by Megan Hand
I face forward and pound my fist into the console between the front two seats. “I just wanted your help, and you’re acting like a fucking baby.”
“You think I wanted to do this!” The sheer volume of his voice shocks me, freezing me in place. “They told me they’d ruin me if I didn’t help them! I’m on a full scholarship. They said that if I didn’t join their little clan that they’d…”
I can’t see him, but I can hear he’s starting to cry, just like last night.
“I can’t say it. I can’t say what they told me they’d do. So I chose the alternative—to play along.”
I let him sniffle for a few seconds, then I ask, “Didn’t you think along the way to collect some kind of information on these guys?”
“Of course I did.”
I turn and raise my eyebrows at him.
He looks almost smug. “I have pictures on my phone.”
What the hell? “And you didn’t tell me this sooner? Why?”
“Because I wasn’t—I’m still not sure if I can trust you.”
“Why are you telling me now then?”
He falters. “You’re my only hope at getting out of this. I want out.”
Oh, thank God! “Okay then.”
We share a genuine look until Jay interrupts.
“Sorry.” He’s out of breath. “There was a line, but I got an address for the KPD Headquarters.” He hands me a torn piece of paper with scribbled notes. “He gave me roundabout directions, so just give me the turns as they come.” He grabs my hand again and heads out of the parking lot, stealing wary glances at Trigger in the rearview mirror.
I think we’re all ready to be done with this. I am at least, but I have a gut-wrenching inkling that this thing is not even close to over.
We arrive at KPD Headquarters thirty minutes later. On the way, Trigger showed me the pics he’d snapped on his phone. The ones of H and Brandon are blurry at best, but he has a pretty good one of Alpha. Since that’s the only name we don’t have, it gives us a greater shot at finding one.
I don’t feel so down about not getting his picture after all. Maybe we’ll get to watch the police use their super-sleuth 3D spy gadgets to match his facial features with those of other convicts. He’s got to have a record.
Seeing H and Brandon though, even in poor quality, sends chills up my spine, overloading my wrecked heart with more adrenaline. I now feel the beginning of a headache biting at the edges of my brain.
The headquarters building is just outside of downtown Knoxville, and it resembles a prison more than a police station. It’s huge with about a hundred little windows dotting its tan brick exterior. Just a light touch of barbed wire would complete the ensemble.
We park in a visitor’s space and head in. I’m torn about Jay going in with us. Having him by me is a great comfort, but just as I didn’t want him with me to confront Trigger, I don’t want him with me now. I don’t want him to hear about all the sick details, things I glossed over during our earlier talk on purpose. Things my gut tells me I have to reveal to get the police to believe my story.
Of course, I’m not going to tell them it happened to me. We decided on the way here that it would be better to say this happened to a friend who is not interested in talking. Furthermore, we’ll admit that these guys approached Trigger to make drugs for them, and we followed them all week long to collect evidence against them and proof that this is happening again tonight, even though our only proof includes the pictures, and our only evidence is our testimonies.
As the three of us enter through the automatic glass doors, I start to feel hot and itchy. I’m panting. I’ve never lied to the police before. I can put on an act like the best of them, as seen earlier with Alpha, but this is more than an act. I have to remember lines and details and plot points. I have to intentionally withhold information, and I’ve certainly never been good at that.
Lying for my life? Easy. For my friends’ lives? Cake. But this isn’t for my life. And it’s not really a lie when you think about it. Everything I plan on saying—most of it—is true. But what if they spot the lies, the holes, the missing details? What if the cop that interviews us has Lila radar as well? What if they cuff me? What if—
Jay sees me pulling at the collar of my shirt. I wonder if my face is as splotchy as it feels. If I can’t get it together, no one will believe me. All my credibility will be in the toilet. He gestures for Trigger to sit down on one of the orange plastic chairs that are all hooked together in a nice neat row.
