0.5 Scooped

by Gina LaManna

  “Meg, do you honestly think someone on this side of town would steal a cop car?”

  “Good point.” Meg looked down at her phone, then put it to her ear as if listening to a message. “Hang on a sec. Ahhhhh.” The breath she let out could’ve blown a mosquito into Wisconsin. The next second she sucked in her breath. When she was done making mini tornados with her mouth, she glanced over at me. “I guess we need alternative transportation.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Just a former co-worker. Calling to check in on me. You know, shoot the shit.”

  “It was the Police Department telling you they towed your car back.”

  “Yep.” Meg gave a firm nod.

  “Well, that’s a real shame, then.”

  “Or, it’s just a sign from the universe that we need to get our creative juices flowing. Maybe our chi’s were being blocked up by the ease of having our own car.”

  “Right.”

  Meg looked around. “See? There’s one of those duplex bikes. Beauteous, huh?” She pointed to a hunk of junk that was half blue, half pink and all around rusted.

  “It’s not mine.”

  “We’ll just borrow it.”

  “No. I don’t want to make enemies of my neighbors. They’ll shoot me. I saw one of them take pot shots at a squirrel the other day.”

  “Nah, they’ll never know.” Meg heaved the tandem bike forward. “I’m tellin’ ya, we got thirty minutes to get there, and it’ll take every ounce of pedalin’ we got to make it there in time.”

  “Can’t we call a cab or something?”

  “Do you know a cabbie that’ll come to this side of town?”

  “Fine. But we have to leave it just where we left it when we get back.” I crossed my arms. “They can never know.”

  “Of course not.” Meg leaned one foot against one of the pedals, and it popped right off. “Whoops. No worries, we can screw that sucker back on later.”

  “Oh, god,” I said, climbing on behind Meg. “Oh lord, save me.”

  With a crunch and a grind of gears as old as my apartment, the two-seater tandem bike slid forward. Meg’s seat sagged considerably more than mine, but for the most part it appeared we were supported.

  It was pretty fortunate that the bike was currently mounted on a downhill, so we could ease into the whole pedaling thing, especially since Meg had sneakily taken the seat with one pedal, so she had to work only half as hard.

  “Obhh, nobhh.” I spit out streamers as we picked up speed and coasted down the hill. “Meg, brake.”

  “What? Nobody braked. We’re flying!” Meg’s streamers were flying straight back into my mouth and eyes, and I couldn’t see a single thing except reds and yellow, glimpses of greens and flashes of blue, and a teensy shimmer of pink somewhere near her left butt cheek.

  “Brake!” I shouted again, the word muffled by the streamers in my mouth.

  “No, it’s a left at the lake.”

  Lake? I couldn’t see anything, but the thought of us crashing relentlessly towards a body of water was enough to make my blood run along the icy side of cold.

  “Duck!” Meg said. “We’ve got company. Fuc—”

  “DUCK OR FUC—”

  The answer was clear, as a Nerf dart whizzed right in front of my face, nearly taking my nose off.

  Taken by surprise, Meg and I both jerked in opposite directions. We crashed into bushes lining the side of the road, and skidded painfully through some particularly scratchy branches. Our front wheel wedged itself beyond stuck.

  “Stop, or the next one’s real!” A kid raced into the streets, his jeans sagging just below his behind.

  “Yeah,” Meg said. “A real Nerf bullet? You wouldn’t shoot me. I’m a cop.”

  The kid raised the hand with the Nerf gun and scratched his forehead. “You ain’t a cop…they don’t wear that. Not even the undercover variety. Know how I know? Exactly nothin’ is undercover. Including your skin.”

  With a guttural yell, Meg yanked the front wheel of the bike from the bushes and set us back on course down the slope. I held on for dear life, my head flopping around a bit as Meg pushed us forward. She looked back, winked, and handed me one of her streamers. I knew immediately what she was aiming to try.

  Pushing away from the curb, we formed a loose ‘U’ shape with the streamer that trailed behind as we flew down the hill. The tail-feather worked like a lasso, and we just managed to hook kid around the waist, tangling him up just enough so that he stumbled before the streamer snapped. I looked behind, watching as he tripped over his low-riding pants.

