Somehow life went on.
Allie breathed as deeply as possible until her chest eased some.
Had all that buildup been for nothing? Somehow it felt logical to assume that it had. Girls cutting each other in group homes in “the system”? That was the stuff of TV movies. Everybody was being too dramatic.
It made so much more sense to think so, and felt more like the world Allie had always known.
She lay awake for a time, revising her own predicament in her head. Settling. In time she even slept some.
“Allie,” Jasmine hissed.
Allie sat up fast, almost head-butting her friend, who was leaning over her on the bed.
“What?”
“Brick just went downstairs and let herself outside.”
Allie tried to clear her brain. To come fully awake. She even tried physically shaking the sleep away. But still she had no idea what to make of this news.
“So . . . what does that mean?”
“I don’t know yet. But I thought we better be awake and watching until we figure it out.”
Allie got up and moved to the window. She’d been sleeping in her clothes. They both had. In case any fast moves were required.
“See?”
Jasmine pointed to a slim, ethereal figure standing on the house’s walkway, three-quarters of the way to the street. Just standing there in the faint moonlight, as if waiting for something.
“Maybe she called her boyfriend,” Jasmine said.
And on that note—exactly on the word “boyfriend,” as if scripted—they heard the roar of the motorcycle.
“Come on,” Jasmine said. “We need to go.”
“Wait!”
“For what?”
“What if it’s not him? What if it’s some random motorcycle and it goes right by?”
“What if by the time it stops it’s too late?”
They froze for a matter of seconds. Maybe the count of three. The motorcycle stopped a few doors short of the house. Before it even cut its engine, Brick walked in that direction to meet it.
“That’s it,” Jasmine said. “You believe me now?”
They looked at each other, then bolted for the bedroom door. They got there at exactly the same time. So much so that their shoulders and hips slammed together, and they bounced apart again. Allie ended up on her back on the floor.
By the time she’d made it to her feet again, Jasmine had the chair moved and the door open. They tiptoed fast down the hall together. Allie gave one sorrowful thought to the rest of her belongings, but there was nothing to be done about that now. She had more important things to worry about, like whether the four of them were about to meet at the front door.
“Come on,” Jasmine whispered. “We’ll go out the back.”
Just as they slithered out the kitchen door, Allie heard the front door creak open.
She ran through the dark yard behind her friend. They made it to the gate in seconds, but it was locked with a padlock. The board fence was six feet high, with no real way to climb it. At least, no way Allie could see.
“I got this,” Jasmine said.
They were the three most beautiful words Allie could imagine. Every one of her internal organs filled with gratitude and appreciation for Jasmine, who knew what to do. Without Jasmine she could be dead right now. She could have some big guy holding her while Brick . . . She forced the thought away again.
Jasmine dug around in the weeds near a corner shed. Suddenly there was a ladder. Jasmine pulled it upright, as if out of nowhere. Like magic. Or, in any case, the magic of knowing where to find what you need.
Jasmine leaned it against the fence and trotted to the top step. From there she stepped onto the top of the fence boards. She teetered there a moment, all attention to balance. Then she jumped, and disappeared.
Allie tried her hand with the ladder, but she didn’t feel nearly as confident as Jasmine had looked. The higher she got, the less secure she felt. She stalled, convinced she could not negotiate that last step onto the fence without falling back into the yard. But this was life or death. So . . .
She reached high and fast, grabbed the top of the fence, and pulled herself up. She swung a leg over, straddling the ends of the boards. Then she slipped over onto the other side, hung from her arms for a split second, and dropped down.
Her heart pounding in her ears, she ran after Jasmine down the dark alley between fences. For the first few seconds she felt a sense of terror mixed with elation. They had done it. They were out. They had survived.
Before they even reached the end of the block the elation evaporated, leaving only terror.
They were two teenage girls alone in the inner city late at night. And going . . . where?
Chapter Fourteen
To the Victor Goes . . .
By the time they burst out onto a major thoroughfare, a street where she could actually see passing cars instead of just hearing them, Allie felt as though her chest would explode.
They stopped for the first time since jumping the fence, and Allie leaned on her own knees and panted.
When she straightened up she saw Jasmine holding one thumb out to traffic. Hitching a ride. It seemed alarming to Allie. It was late on a Saturday night in downtown L.A. They were two young girls. Didn’t Jasmine have internal warning bells and red flags to tell her what not to attempt?
Even more alarmingly, they already had a ride.
A driver was pulling over and stopping. A big one-ton pickup truck. One single guy. Looked like he might be fifty.
“See?” Jasmine said. “Easy.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, why would I be kidding? We’re out of here.”
“You don’t think this is a little . . .”
“Trust me. I’m a really good judge of people. I can handle myself.”
Maybe, Allie thought. Maybe you can handle yourself, Jasmine. But now it’s not just you you’re affecting with these decisions. Now it’s also me.
But Jasmine had already climbed into the front seat. She was holding the door open for Allie. Allie didn’t want to be left out on the street alone. To put it mildly. For a brief second she closed her eyes and allowed herself to be overwhelmed with that unlikely image again—being wrapped in the safety of her mother’s arms. When she opened her eyes, she was still out in the world with no one but Jasmine. So she climbed in, glad to have a whole person between herself and the stranger.
She slammed the door and the truck surged forward with a frightening roar of its engine. As if the guy needed to show off. Show that his truck had horsepower, and he wasn’t afraid to gun it.
“Where you lovely ladies headed tonight?” he asked. Definitely on the flirty side.
Handle it, Jasmine.
“Well,” Jasmine said. She drew it out long. Just kept saying it. There was no mistaking it, no missing it—she was being flirty right back.