed like the proper response to an officer drawing his gun.

That gun was aimed and ready to fire.

I swallowed hard. I hoped the moonlight was bright enough for him to see that I was just some unarmed kid and not the usual trash that prowled these woods at night. To my left, still sheltered by the huge oak and its surrounding trees, three sets of eyes
bulged. In front of me, the officer's gun pointed steadily at my chest.
If only there were a way to make myself invisible now.

I forced myself to lift my gaze from the gun to his face.
Make eye contact. Look innocent!

But I probably just looked confused, because the face above the gun was familiar. I couldn't place the guy, but for some reason, his mug made me think of Mama. Confusion hardened into anger. No doubt this must be an officer who had busted Mama once upon a time. How many times had I seen cops put her in handcuffs over the years?

Twice, when Grandma called the cops on her. Once when Mama was in the hospital.
My fault, sort of.
Once when I was in the hospital.
Her fault, definitely.

I wondered whether the officer recognized me, too, or whether he'd seen so many traumatized children that our tear-streaked faces all started to look the same. Maybe he wouldn't remember me without those tears. I hardly recalled what I looked like with tears myself; it had been so long.

Behind me, but definitely closer now, the megaphone cop spoke again.

“If you're down there, best come on up now.”

The boom of the disembodied voice shattered my silent standoff with the trigger-happy officer. His head swiveled in the direction of the megaphone, and his gun arm finally, mercifully, lowered to his side. I waited for him to answer back, to let the other officer know he had everything covered down here, but instead he did something inexplicable: he whipped around and raced off into the trees after his partner, toward the river.

My breath came out in a whoosh—
How long have I been holding that in?
—and I lowered my arms, which ached from hanging in the air.

“He left,” I whispered. I turned to the trio hiding in the shadows to my left and repeated, louder, “He left!”

York tentatively stuck his head out from behind the tree to confirm what I was saying, and then he spun around in place as if looking for someone. “Whose car is that?” he asked, his voice low. “We need a ride.”

“They're probably up there getting a ticket,” Boston said, equally quietly. He pointed back in the direction of the party.

“I think it's Carrie's,” York said to himself. “It looks like hers.”

There was a faint but distinct noise then, from the direction of the river—the sound of feet on wooden slats. The cops were coming back up the dock.

York grabbed Boston by the arm and started dragging him toward the wide-open SUV, then turned and called back to us. “Let's go!”

I stared stupidly after them, not sure what they were doing, until the megaphone opened up one more time.

“Stay where you are!”

The party police had heard us. I looked back up the hill into the thicker part of the woods and saw a bright light flashing as it bobbed around trees, slicing through the dark in our direction.

Andi shoved me hard toward the SUV. “Move.
Now
.”

I stumbled, letting her push me into the clearing. Ahead of us, the boys were climbing into the front seats of the SUV, York behind the wheel.

“No way!” York cried. “The keys are in the ignition!”

Andi dragged me to one of the back doors, and I pulled out of her grasp.

“We can't ride with him. He's been drinking!”

It would occur to me later that it was also a bad idea to steal a car and run from the police, but in the moment, I only had the wits to focus on one drama at a time.

Andi jumped into the backseat and dropped the messenger bag with the violin at her feet. To my right, labored voices were floating up a path cut through the trees—the path to the boat dock. The SUV would be gone before they got here, and so would Mama's violin, along with all of my money. I was already thinking about how I would track Andi down later to claim my stuff when she yanked the violin out of the bag and held it high.

“Get in, and it's yours,” she said.

I couldn't understand the intensity in her voice, but it was that sense of urgency, even more than the lure of the violin, that pulled me into the SUV.

“Drive!” she screamed, and the engine roared in response.

Within seconds, the SUV was flying backward as York did the three-point-turn maneuver I'd learned in drivers' ed last year. The SUV rocked back and forth until it faced up the road and away from the river.

I opened my mouth to—I don't know, protest, maybe? Or suggest another plan, or maybe just ask to be let out of the damn car. But whatever I was going to say got knocked right out of my brain as York hit the gas and slammed us back in our seats.

We sped all of ten feet down the road before a bright flash of light glared off the windshield, followed by something large flying out of the woods to our left. It was a blur of black, and it made an awful
thump
as it hit the front fender and rolled up the hood of the SUV.

York slammed on the brakes, and the body—
Oh God, it's a body!
—rolled back down the hood, the megaphone attached to its hand
clunk-clunk
ing against the car all the way down.

 

7

THIS IS WHAT people mean when they say silence is deafening.

The quiet shock that filled the car was a tangible thing, and it swelled until it felt like the small confines of the SUV would burst with it. A car door opened, and the
ding-ding
warning bell cut through our hush.

“Stay here,” York ordered.

So, naturally, every one of us opened our own doors and followed him to the front of the SUV. The officer had fallen to the side of the dirt road, half-concealed in the weeds and grass. He was not moving.

“He's dead,” Boston said in a strangled whisper. He said it again, and this time it was a scream that reached all the way to my bones. “HE'S DEAD!”

Jail is for drunks and accidental car thieves. Prison is for cop killers.

I backed away from the officer's body and fumbled in my purse for my phone. It had been so long since I'd had to dial
9-1-1.
My mama is missing. My mama won't wake up.
It made me sick to my stomach.

But before I could punch the numbers, York let out a 9-1-1 call of his own.

“Help!”

It took me a second to realize he was shouting his SOS directly out toward the river.