  “Serves you right,” I said. “Pull up those pants- aaah!”

  It was my turn to shriek as our front wheel hit a bumpy patch, which happened to be a boat launch. I’d missed it during our latest stunt, since I’d been watching behind me for Nerf bullets. By the time Meg squeezed the brakes and we rolled to a stop, we were in waist-deep lake water, accompanied with gusto by lots of hissing and a few squeaks – the sounds of a rapidly deflating front tire.

  I dismounted as quickly as I could, trying to hold the bike steady for Meg to dismount. But she had more power than I could handle, and she accidentally belly flopped from the seat straight into the water. I turned around to pull the bike up and out of the lake. Meg spluttered bubbles and flapped around like a bird.

  “Don’t think about it.” The kid stood in front of us, the Nerf gun replaced with something that looked all too shiny like real metal. “Nobody clotheslines me with their ass feathers and steals my fuggin’ bike. Look at my tire! Look what she done to it.”

  “Hey, hey. Language,” I said. “How old are you? You shouldn’t know those words.”

  “Old enough to work this thing.” The kid looked all too confident, so I kept my hand raised. From the quick glance I managed at Meg, she was doing her best to disappear into the middle of the lake like a pontoon doing a back float.

  “Okay,” I said. “But let me explain. If you don’t like it, then…”

  “Fine. Start jabberin’, I ain’t got all day. My popsicles are meltin’ since I forgot them on the front steps when you two lovebirds flew by.”

  I took a deep breath. “My mother died a few months ago. It was just me and her, and I don’t know where she’s from. She ran away when she was young and my dad disappeared before I was born. My mom was a stripper, and that’s all I know. I’m trying to find my family, and I have a meeting in thirty minutes in Uptown. My car got towed, and this was all I could find in a pinch. I was going to return it.”

  The boy looked at me. He was maybe fifteen.

  “I can pay you thirty bucks for it if you want,” I offered.

  “Shit…” The kid swung his head back and forth and lowered the gun. “You got it worse than me. At least I got a mom to make sure I shower. You know your hair looks like crap, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I had tail feathers blowing in my face for that whole ride.”

  “’Aight,” he said. “I guess you’re one of us. You live in my building, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Coo’. Then I know where to find you. I want thirty-four bucks, since I need new popsicles, and I want the nice banana kind ‘cause mine are gonna be all squishy when I get back.”

  “Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. Now, if you don’t mind…” I looked down at my sopping wet clothes. “I don’t have time to change, but I do really have to get going.”

  “For a fee of six more dollas I can help you out.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Now you’re talking. You got a car?”

  “I can get a car. My ma’s. She won’t even notice. She don’t leave except to buy cigarettes, and she just got a pack.”

  After hauling Meg out from her comfy position in the middle of the lake, we followed the kid into the parking lot. He pulled up his pants with every step, and with every step, they fell right back into place around his knobby knees. I suddenly wondered if he simply couldn’t afford different sized pants.

&nb
sp; Then I threw that idea out of my head as I saw the ritzy logo on his jeans. Either he didn’t skimp on jeans, or he had an alternative way of getting his pants.

  In two seconds flat, he had a green minivan revved up and the passenger door open. I hadn’t been watching, but I didn’t see him jingling any keys.

  “Can I get the key?” I asked.

  The kid scowled.

  “This ain’t his ma’s car,” Meg said to me, rolling her eyes. “So shut it, if you want the car.”

  “But Meg – you were a cop.”

  “We’ll return it,” Meg said. “Ain’t nothing wrong with borrowing it for a hot minute.”

  The kid held the door open and looked at me. There was a trace of something in his eyes I couldn’t quite place, but his voice was forceful. “Ma’am, you wanna find you family or not?”

  “Thanks, bud.” I said, hopping in the car. “I’m in apartment 10C. Stop by tonight, I’ll give you cash.”

  “Deal.”

