“Fuzzy,” I said. “But it doesn’t hurt very much.”
He nodded, his pencil flying.
“I think it’s time to take you home, let you rest,” Sykes said. He reached over to pop the back door open. I climbed into it.
He moved around the car and slid into the driver’s seat. I noticed his ink-black glasses were already back on his face, and his
“I don’t need to go to the station, or the hospital, or—?”
“Do you feel like you need to go to the hospital?”
“Not really.”
“And I’ve got the information I need. We’ll be calling you with more information or questions.”
Sykes keyed in his car radio and spat out the short version of my story, and the location of the parking lot where I’d been attacked. Another patrolman squawked back that he’d check it out. My chest boomed like a cannon. They’d find the gun in seconds, find it open. Find a bullet missing.
Sykes put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb.
There’d be no bullet casing. I knew they could tell when a gun had been fired, but without the casing they’d have no evidence of anything. And without a bullet, wherever the hell that had gone, they’d just guess the gun had been emptied. At the very least, the story I’d told the cop didn’t seem to break with reality on any major parts. The gun would confuse them, but that’s it.
They’d get my fingerprints off the gun—but that fit my story about the struggle. They’d get Baldy’s fingerprints, too, and maybe they’d catch him. As the police car turned onto the freeway, my mind wandered further.
I felt a cold lake sloshing in my belly. A million doubts, a million worries.
The strange heat had died, I realized. It had faded to just a point of warmth in my chest as soon as the car had pulled away from the mall. I wasn’t awash in flames anymore, and I even had a hard time recalling the sensation. It had been like being immersed in warm honey.
The car pulled up to the curb in front of my house. My belly wasn’t going to expel the thick knot of terror any time soon, I realized. Neither of them were outside, but that didn’t mean anything; they were probably inside, making calls, making assurances. Trying to bring my friends back, maybe, tell them I was safe. When the car creaked to a stop, Sykes half-turned in his seat.
“Need me to come up with you?”
I frowned.
“No,” I said. “Do you have to?”
“It’s not protocol,” he said. “You’re healthy, you’re safe. We’ll call you if we need anything else.”
“Thanks,” I said, and reached for the door handle. After a second of groping, I sighed.
“I have to let you out.”
“Ah.”
I climbed out of the car with Sykes’ help and stepped out onto the grass.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said.
“Thanks for not being dead.”
I snapped around toward him, to catch the look on his face, but he’d already turned his back to me. He popped open the driver’s side door and slid into it without another word. Before the car pulled away, he gave me the granite stare I’d come to know well in my brief hour in his care. He cruised down the street at the same even pace he moved at—like he had no hurry in the world, but at the same time, like he might spring into furious motion. Call me wacko, but I think I liked him.
I turned and walked up the driveway. I didn’t make it to the second porch step before the screen door flew open and banged against the wall. My mother, her face red, blasted out through the dark hole into the house and wrapped her arms around me.
The heat inside of me flared to life again, burning through my core. I sucked in a breath and felt an icy sting on my tongue. It rushed down my windpipe, into my lungs, my belly, throwing a spray of fine white ice on the erupting flame. My skin cooled almost instantly.
Something leaked into me, flooded my senses—a fumbling primal grasping in the dark…tears being kissed away…oh God our little Lucy…
Aftershave, stinging and musky and pleasant. The little tug of his lips…oh. Of Dad’s lips. On my Mom’s neck. Oh. Oh! Blargh! Yuck, ack!
The little brain-movie faded, and I staggered under a rush of vertigo. What the hell? How did I…what was I seeing? Whatever it was, it combined terror and heartbreak and comfort—for them, at least. I kinda longed for a lobotomy to scrape that image out.
What had I just seen? And more importantly, why was I seeing it?
Mom held me at arm’s length, her eyes flashing across my body, looking for drug marks, cuts, bullet holes, who knows. The dark silhouette shape of my father crowded the doorway into the house. “Lucy,” Dad said, his voice low. “Are you hurt?”
I looked up at him—my mother turned, her arms still grabbing at me, to look back at him, too.
“A little,” I said.
The sound of the gunshot—Baldy’s hands, the leer in all of their eyes. The terror. The helpless stand in the alleyway where they could do anything they wanted. The…
…black…
…long wide ribbons of light, snaking through the dust-motes. Noon no longer—evening leaned into the living room in long dusty strokes of amber and red. The over-stuffed sofa beneath me, cradling me on a cloud of upholstery and fluffy pillows. My head had been used to pound in nails. The hand and knee on my right side ached. The TV was dark.
I lolled my head, trying to find the source of a cold something dripping down the back of my neck. I saw the corner of something white. My groping hand found the ice pack, tugged it off my head, and flipped it over. It was wrapped in paper-towels stained the light pink of diluted blood. I touched a tender spot on the right side of my head, not too far east of the asphalt-raw lump in the back.
The floor behind me creaked. I rolled to look over the back of the couch.
Mom perched on an ottoman next to the couch and laid the back of her hand across my cheek. She smiled and handed me a glass of water.
“You passed out, baby,” she said. “You must have had a long night. I can’t even imagine.”
“What?” I rubbed the spot on my head. The pain in my wrist and the sting in my knee concurred with Mom’s objective assessment. “I just…keeled over?”
“Pretty much,” Mom said. “Scared the hell out of your dad and me. I think he was ready to launch into a tirade before you bowed out.”
“What about now?”
“Actually, he’s still ready. He’s on the phone with the police. He had some questions I guess.”
“All reasonable and un-angry like?”
Mom laughed.
“Of course,” Mom said. “Nothing about legal action, incompetence, or gross negligence.”
“Zack called,” Mom said as she stood up.
I sat up again, and she made a face.
“He knows you’re fine, they all do.”
I hadn’t thought about Zack. Not since the dream or whatever it was. My first date with him, with anyone, had ended in an all-night search party. I covered my eyes and threw myself back on the couch with a groan, hoping to turn invisible or explode, anything to stop the gushing embarrassment. I heard Mom shift on the ottoman.
“You really like him?”
I nodded, my eyes still shaded in shame and something like self-loathing.
“Did the boys in the alley—?”
“No,” I said, firmly. “They ran away.”