“HELP!”

He was calling for the other police.

And they answered.

The first shot whizzed by us far to the left, lost somewhere in the woods.

The second bullet burrowed deep into a tree just over the fallen officer's body.

By the time the third bullet screamed into the rear bumper, we were all back inside the SUV.

Andi yelled for York to “Go! Go! Go!” but he really didn't need her prodding. His foot was on the gas before our doors were even closed.

Two more shots rang out, and I couldn't help but turn around and look out the rear window. Through the cloud of dust we were kicking up, the cops finally emerged from the trees, still firing their guns, until they became so small I couldn't distinguish them from the trees. I wondered if the familiar cop knew he was shooting at the child of a woman he had arrested.

Small world
, I thought as I collapsed back into my seat, because in this chaos, it was the only thought I could spare.

The SUV roared out of the woods, and our heavy breathing paused for only a moment as we passed the fork in the dirt road that led toward the party and held a collective breath. But there were no signs of any cop cars, and the only thing that followed us out of River City Park and onto the road was our own fear.

As soon as the tires hit pavement, the silence in the SUV broke.

“Pull over,” Andi ordered just as Boston said, “Slow down.”

York told them both to shut up, but a moment later, he sideswiped a curb and seemed to change his mind.

“Maybe I shouldn't be driving,” he mumbled as he slowed down
and
pulled over.

“You think?” I muttered.

The SUV rolled to a stop in a dark parking lot behind a boarded-up fast-food restaurant. A giant plaster taco dangled from a rusted chain over the old drive-through window. I was suddenly hungry, and not just because I'd skipped dinner but because hunger was an easier feeling right now than horror.

“Is everyone okay?” York asked.

“We're fine,” Andi snapped. “You just hit a curb.”

“No, I mean—what happened . . . we—are we okay?”

In the passenger seat, Boston's head dropped into his hands, and his shoulders shook.

Oh shit, a crier.

“Oh my God, are you crying?” Andi said. “We don't have time for your meltdown.”

It was harsh, but I had to agree.

“Hey!” York whipped around and pointed at Andi with a finger backed by a fist. “You don't talk to my brother. He's scared, all right?” He turned and ducked his head toward Boston's. “But dude, you really can't cry right now. We're gonna be okay, trust me.”

Boston wiped his nose on the back of his hand and sat up straight again. “We just killed a cop. There's nothing
okay
about that.”

“We didn't kill a cop,” York said. He turned to look each of us in the face. “Right?”

“If he's dead, we killed him,” I said, emotionless. My brain wasn't really connecting with the truth of those words yet.

“But maybe he's not dead.” York latched onto the bone I'd thrown. “Maybe he's fine, and—”

“He didn't look fine,” Andi said. “And either way, the little one is right. We are
not
okay.”

Boston pounded the dashboard suddenly. “I'm not the little one!”

His punch sent something clattering off the dash and into his lap. He picked it up and turned it around. It was a flat black box with an old-fashioned-looking digital display running along one side.

“What is this?” Boston fingered the display, which was blank. Whatever it was, it was off. “What is
all
of this?” He gestured around the dash and the center console, and Andi and I leaned into the gap between the front seats, finally taking in our surroundings.

The SUV was full of custom equipment. The stereo was the biggest one I'd ever seen in a car, with more buttons and
knobs than you could possibly need to tune a radio. It, too, had a display window, which was constantly scrolling a series of nonsense numbers and letters that didn't match any radio station I'd heard of.

Boston spun one of the knobs until a soft crackle sounded from the speakers. He turned it farther, and a voice cut through the static, loud enough to startle us all back into our seats.

“All units River City Park, Forest Road 6.”

My heart raced, and I imagined it beating in time with the three pounding hearts around me.

Another voice answered through the radio. “Dispatch, this is Twelve, en route to Forest Road 5, juvenile disturbance backup.”

“Negative. Forest Road 6. Nine-one-eight, officer down. Possibly related to disturbance.”

Boston's hand flew off the knob like it was on fire. “What the hell?!”

My thoughts exactly.

 

8

BOSTON SPOKE AGAIN, and his voice was choked down to a whisper. “Whose car is this?”

York shook his head. Actually, his whole body seemed to be shaking, and I wondered if he was crying now, too. “I thought it was Carrie's, or someone from the party. I figured we'd give it back later.”

“York.” Boston seemed to be struggling to keep his voice even. “Is this a
cop car
?”

“It's just some SUV. I didn't—how could we—”

“It's a cop car!” Boston shouted.

I felt a pang of guilt. If it
was
a cop car, it seemed like I should have known somehow. I'd certainly seen enough of them. But this one wasn't marked, and I was ever-so-slightly distracted by the gunfire and the running away before.

Boston slammed around in the SUV, flipping down the visors and opening the center console compartments. Then he yanked on the glove compartment door and pulled out a small
walkie-talkie. “Undercover!” He shook the walkie-talkie as if it was proof. “I am so screwed!”

“
You?!
” York exploded in return. “Of course
you
. It's always about you! We are all in this. We all hit that cop!”

“Actually,” Andi spoke up, sounding almost bored, “you're the only one who hit a police officer.”

“And drove drunk,” Boston added.

“And stole a cop car,” I said, because it felt like my turn.

York caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “We all left.”

“No,” Andi said. “The rest of us were kidnapped. We're innocent.”

“You're a thief,” I reminded her.

She rolled her eyes. “Hardly ranks now, does it?”