I kept my hand where it was. “He has to drive me home. I have someplace to be.”
“He’s not driving anywhere,” I was informed.
Turning to Kyle, I said, “Then gimme the keys.”
“Yeah, right. Let you behind the wheel of my pickup? Shit, not a chance.”
Cop number two took my arm and said, “Let’s go.”
They led us to the emergency/security building and cleaned Kyle up while attempting to administer a field sobriety test on me. I knew now the trick was to get them to haul us off to jail. That would involve them putting us in the back of the police car and escorting us out without the Camaro driver or the helicopter backup knowing we’d even left the grounds.
I’d already failed the walk-in-a-straight-line test. Told the officer I’d fall over if I closed my eyes and tried to touch my nose—on account of having a problem with equilibrium. Which I pronounced incorrectly.
Finally, he instructed, “Say the alphabet for me. Backwards.”
I laughed and wagged another finger at him. “I always wondered about that one. Most sober people can’t even recite the alphabet backwards.”
He groaned. “There’s always the Breathalyzer.”
“Which I can refuse.” I defiantly crossed my arms over my chest. I might land in jail for some time, but it was safer than what awaited us if we tried to leave here on our own.
“You’re right,” the officer said. “We can do this the old-fashioned way. I can arrest you, take you to the station, book you for drunk and disorderly conduct, and get your alcohol level from a blood test.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
And that’s precisely what happened.
“Watch your heads,” cop number one directed as Kyle and I were helped into the back of the cruiser, our hands cuffed behind us.
As the officers climbed into the front, I shot my friend a look. He grinned, then grimaced. His lip and one side of his jaw were swollen, for which I felt horrible. But we’d gotten what we wanted. Safe passage into Flagstaff, where we could figure out what the hell to do from there.…
chapter 15
Yeah. Jail.
So not the place for me.
I was in with a couple of other rowdies from the music festival, a prostitute and a woman who claimed to be a meth addict and kept screaming that if she didn’t get some crystal in her soon she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. Needless to say, I didn’t dare close my eyes.
In the morning, cop number one came for me and put me in a room with Kyle. We sat opposite the officer, who pushed a file across the table and demanded, “Care to explain this?”
I stared down at a legal-looking document with “Negative” stamped across the top portion. “Neither of you were drunk last night. Not a trace of alcohol in your systems.”
Kyle and I exchanged hopeless looks. We really hadn’t thought this through. Now what?
Time to make it up as we went along. “See … it’s just that we’re, um, you know … Uh.” I wracked my brain. Then blurted, “We’re twelve-steppers!”
He gave me a blank stare. “You’re what?”
“You know, like AA,” Kyle joined in.
“Right,” I said enthusiastically, so glad we always ended up on the same mental track. “We were with our friends last night, and they just can’t handle that we don’t drink with them anymore and it makes it kind of awkward, you know? We pretended we were drunk so they wouldn’t think we were … well … lame.”
Oh, but we were. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes—at myself.
“Uh-huh,” the cop slowly said. “Twelve-steppers.”
“I deserved to be arrested for picking a fight,” Kyle confessed.