Chapter 3
Biology Class
Day 3
We sat at our table with a dead toad in front of us and the smell of formaldehyde punching at our noses. To the right was a scalpel. Dax sat with his eyes closed, drumming to a song while his fingers rapped against the desk.
“What do you want to do?” I asked, raising my voice so I didn’t sound timid. The last thing I wanted to do was sound weak. But my voice came out wobbly, and I immediately hated that it did.
“I don’t care.”
“Great,” I said cheerfully. “I’ll sit here and watch while you carve.” I inched the scalpel his way, really missing my old lab partner and her fascination with dissection.
A soft laugh came from his lips. “I doubt that.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s only one person at this table who cares about their grades.”
We sized each other up while I desperately tried not to show fear.
“Don’t you want to graduate?”
He shrugged. “Makes no difference to me.”
“Then why are you here? ”
A tiny smirk crossed his face. “I’m bored.”
Thanks to Google and my fear-induced flying fingers from the hours between two and six am, I now knew that a DUI in Florida could technically be a felony or a misdemeanor. The severity of the sentence depended on past convictions, which, thankfully, I had none. It would most likely be reduced to a misdemeanor, and hopefully, the judge would go easy on me.
Hope filtered throughout my thoughts the rest of the night. Along with the words like: jail, convictions, fines, jail, felony, sentencing, jail, etc.
The cheerful yellow walls of my childhood bedroom mocked me as I woke up. In my teens, I had gone through a photography phase which resulted in frames hung all around the room. Pictures of me and Cat on the volleyball team. Making banners for a pep rally with my friend Jane. Dressed with friends for Powder Puff football my senior year. Smiles and laughter radiated from the pictures, evidence of happy times. Noticeably absent were pictures of my family. Without even realizing it, my room had become an oasis for me growing up.
Good vibes only.
All morning long, my brain scrambled to form a new plan. My exit strategy had been blown to bits, along with Dax’s windows.
Dax.
He had also filtered his way through my spiraling thoughts. It wasn’t only courtroom dramas and prison jumpsuits keeping me awake well into the morning, but faint flickers of his voice, the feeling of flying, and the press and cradle of his body holding mine. Some things were just vivid enough to be remembered through a hazy fog.
Which meant I now knew two things for certain .
I owed Dax Miller an apology. And I needed to get out of this house before my dad could corner me again.
As fun as it was to spend most of the previous night listening to him make phone calls and excuses to politicians and supporters about his daughter’s untimely accident, I wasn’t about to subject myself to his contemptuous comments today. I’d find things to do.
Even if that something was apologizing to Dax.
So, when I heard Angela and my dad heading out for their morning run on the beach, I flew to the shower. I washed in record time, coaxed a little gel and direction into my wild curls, and rummaged around for some old clothes in my closet. I slid on a pair of blue chino shorts and a flowy tank top, feeling a little more like myself. A small moment of order and normalcy in my otherwise alternate reality of existence.
The hallway leading down the stairs had been stripped of the family picture frames that used to line the walls. A pang of sadness bolted through me, but I pushed it aside and stepped into the spacious kitchen to find the flip-flops I’d kicked off after getting home from the clinic. My heart sank when the back door suddenly opened, and my dad and Angela stepped inside.
I hadn’t been fast enough.
The only thing that slightly gratified me was noting the sweat stains across the senator’s chest and armpits while Angela hardly looked winded.
“Hey. How are you feeling?” Angela asked, breezing past me, dotting her glistening neck with a tissue.
How am I feeling?
I currently have a court date to see a judge because I had plowed into a building while under the influence. How did she think I was feeling? But there was only one answer in this house.
“Fine,” I said, giving her a smile while tracking my dad’s movements toward the kitchen sink .
“Good. I’m going to shower, but stick around and I’ll make you some carrot juice and an egg white omelet, if you’re interested.”
All of that sounded terrible, but I smiled anyway. “I’m going for a walk, but thank you.”
“Hold on a minute, Ivy. I need to talk to you,” my dad called out before filling his glass with water.
As Angela disappeared upstairs, the life of the entire room went with her. I couldn’t avoid this conversation, but I wasn’t sure how calm I could be anymore. My dad tipped his head back to drink, the water leaving the cup in slow, steady gulps, packing more tension in the room with each swallow. Though itching to run, my feet were glued to the floor until he neatly placed his cup on the counter and turned toward me.
