“What are you doing?” says Cassie, thin and quaking.
“CASSIE, GET–” The second guy’s thick hand swallows the last word. I thrash my head. His hand tight, untrembling, presses my lips against my teeth.
“Jesus, this girl’s out of control,” he says.
“You can stay here with your friend and we’ll make sure you’ll regret it,” the one with blue eyes tells Cassie. “Or you can get the hell out of here, and pretend you never saw us. Nice girls from Ponquogue don’t call the police if they want to stay out of trouble.”
She looks at me. I thrash harder, the way I would to kick out of a riptide. My eyes plead with hers.
Then she turns away and runs.
“Real friend you got there,” the Boulder says behind me, his words muffled by my hair.
She’s getting help. She has to be. Running for the police station or back to Marcos or to someone, anyone who can get me out of this–
Blue Eyes leans close to me. I see the freckles across his cheeks and nose. When Marcos said there were guys causing problems at Pav’s, I pictured older thugs. This kid has to be my age, maybe younger. He could be from Galway Beach or from Ponquogue and I never noticed. He could be Tommy Brown, Always Late Nick, any kid who walks the hallway like he’s friends with everyone. His breath is too fast. He’s nervous. I scare him. Maybe I can make him more afraid of me than I am of him.
“You’re all alone out here with the two of us,” he says.
I shake my head.
“She’s not coming back.”
A more ferocious shake. Of course Cass is coming back, and if she’s not, she’s sending someone else who will. She’ll run to Juliana. Juliana will know what to do.
He nods to the Boulder. “Let’s go.”
I swing my feet for the back of the Boulder’s knees. He dances back. I swing harder and his right leg buckles for a moment. “Help me out with this bitch, will you?” he grunts.
I have to get out of here. I have to get back to Marcos–
Blue Eyes reaches for my legs, but I kick his chest and he stumbles back. He comes back and I kick again. This time he dodges my feet.
I’m fading. I can feel it. Not my will, nor my anger, but there are two of them and one of me and I know they will carry me off, no matter how hard I fight.
So I kick harder. He grabs my shoe and my foot wrestles its way out. I wriggle violently from side to side, hoping the Boulder will lose his grip. I’m slipping, I can feel it, my head down lower on his chest, and if he tries to readjust, I’ll break out. Then what? Run like hell, that’s what, with one shoe.
“Let’s go,” Blue Eyes says. “Hurry up, you idiot, we have to get out of here–”
“That’s enough, gentlemen,” says an unmistakable voice. “Put her down.”
He stands next to his bicycle, one hand holding it steady. Helmet and jersey. Skinny legs beneath tight Spandex shorts. Dirt spattering his wheels and legs.
“Who is this clown?” says the Boulder in my ear.
Blue Eyes swaggers a bit. “Yeah? What are you gonna do?”
My father does not move. “I will kill you. Do I need to be more explicit?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“DID CASSIE FIND you?” Those are the first words I speak to my father. Not thank him, not reflect on what just happened.
His brows crease. “She was out here, too? Did they scuffle with her?”
I tug out my phone, drop it in the dirt, pick it up again, hit her name on speed dial. The ringing I’ve come to know too well. My entire body vibrates, yet there’s a weird calmness within me, the eye of the hurricane. “Hey, mates…” her voicemail begins.
“Cass, it’s me. My dad’s here. I’m okay. You must have just missed him,” I say more confidently, creating stories that I want to believe. “Um, yeah, call me?”
As we emerge from the woods, I’m met with the first bit of luck all afternoon: a series of texts.
At hospital w/ Victor wtf is life!!
Vic says Marc is conscious and talking. Going in for a CAT scan. Doc says prob a concussion.
Btw this is Dre.
I almost drop my phone with relief. Thank God for Andreas. Thank God that Marcos is okay. I pull it together enough to request frequent updates and then to text Marcos. Call me when you can.
“You don’t think they followed her, do you?” I ask Dad when we reach the police station. He shakes his head but says nothing. There’s a special kind of hell for this silence.
I call her again when we’re out in the parking lot, after I repeated the story over and over until I started to think that the Boulder’s eyes were red instead of blue. The officers gave me hot chocolate and handed me a scuzzy blanket that I gratefully wrapped around my shoulders. I couldn’t stop shaking.
No updates on Marcos from Andreas. “Can we go to the hospital?”
Dad looks exhausted. Older. No hint of the Smirk, of you’re not mature enough. “What did they do to you?”
“I’m okay,” I say quickly. “I want to see how Marcos is.”
“Let’s get you home first,” he says, “unless you want to ride on a bike all the way there.”
“What about Cassie’s house?” My words are still too fast, too high-pitched, and Dad agrees.
Three miles is a long way to ride on bicycle handles. By the time Dad turns right at the stop sign for Cassie’s road, I jump off and start running.
Click, click, click. The bicycle pulls up behind me when I stop short in front of Cassie’s house, where the grass is a tad too long and the pile of fallen leaves grows.
I can’t move.
Because there’s Cassie’s car in the driveway, parked askance the way it always is, and there’s the light in her bedroom. Neither of those things tell me why she won’t answer the phone, why she didn’t come back or send someone my way.
For the first time in my life, my dad curses. Then his hand is on my shoulder. “Let’s get you home, sweetheart.”