There’s an edge to his voice, too. Like he wants us to get lost.
“No—um—we’re not lost,” I say as Jasper and I make our way up to the counter. I sound nervous and guilty. I swallow hard, hoping my throat will clear. “We’re here, um, looking for our friend?” Like it’s a question.
“Missing friend, huh?” says the younger officer who’s facing us. He has beady eyes and a pockmarked face, and now that he’s talking, I can see that he’s really young—not that much older than Jasper and me. There’s the hint of a smile playing on his lips. “You lose her somewhere?”
This time he smiles wider, like a wolf. I wait for the older guy to shoot him a look telling him to knock it off. But the only one who does anything is the third officer, and he just begins collecting the cards. He hasn’t even looked in our direction.
“She texted us and said that she needs our help,” Jasper says. “We drove all the way up from Boston.”
He adds that part, I think, to make us seem like good, dedicated kids. Loyal. To help make up for the mess that Cassie is in.
The older cop finally heaves himself out of his chair with a grunt, looking officially annoyed as he makes his way over. For sure not concerned about what happened to this friend of ours. Like he’s already decided that nothing has. Once he’s close, I see his badge: Sergeant Randolph Sternbach. When I look up from it, he’s staring at me. Or my hair, to be exact. His eyebrows are scrunched together. His frown is disgusted.
“Let me guess, your friend came up here to party?” he asks, still staring at my hair, and making no attempt to pretend otherwise. I put a hand up like that could hide how crazily hacked it is.
“Party?” I ask. It comes out in a squeak. Already I do not like where this is headed.
The sergeant takes an exasperated breath and looks away from my hair to reach for a pad of paper. He slaps it down on the counter in front of us. “Yeah, you know, meth.” His eyes narrow on my face. “And I know, she’s never done it before in her entire life and she’ll never ever do it again.”
He even rolls his eyes a little. Blah, blah, blah. He doesn’t actually say that, but it’s what he means. All I can do is stare at him. It’s not very policeman-like.
“Meth?” Jasper asks like he must be hearing things.
“You know, chalk, dust, ice, crank, glass,” the pockmarked, weaselly one says, slithering his way over to stand next to his boss. Unlike the sergeant, he seems happy to be talking about it. Excited almost. Like he’s taunting us.
“You’re kidding, right?” Jasper asks. “We’re in high school. We don’t shoot up.”
I turn to look at him. The way Jasper says “shoot up” sounds so awkward, too awkward. Like he’s playing up how little he knows about it.
“Lots of ways to take meth, son. Most of them don’t require a needle,” the sergeant says, and like he’s damn sure Jasper already knows that. “And you’d be surprised what ‘regular people’ do. Trust me, you’re not the first to come in here looking for a missing friend. We got a whole damn cottage industry in screwed-up kids making a mess of what used to be—what ought to be—a nice town.”
“Pigs is what they are,” the weaselly guy says, but with this glint in his eye like it also turns him on a little. “Look at those tweakers from the other day.”
“Mmm,” the sergeant says without looking at the other officer. Like he doesn’t necessarily approve of where this conversation is going, but doesn’t disapprove enough to stop it.
“One of them stuck a damn fork right in another one’s eye.” The weasel points two fingers toward his own eye, then jabs them at Jasper’s and mine. “Some damn argument about Peeps. You know, those stupid little bunnies? Fork in the eye for a freaking marshmallow. EMTs said the guy was so high he didn’t even know there was a fork sticking out of his face.” He laughs, full on. Like this is hilarious. “Guy kept on talking the whole time.”
The sergeant finally glares at him. “You got somewhere to be, Officer O’Connell?”
“Not really,” the weasel says, eyes still on us. “Not unless I can go back to kicking your ass at Bullshit.”
“Then go pretend,” the sergeant says.
“Okay, boss man.” Officer O’Connell holds up his hands and grins some more. And I wonder if he could be high himself. He’s having an awful lot of fun. With his hands still raised, he whistles low and long, spinning on a heel and heading for a door at the back of the station. He pauses before he reaches it, grabs a piece of paper off a desk nearby. He crinkles it into a ball before winging it at the head of the other officer, the one who still has his back turned to us.
“Two points!” Officer O’Connell calls.