The inside of this place is a cross between a Bureau of Motor Vehicles and a courthouse. Ahead of us is a lengthy front desk manned by about five officers. To our left are three very intimidating metal detectors complete with bodyguards, guns holstered to their hips. The place isn’t quiet. There are civilians milling around, chatting up the officers, putting their personal belongings on the conveyer belt, stepping through the detectors, and holding up their arms for second checks by the handheld detectors.
I’m beginning to hyperventilate, and I have no idea why. Key details and half-truths are forming a muddle in my head, funneling into a sandstorm, and it’s hard to collect a pure thought. Why is this happening? Why now? All day, this has been the plan. To come here. To fix this. To save the day. This was the only point of petrifying my friends, of hunting down Trigger, coaxing him out of his mania, and possibly sacrificing Jay’s faith in me.
Maybe this is just way too real now. I don’t know if I can do this, say aloud word for word what they did to me last night, even though I’m pretending it wasn’t me. I’ve never been on the Alpha side of the law. The most illegal thing I’ve ever done was steal a pack of gum which my mother made me return, pronto. But cops have always made me nervous.
Once Trigger sits, Jay takes me by the shoulder and pulls me aside to a far wall near a forest of plastic potted trees.
He strokes my face. “What is it, baby?” His words, so gentle and caring, don’t penetrate my rising panic attack.
“I don’t know,” I choke. “I need to sit down. I can’t breathe.” I claw at the T-shirt that’s not even tight around my neck, but for some reason it’s strangling me. If we weren’t in a public place, I’d strip. “I don’t know if I can do this. I can’t…” I shake my head back and forth, looking up at the ceiling. “I have to lie to cops. To cops.”
Jay cups my cheeks with both of his hands and comes close to my face, forcing out my view of anything else but him. “I believe you.” I try to move my head, but his grip has no give. “I believe you, Lil. I know you think I still kind of don’t. And I’ll admit, all of this is…strange and terrifying, to say the least, but…you can do this. I’m right here. You don’t give up. This isn’t you.”
“It’s too real now. What if I mess up? I’ll say something wrong. I’ll ruin it and they won’t believe me and—” God, if they don’t believe me…nope, can’t think it. Not an option.
“You won’t,” he says.
“I—”
“You won’t.”
I gulp and let myself fall into the depths of his eyes, the ones that have never let me down thus far, and I try to accept what he’s saying as truth, as certainty.
He’s right. Of course, he’s right. I’ve come this far. I sure as hell didn’t back down last night. Why now?
“I can do this,” I whisper to myself, still entranced in him.
“You can do this,” he fiercely repeats back to me.
I gulp again, nodding furiously to myself. This is just my low blood sugar talking. I should’ve eaten on the way over when Jay offered to stop for food, but I told him I couldn’t. My stomach has been on the outs from all of this, and it’s still raw from last night’s puking fiasco, even though I’m unsure if I really puked. When I checked the clock in the car, it was past noon. I haven’t eaten all day, and I’m very much a breakfast person.
He lets go and holds out a hand. I take it with both of mine. They’re shaking. I really should’ve eaten. That’s all this is—a minor h
unger-induced panic attack.
I can do this. I adopt that new attitude right away. I can lie and tell the truth in the same sentence. I can say all those horrific things out loud. I can.
I picture myself as a boxer, bouncing side to side, stretching my neck from my left shoulder to the right. My gloved fists circle midair, ready for whatever life is about to hurl at me. The Rocky theme song is playing in my head. Why is this so much harder than saving my friends and myself? Get on your game, Lil.
Jay waves Trigger over, and we approach the front desk as a threesome. There’s a girl ahead of us in a pair of low-riding jeans with a sparkly pink thong peeking out. She’s spilling some story about needing to see her friend who was arrested last night for public intoxication, but she’s about, oh, three-hundred dollars short on the bail. I wish life was that simple.
