Chapter Sixteen #2
“Tasha, you’re the only person in the entire school who got into an Ivy League. Do you really want to get caught up in a mess I made and to have to stay?”
“Hi, Mom,” Tasha said when she answered, and Bailey looked visibly relieved. “I got a ride home. I wasn’t feeling well. No, you don’t have to come home yet. No, it’s okay. Mom—” Tasha lowered the phone and hung up.
“I’ll take you home.”
“There’s no way you should be driving right now. Your hands are still shaking. Call someone to come pick you up.” Tasha grabbed Bailey’s keys and got out. She couldn’t have prevented Bailey from hitting Clutch, but she could keep her from doing any more damage tonight.
Bailey immediately followed her as she crossed the parking lot. “What are you doing?”
“I want you to remember this. Right now, I’m ten times a better friend to you than you ever pretended to be to me.” Tasha threw the keys into the wooded picnic area beside the church, then brushed past Bailey, adding, “And that’s the last favor I’m ever doing for you.”
There were always pay phones in movies, but there was never one in real life when you needed one.
All the way home, Tasha tried to figure out how to call 911 anonymously.
She wouldn’t say anything about Bailey, but if Clutch needed help, she couldn’t just leave him there.
Maybe she could get her mother’s keys to the insurance office and call from that phone.
No, the office had cameras. Then she remembered there was still a prepaid phone somewhere in the house, from when Pam forgot to pay the mobile phone bill years ago and had to get an emergency one. Tasha could use that one.
She’d very nearly made it home when she saw her mother’s Jeep turn at the corner ahead. Oh, hell. What was she doing here? Pam stopped and rolled down the window. “Darling! Why are you out walking?”
“Just getting some air,” Tasha said. “The smoke of the bonfire was giving me a headache. I’m better now. You should get back to the party.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Pam said, waving her hand.
“The other parents were so nice when they found out you were sick. They said they would stay to make sure the fire was put out when people decided to leave. But everyone was having so much fun, so that could be hours! I’ve always said that property was great, haven’t I?
Get in. I’ll drive you the rest of the way home. ”
Tasha was so tired. If her mother wanted to drive her around the corner home, she would let her. She crossed to the passenger side and started to open the door, but her mother called, “No, you’ll have to get in the back. I offered this boy a ride home first.”
Of course she did.
“Do you two know each other?” Pam asked as Tasha got into the back seat. “He says he goes to Hen Town High, too.”
Tasha leaned forward to see who it was. She sat back and tried to keep her voice steady as she said, “Oh. Hi, Clutch.”
Tasha’s fingernails were cutting into her palms as Pam kept turning down streets.
Clutch’s directions seemed so random, as if he was purposely trying to throw them off.
All Tasha could smell was the intense black licorice scent of dread.
Eventually he said, “Here’s fine, thanks.
” They were on a street lined with townhomes.
Who did Clutch know here? Clutch lived with his grandfather off the highway, near the commercial greenhouse.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Pam asked.
“Oh, I will be,” he said as he got out with a wince. “I have a plan. Don’t worry about me.” Before closing the door, he reached in and took something from the floorboard. He didn’t even glance at Tasha.
As Pam took off, Tasha turned and watched him disappear from sight. She couldn’t make out what he was carrying, but he looked terrible. He had scratches and bruises on every part of skin Tasha could see, and his jeans were ripped. But at least he was alive.
Whatever had happened tonight was done. It wasn’t Tasha’s responsibility anymore.
“Where did you pick him up?” she asked her mother.
“He was walking on the dirt road from the bonfire. I’m glad he didn’t stay. He would’ve changed the mood of the whole party. And everyone is having such a good time!”
Tasha was so preoccupied that she didn’t notice Pam wasn’t driving home. She was approaching the neighborhood where the Wester House was located, instead. When she finally looked up and around, she said, “Where are we going?”
“This will be just like old times,” Pam said, obviously having fonder memories than Tasha of staring at old houses in rich neighborhoods. “When you leave, I won’t have anyone to do this with.”
