Steps echo in the hallway, and the door opens quickly after.
Colter regards me carefully, looking me up and down. A flash of familiarity crosses his face. He’s figured out where he knows me from but he’s not going to say anything. “What were you doing with a gun, Ms. Stevens?” he says, sitting in the squeaky chair across from me.
Ms. Stevens? Really? He’s a senior and I’m a junior, come on. “I have a receipt. I wanted to return it. It’s broken.” His eyes narrow as he takes in my statement. He doesn’t believe me. He thinks I wanted to rob the place. Seriously, what the hell would I take? “Having the wrong receipt doesn’t make me a criminal.”
He licks his lips once and leans back in the chair, making it screech so loud I want to cover my ears. His appearance makes it look like he’s trying too hard to blend into the crowd. His wavy dark hair is sticking out from under a Yankees cap and his jeans are torn at the thigh. A walkie-talkie that crackles every five seconds is attached to his side. A memory from class pops into my mind. He once told Mr. Kramer he was clueless for thinking that Shakespeare wasn’t a pervert. I remember laughing at that. He has to have a sense of humor somewhere under that sweat-stained baseball cap.
He writes something down in an official-looking binder. I try to peek, but he moves the paper to the side and gives me a look of contempt. I pull my sleeves down past my scars just to make sure they’re covered and lean back against my chair.
He closes the binder and sets the pen down on the top of it. “Who can I call to pick you up? Are your parents at home?”
“I have a car. My mom’s at work.” I start drumming my fingers in an uneven beat on the desk. “Do I get the gun back?”
He lets out an exasperated sigh. “No,” he says with a surprising lilt in his voice. He leans over and his face nears mine. He smells like a mixture of cologne and sweat. His eyes roam over me again. “I know you.”
“That’s most unfortunate.”
“I could have you arrested.”
“I bought the gun,” I lie.
His lips purse again and he leans back in the chair causing it to squeal like a wheel needing oil. The sound shrieks in my head. He scrutinizes me. “There’s no way anyone sold that gun to you. We both know that.”
I shift in my chair and cross my feet, and for the millionth time I have to say, “I have a receipt.”
“I’m going to ask you again. How did you get that gun?”
“I. Bought. It.”
He can’t prove otherwise, but his third degree is making me feel like wood in a bonfire. I swallow and turn to the water cooler.
He rubs the back of his neck and lets out a breath. “Let’s say I believe you. Why would you want to return it?”
“It doesn’t work,” I say as non-snotty as I can make my voice.
He throws his arms in the air. “You know what? Fine. But someone still has to come get you. What about your dad? Mom?”
I don’t want to call Jackson, but I have no one else. “I can just leave.”
“No. You’re . . . .” He thinks about his next words carefully. “Unstable, at best.”
Not the worst insult I’ve been given.
Static from his walkie-talkie makes me jerk in my seat. I quickly recover and hope he doesn’t notice how jumpy I am. “I can call Jackson.” My voice groans when I say it.
“Jackson Gray?” His face looks contemplative as he quirks his lips to the side and glances into the air. He blinks once, then his gaze travels back to me. “It’s really supposed to be a parent or guardian.”
“Please. My mom works nights and I’d rather not have her . . . involved.”
His sympathetic expression tells me everything I need. He’s going to let me go. “It’s fine. But I’ll call Jackson.”
I give him Jackson’s number and within ten minutes Jackson’s standing in front of me fuming, red-faced and ready to let me have it. Colter tells him what happened, and the whole time Jackson sneaks glances at me and shakes his head. We’re the same age, but you’d never know it. Jackson is millenniums older than me. It’s obvious to everyone but him.
He grabs my arm, just like Colter did, and hauls me out of the back room and into the crisp night air.
“Is that Colter Sawyer?”
“Yes.” I’m going to call him Tom Sawyer if I ever talk to him again, I bet he hates that.
“What in the fuck were you . . . .” He trails off.
“It was broken.”
He spins to face me, his face full of rage, his fists clenched tight. His knuckles have turned white. “What were you doing with a shotgun?”
There’s no lie I can tell that would make any sense. I could pretend to faint. Maybe I could just run away. He’s fast and would catch me. Instead I say, “I found it.” I can hear the lie in my voice, it seeps out. It’s so obviously not the truth that I want to smack my own face for being so stupid. I was here to return it.