Hanna smiled. “Join the club. I fell on my ass last night. It was so random.”
Wilden’s kind expression was suddenly grim. “Was that before or after you stole the car?”
Hanna stood back. “What?”
Why was Wilden looking at her as if she were the love child of space aliens? “There was an anonymous tip that you stole a car,” he enunciated slowly.
Hanna’s mouth fell open. “I…what?”
“A black BMW? Belonging to a Mr. Edwin Ackard? You crashed it into a phone pole? After you drank a bottle of Ketel One? Any of this sound familiar?”
Hanna shoved her sunglasses up her nose. Wait, that was what happened? “I wasn’t drunk last night,” she lied.
“We found a vodka bottle on the driver’s-side floor in the car,” Wilden said. “So, someone was drunk.”
“But—” Hanna started.
“I have to bring you into the station,” Wilden interrupted, sounding a little disappointed.
“I didn’t steal it,” Hanna squeaked. “Sean—his son—said I could take it!”
Wilden raised an eyebrow. “So you admit you were driving it?”
“I—” Hanna started. Shit. She took a step back into the house. “But my mom’s not even here. She won’t know what happened to me.” Embarrassingly, tears rushed to her eyes. She turned away, trying to get her shit together.
Wilden shifted his weight uncomfortably. It seemed like he didn’t know what to do with his hands—first he put them in his pockets, then they hovered near Hanna, then he wrung them together. “Listen, we can call your mom at the station, all right?” he said. “And I won’t cuff you. And you can ride up front with me.” He walked back to his car and opened the passenger door for her.
An hour later, she sat on the police station’s same yellow plastic bucket seats, staring at the same Chester County’s Most Wanted poster, fighting back the urge to start crying again. She’d just been given a blood test to see if she was still drunk from last night. Hanna wasn’t sure if she was—did alcohol stay in your body for that long? Now Wilden was hunching over his same desk, which held the same Bic pens and a metallic Slinky. She pinched her palm with her fingernails and swallowed.
Unfortunately, the events of last night had coalesced in her head. The Porsche, the deer, the airbag. Had Sean said she could take the car? She doubted it; the last thing she could remember was his little self-esteem speech before he’d ditched her in the woods.
“Hey, were you at the Swarthmore battle of the bands last night?”
A college-age guy with a buzz cut and a uni-brow sat next to her. He wore a ripped flannel surfer’s shirt, paint-spattered jeans, and no shoes. His hands were cuffed. “Um, no,” Hanna muttered.
He leaned close to her, and Hanna could smell his beery breath. “Oh. I thought I saw you there. I was and I drank too much and started terrorizing someone’s cows. That’s why I’m here! I was trespassing!”
“Good for you,” she answered frostily.
“What’s your name?” He jingled his cuffs.
“Um, Angelina.” Like hell she was giving him her real name.
“Hey, Angelina,” he said. “I’m Brad!”
Hanna cracked a smile at how lame that line was.
Just then, the station’s front door opened. Hanna jerked back in her seat and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. Great. It was her mom.
“I came as soon as I heard,” Ms. Marin said to Wilden.
This morning, Ms. Marin wore a simple white boat-neck tee, low-waisted James jeans, Gucci slingbacks, and the exact same Chanel shades that Hanna was wearing. Her skin radiated—she’d been at the spa all morning—and her red-gold hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail. Hanna squinted. Had her mom stuffed her bra? Her boobs looked like they belonged to someone else.
“I’ll talk to her,” Ms. Marin said to Wilden in a low voice. Then she walked over to Hanna. She smelled of seaweed body wrap. Hanna, certain that she smelled of Ketel One and Eggo waffles, tried to shrink in her seat.
“I’m sorry,” Hanna squeaked.
“Did they make you take a blood test?” she hissed.
She nodded miserably.
“What else did you tell them?”
“N-n-nothing,” she stuttered.
Ms. Marin laced her French-manicured hands together. “Okay. I’ll handle this. Just be quiet.”
“What are you going to do?” she whispered back. “Are you going to call Sean’s dad?”
“I said I’ll handle it, Hanna.”
Her mother rose up from the plastic bucket seats and leaned over Wilden’s desk. Hanna tore through her purse for her emergency pack of Twizzlers Pull-n-Peel. She’d just have a couple, not the whole pack. It had to be in here somewhere.