She pulled over in front of the Wester House and cut the engine. Tasha crawled into the front seat, leaning over to turn off the headlights so they wouldn’t attract attention.
Pam sighed as she looked up the lawn. “Wouldn’t it be great to live there?
I wonder what it looks like inside. It was nice of Bailey to come tonight.
I wish I had been able to say hello. I’ll call Tug later and tell him to thank her.
I haven’t talked to him in ages. It’s a shame you and Bailey won’t be going to college together.
But you can catch up when you’re home on breaks.
Maybe the four of us could get together in the park, like old times. ”
She could feel her mother shaking with nervy energy.
All day she’d been in a crescendo toward manic.
She would be up for the rest of the night, maybe longer.
There would be no calming her unless Tasha made her take her meds and sat with her to make absolutely sure she didn’t spit them out, because she liked her highs.
Getting things done, making lists, calling people she hadn’t spoken to in a while—it all felt like hope to her.
But she always paid for it later. They both did.
Minutes ticked by. Tasha pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them, suddenly cold. The adrenaline was wearing off.
“Who is that?” Pam suddenly said, and Tasha looked up to see someone limping down the sidewalk toward them. He would appear under one streetlamp, disappear into the darkness, then reappear under the next streetlamp.
Her mother leaned forward. “It’s him! That boy. What is he doing here? We dropped him off two blocks over.”
They both watched as Clutch finally stopped in front of the Wester House.
In one hand he was carrying whatever he’d taken off the floorboard.
It was a broken, globe-like piece of plastic.
He set it down to take a cigarette out of his pocket and light it, and then he stared at the house while he smoked.
Tasha held her breath. They were only feet away from him.
He might notice them at any moment. He finally dropped the cigarette and picked up the object again and slowly ascended the concrete steps toward the Westers’ door.
That’s when it clicked.
He knew it was Bailey who’d hit him.
Her mother sucked in her breath. “Is he going to rob them?” Pam said. “No, no, no. That’s not going to happen. Not on my watch.” She opened her door.
“Mom, stop!”
But Pam had taken off in a sprint toward Clutch, her yells piercing the silence of the neighborhood. Someone was probably, at this moment, sitting up in bed and grabbing their phone to report a crazy woman screaming, “Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest!”
Pam’s battle cry obviously caught Clutch off guard, because he didn’t even check to see who it was. He instantly ran around the side of the Wester House, toward the backyard.
And her mother went after him.
Tasha fumbled around in the glove compartment, wasting precious time.
Everything fell out and she scrambled through the contents until she finally found the can of pepper spray she’d given her mother, then ran up the steps.
She rounded the corner of the house, not knowing what she was going to find, and nearly collided with her mother.
She was now completely wet and smelled of earthy, murky creek water.
“Oh my God, what happened?” she whispered. “Why are you wet?”
Pam looked down at herself as if this was news to her.
“Come on,” Tasha said, and started to guide her back to the Jeep. That’s when she noticed her mother had a broken side mirror from a car, carrying it by the hanging cords like some sad purse. “What is that?”
“He dropped it.”
So that’s how he knew. He’d found Bailey’s side-view mirror.
“I picked it up and hit him with it. He went into the creek and I lost my balance and went in with him.”
“You hit him? Are you sure?”
“I think.”
Her mother was barely five feet tall and as thin as Christmas tinsel, so she couldn’t have done much harm. Could she? “Is he okay?”
“He got carried downstream.”
If the police got involved now, what kind of havoc was this going to create?
Clutch Vallow and Pam Keller had gotten into a fight in the Westers’ yard.
Would anyone believe them if they told them why they were there?
And if it came down to it, would Bailey come clean and protect Tasha’s mom the way Tasha had protected Bailey?
She knew the answer to that.
And in that moment, Tasha understood the real meaning behind Bailey asking, What if we don’t say anything?
You would do anything when it came to protecting the person who had shaped you most, the person who had given you everything, except the one thing you needed. Because the child in you never stopped dreaming of still getting it, one day.
Tasha took the mirror from her and set it by the front door so Bailey could do something with it when she got home. “Hurry, before anyone sees us.”