“Your court date is Tuesday morning at 9 am. My lawyer, Will Frost, is going to represent you.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I took a few steps toward the doorway before he spoke again.
“Have you thought about how you’re going to handle your little indiscretion?” His low Southern drawl showed slightly in his speech.
Even though the way his voice coated the words “little indiscretion” was enough to clench my teeth, I turned and faced him with a neutral expression on my face.
“What?”
“Right now, people just think it was some sort of accident. But if the judge slaps a DUI on your record, it follows you for a long time. It could mess with your job. It will be all over the papers. Online. It could ruin your reputation. And not that you care, but when people find out, it could sure as hell ruin mine.”
The twist in my gut made a familiar presence. It was ironic for him to imply that I didn’t care. My entire childhood had been seeped in the knowledge that one wrong move on my or my mother’s part could ruin my dad’s political career. His aspirations had gotten him as far as a local senator. But he was always hopeful for more. Always campaigning, so to speak. I could only imagine how difficult my actions would be to a man who honored his fake image with much more gusto than his real one.
“You’ll meet with my lawyer tomorrow to go over some things. Specifically, how to act and what to say. In the meantime, stay away from the mechanic.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want it looking like you’re guilty. We need to keep things quiet—keep you quiet. And hopefully, we can make this all go away. Brookses don’t make mistakes.”
Aw, the loving family motto of my youth.
“But if we do, we’re going to be quiet about it,” my dad added. My eyebrows quirked upward. That part was new.
“I’m pretty sure everybody knows what happened by now.” Cat and Jane had both called to check on me yesterday, which meant the island gossip mills were already humming. Dax’s shop was somewhat of a landmark in town, just off Main Street and up the road from the island ferry, not to mention next door to the worst gossip of all—the Seaside Oasis Retirement Home.
“It doesn’t matter what people say today. What the judge says on Tuesday will be what everyone remembers. That will be what gets spread around. You plead not guilty, and that will give us more time to make it all go away.”
Not guilty. The words poked at my conscience.
“I did it, though.”
His sharp eyes met mine. “What?”
“The DUI. I didn’t mean to do it, but it still happened. Shouldn’t I have to deal with it?” The contemptuous look on my dad’s face sent the tiniest chill down my veins. Then I remembered Dr. Barb and took a deep breath.
He ran his hand through his hair impatiently. “You will be dealing with it. You’ll pay for what happened. For the damages. But it wasn’t the kind of DUI that should be on your record. It was an accident. A pill. Not alcohol. You don’t want something like that hanging over your head.” He folded his arms across his chest, looking at me in a patronizing way. “Do you know how long a DUI stays on your record in the state of Florida?”
I didn’t react, but he didn’t need me to.
“Seventy-five years. You want that following you around for the rest of your life?”
Or his life.
“I know I can make this disappear. But you have to plead not guilty.” At my look, he said again, slower, “Because you’re not guilty .”
I didn’t know much about the legal process beyond what I’d seen on TV. Maybe pleading a certain way to lessen a sentence or bargain for a deal was normal and not just good TV drama. But there was a thought that persisted uncomfortably in my heart that wouldn’t lessen. I was guilty. I had done the bad thing. I hadn’t meant to. But I did. Should it all go away because my dad wanted to save his reputation?
“I’m going for a walk,” I said before making my way to the nearest exit.
My dad grunted something before I closed the front door, the tension in my shoulders lessening almost immediately as I stepped onto the sidewalk.
The warm island breeze and the chirp of the birds only distracted me for a moment. Never far from my mind during my talk with my dad was the very real knowledge that Dax Miller and I were about to collide once more.
It had been ten years. A lot could change for a person in that amount of time. My dad could grow a whole new personality depending on who he was talking to, so…it was definitely possible that Dax had changed. That maybe he wouldn’t make my life miserable over this. We weren’t teenagers anymore. This accident would be just that…an accident .
Just an itsy-bitsy violation of the law.
My dad’s words were a distant memory as I walked toward the town square. And though my hands grew clammy and my movements a bit twitchy at the thought…Dax deserved an apology from me today.
And he would get one.