“Shut up. Fucking Christ, enough wasting time. Let’s just go in there and explain to the secretary, or whoever we need to talk to, that Josie’s mother is having some kind of emergency and we need to pick up her daughter.”
Crash doesn’t wait for any of us to respond, he charges forward and stalks down the hallway and, as I rush to catch up with him, I whisper a wish that no school official pokes their head into the hallway at this moment and sees the four of us — three very conspicuous, leather-clad bikers and one woman with a very prominent bruise on her head — charging down the halls like we’re on some kind of deadly mission.
No, this isn’t how you get a third grader out of class.
Still, despite all the protestations surging in my thoughts, I don’t say a thing as I follow Crash down the hall, with Mack and Snake at my heels. I keep hoping that his grim determination to get this over with and his fervent desire to protect Josie from whatever monstrous torments are befalling her mother will overwhelm the basic common sense and logic of whatever school official we run into.
Yeah, even I know that isn’t much.
We reach the school’s main office and Crash stops in the doorway, takes a deep breath, and puts on a smile so charming that it makes me stop in my tracks.
What the hell is he doing?
The suddenness of it stops Mack and Snake, too.
“What the fuck’s gotten in to Crash?” Snake whispers.
“Don’t know, brother. But, whatever it is, I don’t like it. Smiling like that? It’s fucking unnatural,” Mack answers.
Hearing whispers, he looks over to the three of us.
“The secretary is a middle-aged woman who looks like she hasn’t had a good fucking in decades. I’m going to go in there, lay it on her until she’s fucking wet and panting and ready to do whatever the hell we ask, and then we’ll get Josie. Got it? Now wait here for a second while I get this shit handled.”
I know it’s for show, but hearing him talk about flirting with another woman spurs a twinge of jealousy deep in my chest.
Crash takes a deep breath, then opens the door and steps into the office.
Mack and Snake both trade a look, then they take a step forward and look through the window.
“Oh Jay-sus,” he says, lingering on the word with thick Irish emphasis. “I do not envy him.”
Snake shrugs. “I’d hit it.”
“Fucking serious, lad?”
“Yeah, she looks like she’d be grateful for the fucking, and they’re always more into doing the freaky shit when they’re grateful. Plus, there’s more cushion for the pushin’.”
“That’s enough cushion to pad the walls of a whole fucking insane asylum. Which is where you belong if you are even considering hitting that.”
I finally work myself up enough to look through the window. The secretary, Calista, judging by the little nameplate on her desk, is a frumpy-looking woman who has spent too much of her life sitting behind her desk and dealing with the concerns and complaints of decades of pushy parents. Care and worry lines her forehead and the spaces around her eyes. She’s not ugly by any means, but she isn’t a threat, either; I can tell from the determined set of Crash’s shoulders and agitated way he’s tapping his foot that he’s forcing himself to flirt with her. It’s an awkward show, but at least this angle offers me a pleasant view of the way his jeans hug his tight butt.
Maybe it isn’t so bad.
I watch as Calista the secretary says something to Crash, I see his shoulders shake with laughter and I watch as she plays with her hair. Whatever he’s telling her, she is drinking it up.
Then Crash says something and Calista’s expression changes; she stops twirling her hair, her playful smile turns to a fierce frown, and she shakes her head.
Crash says something else, leaning in over her desk, and the set of his shoulders changes; whatever he’s saying, it’s not flirtatious.
Calista’s eyes widen.
But she doesn’t break. Instead, she raises one arm and points defiantly toward the door and all three of us — Mack, Snake, and myself — step back from the door to avoid being seen.
Crash comes out seconds later.
“What happened, brother?” Mack says.
“She wasn’t into it. Said she was flattered, but I wasn’t her type,” he says. “Then, when I tried to get some info about Josie, she told me to get the hell out.”
“You aren’t her type?” I say, feeling both relieved and offended. Is Calista blind?
Crash laughs. “Yeah. Says I seemed too safe. Apparently she writes plenty of fanfiction and letters to prisoners. That lady likes some really dark shit.”
“Step aside, brothers,” Snake says. “I got this.”
“Snake, you are not going in there and flirting with that woman,” Crash says.
Snake raises an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“You don’t think she’d find it suspicious if two bikers came in and started flirting with her within minutes of each other?” I say.
“OK,” he says. “How about I go in there, introduce myself, take her to a nice private closet somewhere, and then—”
“For the last fucking time, Snake, you goddamn deviant: no stabbing people for the sake of fucking convenience,” Mack says. “This is a fucking elementary school.”
“It would solve a whole fucking lot of our problems. And it would only take, like, thirty seconds.”
“It is disturbing that you think you could pull it off that quick,” Crash mutters.
“Oh, it’s not just wishful thinking. I know I can,” he says.
“No more talking from you,” Crash says. “Besides, we don’t need to seduce her. Or murder her. While
