“I don’t know,” Sam answered, trying not to sound as scared as she was feeling again.
“You need to call your parents,” Alex said suddenly. “They must be worried sick.”
“I know, but I’m scared.”
“Those men, the fake cops, came to my house looking for me. Any others, if there are any others, would have no reason to come looking for you.”
“I can’t risk a phone call giving away our location.”
Alex looked at her, swallowing so hard it looked as if the air had lodged in his throat. “You should go home.”
“Don’t go there again.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he said, looking down once more. “I can’t ask you to stay with me.”
“You didn’t ask me. I volunteered and I’m not leaving you now.”
“On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“We figure out a way for you to call your parents. Tomorrow,” Alex said and ground his feet into the worn carpeting.
Sam found herself doing the same, the two of them finding a strange rhythm to the motion, seeming to work in concert.
“And I’ve got to get new sneakers. Dr. Payne’s are killing me.”
“You should try high heels,” Sam told him.
“I never saw you wear high heels, never saw you, you know, dressed up.”
Sam held his gaze. “Maybe you weren’t looking.”
“Really?”
She shrugged. “Okay, so maybe I haven’t been to a lot of the dressy stuff.”
“Well, prom’s coming up,” Alex said, seeming to brighten up a bit, embracing a brief moment of normalcy. “Let’s make a pact: we get out of this, we go together.”
“It’s a date—er, I mean a plan.”
“No,” Alex corrected, “it’s a date. Hey, do your parents really grow weed?” do your parents really grow weed?” Alex asked her suddenly.
“Not the way you put it.”
“How did I just put it?”
“Like it was a crime or something. But it’s legal. They’ve got a license and everything.”
Sam’s parents had barely been making ends meet by packaging their own line of herbal supplements grown in gardens they tended themselves. For a long time they supplemented this by growing exotic flowers, orchids mostly, that appealed to a specific clientele. And when that proved more costly than it was worth, they began their foray into growing marijuana for a local dispensary.
Her mother approached the effort as if pot were like all the other plants she nursed lovingly from mere seedlings. Making a go at the world of weed meant growing in much larger quantities than her parents had ever taken on before, posing a challenge that left her mother perpetually exhausted and hoarse. Exhausted because of the hours it took tending and trimming such a volume of plants. Hoarse because it was the habit of Sam’s mother to speak out loud to her plants, going so far as to read them children’s books when they were seedlings. It took hours to manage that task within the hydroponics greenhouse that had once held exotic flowers, their luscious smell replaced by the skunk-like stench of weed. Sam wondered how much weed her parents had smoked as kids, how much they continued to smoke today, often lighting incense in an inadvertently hilarious attempt to keep their habit from her. Once when she was a sophomore they’d even sat Sam down, her father extending a joint toward her.
“We want you to try it with us first.”
“But I don’t smoke.”
“It’s safer than drinking,” her mother noted.
“I don’t drink, either.”
“Sam?”
Alex’s voice shocked her back to the reality of the present and the plight in which she may have placed her loony, ditzy parents. His hand was on her shoulder, squeezing gently, to bring her back to reality.
“Finally,” he continued. “Have a nice trip wherever you went?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m back.”
“I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Getting you involved in all this.”
“I don’t mind.”
Spending the night in a motel room with the boy of her dreams? Not that it had happened the way she’d conjured in this fantasy or that.…
“I’m sorry for messing up your life,” Alex was saying. “I wish you could just go home and forget this ever happened.”
“Then who would I go to prom with? And what kind of friend would I be if I just left you alone like that?”
“So we’re friends.”
“What else do you want to call us?”
He managed a smile. “Don’t give me any ideas.”
In that moment, he was charming and charismatic Alex again. But the glimpse of a smile quickly faded, his eyes losing their gleam and glow.
“Just remember I’m still your tutor,” Sam said, failing to get another smile out of him.
“But you’re forgetting the first lesson you taught me, back to math again.”
“What’s that?”
“What you said to do whenever I couldn’t solve a problem set in calculus or analyzable geometry. Go back to the beginning. Start there and work forward toward the answer.”