When she walks away, huffing with attitude, I realize we’re up. Trigger speaks first. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My brain celebrates because my mouth has suddenly gone dry. I begin sloshing my tongue around to work up some spit. This whole helpless act is going to betray me very soon.
“We need to speak to somebody about a crime,” Trigger says.
The female officer works some magic on her computer. “What kind of crime, sir?”
I’m starting to get splotchy again.
“A rape,” Trigger replies, his voice ten notches quieter than it just was.
The officer’s brows pinch in the middle with sympathy, her eyes cut to me but she remains professional. “Alright, we’ll have you speak to someone in—”
Trigger’s gaze is skipping around the room like he’s expecting Alpha to materialize any second. He clears his throat. “You don’t understand. This isn’t just a past crime. This is going to happen tonight.”
Well, it’s about a past crime, too, but in the car, we came up with this tactic, hoping that we’d be sent straight to a detective to report our ‘findings’.
The lady glances at each of us, testing our sincerity, and goes to work on her computer again. “Detective Howard is one of our CAP officers. That’s Crimes Against Persons. He’s out right now. He should be back in an hour. Can you wait?”
“Yes,” Trigger and I say simultaneously.
I’m relieved that we’ll have more time, but Trigger doesn’t seem so thrilled.
The officer motions to the detectors. “We’ll have you go through security. Tell them you’ve been sent by Officer Dillon to see Detective Howard, and they’ll escort you to a separate waiting area.”
So accommodating.
We go through the detectors without a fuss, relay our instructions, and we’re promptly seated in a small glass-walled waiting area. Through the windows, I can see desks everywhere, officers coming and going with various duties. It doesn’t look intimidating. I’m not reassured.
Trigger is three seats down to my right while Jay is at my left side. My knees bob for about seven seconds. My fingers tap a wacky rhythm on my jeans for another five. Then I begin chewing on my nails. I never chew on my nails. Patience has always been a virtue far outside of my capabilities.
Wringing my hands, I surge to my feet and pace in a three-foot square. Since we’re alone in the room, I let myself ramble aloud.
“Is this perjury? It is, right?” I toss a glance at both of them. “Can’t you go to jail for perjury?”
“Sit down, Lil,” Jay insists.
But I can’t stop. I add the nail biting to my pacing and only consider stopping when I see the face Trigger’s giving me. I must look like a junky on her first day of rehab.
Right. I nod, sit, and gaze at no one. “But can’t you go to jail for it? Will we go to jail? You could go to jail. What if they figure out you already made the drugs? What if they—”
“Shut up,” Trigger barks. “If you can’t keep it together, I’ll leave.”
I shake my head at him. “No way. You came. You’re staying. We’re doing this together.”
“Then get it together.”
“Okay, okay,” I whisper to myself, resuming the knee bobs and finger taps.
Pursing my lips, I try to summon up my memory of the three and a half episodes of Law & Order I’ve seen. I feel like a complete law virgin.
I’ve known I wanted to be a doctor since I was twelve when I went to the ER with our friend Amanda Ingram—a mutual regular addition to our triplet clan when we were younger—while she got stitches for busting her head open after running her bike into a parked car. We’d been racing down one of the neighborhood streets, and she peered back to see how well she’d smoked us when she whacked into someone’s red Mazda Miata. She went flying over the hood and scuffed herself up on the pavement. Her head got the worst of it.
Blood was everywhere, dripping down into her eyes—who knew a head could bleed so much?—and I was the only one with the guts to hold my hand to the gash after I plucked some of the rocks and dirt out of it. I’ve never been bothered by blood.
Since it was daytime in the summer, my mom was the only parent home at the time, so it was up to us to take her. Heather and Nilah refused to even go past the doors labeled Triage, but I went in. I was completely fascinated as the soap opera–cute doctor sewed her up. I watched every single stitch, and I remember thinking how cool it would be to do that for a job, to have the privilege of healing people on a regular basis, like a human version of God.
I stalked Amanda for the better part of a week as I checked up on her, watching with morbid curiosity as her stitches mended. I even went with her to get them taken out. I held her hand and everything.