  We fist-bumped, and I felt a whole heck of a lot cooler in that moment than I’d ever felt in my whole entire life. I was sitting in a stolen car, crap-tastic or not, driving away to investigate my family, and on good terms with a tough guy. Maybe I was cut out for this shady business.

  “Hit it, girl!” Meg hollered, leaking lake water and pond scum all over the seat.

  We zoomed out of the parking lot, and I did a few wild shrieks.

  “Don’t give yourself away, jeesh,” Meg said. “You’re such a noob.”

  “You’re not a noob at stealing cars?”

  “Just drive. You’re gonna be late and my tail feathers need plumping.”

  Drive I did, my heart beating a little fast. Besides stealing a car and having a gun pointed at me, I’d just barely managed to rescue my rucksack from the water, thanking God I’d put my photo into a protective sleeve.

  We were going to see a man about a photo that could get me somewhere.

  Somewhere I could only hope I wanted to go.

  ** **

  The drive went so smoothly – I couldn’t believe we were going to get away with it. Was breaking the law really this easy? If so, why hadn’t I done it before?

  I figured the sirens were a figment of my imagination, my paranoia going wild.

  It was only when Meg smacked my arm and told me to drive faster than I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the cop car tailing me.

  I slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side.

  “What’d you do that for?” Meg groaned.

  “I’m not running from the cops.”

  “This is going to be real embarrassing for me.” Meg gave me the ‘look.’ “What if I know them? My feathers are limp right now. My lip gloss is off. My hair…. Don’t even get me started on my hair.”

  “Oh, and it’s not like you had anything to do with this decision,” I shot back. “Really? Plus, my hair isn’t all that great right now, either.”

  “You’re right. It’s pretty crappy.” Meg eyed me up and down. “I feel much better about myself now.”

  I groaned as the cop approached the window and knocked.

  “Chuckie!” Meg leaned over me before I could even wrench the door open. “How’s it going, buddy?”

  Squished against the back of my seat, I slowly pressed the button to roll down the window. It inched down with every painful lurch of Meg’s arm, pressed into my abdomen.

  “Is that Meg? What’s happening?”

  “Not too much, buddy. I miss ya.” Meg smacked the large man on the arm. He smacked her right back, and my head pounded into the back of the seat.

  “Uh, excuse me.” I lifted my finger, but Meg just wrapped her hand around it like it was a microphone and stuck it back down.

  “How’s the wife and kiddos? She let you out to play poker still?”

  “I sneak out once in a while,” he said. “Though I miss takin’ your money.”

  “Ah, you little shit. I let you win once…”

  Essscuse me,” I lisped, a feather from Meg’s bum stuck to my lip. “Can’t breathe.”

  “Oh, sorry. Meet my friend Lacey. Lace, this is Chuck. He’s one of the good ones.”

  I was heavily skeptical of Meg’s definition of a ‘good one’. Probably because she had just encouraged me to steal a car, had stolen her own cop car herself, and had also illegally borrowed a gun from the evidence locker.

  “Hi,” I said. “Nice to meet ya.”

  “Likewise,” he said. “Sorry to broach an uncomfortable subject, but what are you doing in a stolen vehicle? You guys could get charged for this. Meg, with your list of felon—”

  “Hear her out,” Meg said. She nodded at me.

  My eyes bugged out of my head. “What felonies?”

  “Tell him where you’re going,” Meg said.

  I filled him in on the story of how we’d ended up here, except I took the liberty of altering the part about the stolen cop car, the kid holding a gun in my direction and a few other small details that seemed trivial in the grand scheme of things. I played up the part about the meeting to find out more about my family. The sympathy card seemed to be working the best for me today.

  “Oh, shit, man.” Chuckie wiped a tear away from his eye. “That sucks. I can’t imagine if my kids grew up without a dad, and then without a mom.”

  “Yeah,” Meg sighed. “It’s been tough.”

  I slid her a look, but she just opened her eyes as if to say ‘shut it.’ So, being smart or dumb, I took her advice again. I looked back. “Yeah, tough it has been.”

  Chuckie took a deep breath. “Alright then, I feel like I owe a good deed today. And I think this will be it. Lacey, if you want a ride to your meeting, hop in the back of the squad car. I’ll take ya. Meg, I’ll be happy to look the other way this one time if you promise me you’ll bring the van right back to the kid’s ‘mother’.”

  “Yeah, sure thing.” Meg nodded. “Kid lives in—”

  “I don’t want to know anything about the kid. This is a once in a lifetime favor, so just let’s do this now before the calls go out over the radio and I have to explain this.” Chuckie glanced at me. “You coming?”

  “All right.” I looked at Meg and shrugged, but she was already undoing her seatbelt and hopping over the median onto the driver’s seat.

  “Ooofph—” I tried to get out of her way, but she squished one of my lungs before I could dodge her.

  “Squeeeeeze me,” Meg said.

  I managed to slip out before the other lung was pinned to the seat.

  “Right this way, ma’am.” Chuckie led me to the car. “Oh yeah, but you’re gonna have to share the backseat with a guy. He’s harmless.”

  “Oh, wow. Okay, didn’t know I’d have company. Are you sure you don’t want me to go with Meg? She could drop me off first if you need, and then return the van.”

  “Nah, it’s fine. This guy’s a regular. But nothing bad. Just a little indecent exposure now and then when he’s drunk, that sort of thing.”

  I peeked in the window. The guy was a real looker. “Oh, okay then. No problem.”

  I slipped into the back seat next to a stud without a shirt or shoes, his jeans riding low against a toned waist. He didn’t look like a perv. No, he looked more like a sexy rocker who’d had one too many shots of Jaeger and relieved himself behind a very thin, Charlie Brown style Christmas tree, only to be caught and handcuffed.

  “Hey there, sexy,” he said with a slightly drunken drawl. His breath was fresh, as if he’d just popped in a few pieces of Trident, and his expensive-smelling cologne masked any of the booze I expected to smell.

  “Hey, yourself,” I said, barely believing I was flirting with a criminal. I didn’t do stuff like this. Well, except for today. Today was one giant exception in this game we call life.

  Chuckie put the car into gear. I glanced back to see if Meg had turned around to bring the car back, but as we pulled forward, she did as well, a determined look on her face. I looked forward quickly so as not
to draw attention to my friend.

  The cop’s groan signified that he’d made the tail as well. “She ain’t gonna leave us, is she?”

  “Yeah, no. Not with that look on her face. That’s the look she gets when she’s…”

  “—taking a really tough shit, but not getting off the pot til it’s over?” The criminal next to me interrupted.

  “Well, that’s not exactly what I was going to say, but I guess it works.” I eyed up his figure once more, cute disheveled hair and all, noticing the sparse tattoos littering his arms and chest.

  “What brings your sweet cheeks in here?”

  I looked into his melty brown eyes, as gooey as the insides of an undercooked brownie, and got a little lost for a moment. Or at least my words did. They got lost somewhere between my esophagus and my lips.

  “I, uh…”

  “Grand theft auto,” Chuckie supplied from the front seat. “I’m not bookin’ her though. She’s had a tough break of things recently.”

  “Aw, Chuckie man, I’ve had a tough break too. How about you don’t book me neither?” The man smiled and winked at me.

  I realized for the first time that he wasn’t handcuffed, tied or restrained in anyway. He was lounging half over the seat, looking as if he were being chauffeured around by the police department.

  “Blake, bro, I’m not booking you today. It’s Shaun’s bachelor party. The only reason I picked you up is the bar staff would be pissed if they thought one of you didn’t get in trouble. I’m takin’ you home.”

  “Good man, Chuckie.” Blake, apparently, leaned forward and clapped the cop on the back, trying to wink at me again, but in his drunkenness actually blinking both eyes at once. “You, sweet cheeks. What’s your name? You wanna come home with me, too? It’ll make the drive quicker for our mutual friend, here.”

  “Sorry, but I… I have a meeting to get to. But maybe some other time, I’m Lacey—” I said in a rush, sticking my hand out.

  “Lacey, darlin’, you’re real fine. You aren’t married, are you?”

  “Absolutely not.” I said, blushing. “I don’t know why I said absolutely, but what I mean is no, I’m single.”