After that day, medicine and I began an unmistakable romance. Discovery Health and Untold Stories of the ER became my favorite TV choices as opposed to the more popular teen comedies or court dramas.
Now I’m starting to regret that. Maybe if I’d watched more of them, I’d have a better understanding of what will happen. Will they stick us in a room? Separate us? Will Jay be allowed to come with me?
Along with the knee bobbing, I start making weird popping noises with my mouth. I have to do something to occupy myself. All this free time is unraveling me and winding me tight at the same time.
Jay patiently gathers my hands in his. “Get a grip, Lil. They’re gonna kick us out or arrest us as soon as they get a look at how jumpy you are.”
The way he holds onto my hands limits the knee bouncing, so I lean my head against the wall and count my breaths as they enter and exit my body.
1, inhale. 2, exhale…20, inhale. 21, exhale. Huh…I think I messed that up somehow.
Jay’s hands are warm. I didn’t realize how cold mine were until he covered them with his. Why is he being so quiet?
I ask him aloud, “Why are you being so quiet.”
“I’m thinking,” he tells me, his expression unreadable.
My head slides to the left, and I watch him. He’s perusing all the message posters that are taped to the glass walls. The ones with pictures of messed-up drunk drivers and smoker’s lungs. He looks tired and anxious. He’s been so quiet today, letting me call the shots, even as he puts on his tough guy act.
When he realizes I’m watching him, our eyes meet, and we have a moment—an unsmiling, gulping, I-love-you-so-much-but-this-is-a-very-freaky-situation moment. I can’t help but wonder if he truly believes me in his heart of hearts, if there is such a place.
We stare at each other for a long time, and my breathing evens out, my heart rate steadies, my feet relax against the carpet, my hands hold onto his.
“Thanks for coming,” I whisper. I don’t think I’ve said that to him yet.
He gives me a strained smile and brushes a thick strand of hair out of my eyes. “Where else would I be?”
Suddenly, I want to cry. Oh, Jay. If you only knew how I felt last night when I thought I’d never see you again. Then I remember that I was also with him last night. I made love to him last night, more than once.
This is all too weird for words.
Still, I can’t shake the
heartache shooting up my legs, spreading heat down my arms and into my fingertips. I want to show him that I’ll never leave him—never. I want him to know how much I need him, so I lean in and kiss him hard, sucking in air through my nose like I can draw his confidence and strength and love into myself.
Trigger makes a disgusted noise, pulling us out of the moment, but I keep my focus on Jay and lay my head on his shoulder. His eyes are deep, deep, deep, like he’s opening them up just for me, allowing me to bask in something soft and secure as he did earlier when I was freaking out. His eyes are giant blue featherbeds.
I can tell he needs me too, right now, but it’s not in the same way that I need him. He needs to be here to know that I’m okay. He needs to be my hero.
You already are my hero, I want to tell him, but I don’t. Not moving around is zapping me, replacing all that nervous energy with exhaustion.
I let Jay stroke my hair for a few minutes until Trigger scoots down next to me.
“We should probably get our story down straight, so we don’t make any mistakes, especially if they separate us.”
The idea of being separated from Jay or Trigger shoots me back up with fear. “Okay,” I reply, sitting up.
We go over the most important details to make sure our stories don’t differ. As we’re wrapping things up, a man steps through the glass door.
He looks to be mid-forties with dark hair and eyes that seem hardened and kind at the same time. He’s in jeans and a long-sleeved deep navy button-up shirt, the dressy kind, not the cop kind, which sort of takes me aback. His gun is on his hip.
He approaches us with an outstretched hand. “Hello, I’m Detective Howard,” he says with a light Southern accent.
We all shake hands and offer our names one at a time. It feels weird hearing Trigger introduce himself as Franklin since he’s been Trigger in my mind this whole time, even if I did get his name right a few times earlier.
