“Just listen! It’s going to be an awesome party. Hawkeye is a great guy; he won’t let anything bad happen to us. And we’ll leave the second you feel uncomfortable. But come on,” she said, pleading and tugging on my arm, “it’s going to be so much fun!”
“Lori, you’re insane.”
She shifted to look straight at me suddenly. “Don’t you want to get out of here? You were just saying how badly you wanted to leave. And if your dad is gone for the night…” She raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Then what’s the harm?”
I sat back against the couch and considered her words. On one hand, she was right. I desperately needed to get the hell away from this repressive dungeon on the next thing smoking. ASAP or sooner. It was a nice house—my mom had invested so much time into decorating it before she died—but the longer I spent in here, the more I grew to hate all the things that she herself had loved. I didn’t want that to happen.
And if I was being honest, I didn’t want to hate my dad, either. He cared about me and loved me, even if it was his own particular brand of strangulating, self-serving love, and at the end of the day, he was still my dad and I was his Car Girl. But another night locked away in this house might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Still, the avenue out that Lori was proposing was not just risky. It was downright insane. The Dark Knights were notorious for throwing raging parties that girls attended at their own risk. I’d seen them tooling around town on their bikes from time to time. They were the biggest, the meanest, the most tattooed and grizzly-looking guys this city had to offer. Every single one of them was rippling with muscle, ink, and more piercings than I could count. I’d heard stories of girls who’d gone to one of their bashes and ended up pregnant or worse. The Knights guys churned through a sizable portion of Albuquerque’s female population on an almost nightly basis.
My dad, of course, had on more than one occasion ordered me, in no uncertain terms, to stay the hell away from those guys and everything they represented. But, given the present circumstances, that gave me all the more reason to take Lori up on her crazy offer.
“You’re chewing your fingernails,” Lori observed excitedly. “You’re thinking about it. Come on, Carmen, it’ll be so fun!” She squeezed my wrists and shook me. Her eyes were lit up with eager anticipation.
I giggled nervously. “I don’t know,” I said. “What happens if my dad finds out?”
She shook her head vigorously side to side. “No chance. We’ll be back before him, guaranteed. We’re just gonna go, have a couple drinks and flirt a little, then come back. Pinky promise.” She stuck out her pinky to me with a grave expression on her face. “Come on, Carmen. You know how seriously I take these kinds of things.”
It was true; Lori treated the pinky promise like it was the most solemn oath a person could swear. If she was offering it, then she really meant business.
I hesitated, then reached out my hand. Just before I wrapped my pinky around hers, I froze again. “I really don’t know,” I said for the thousandth time.
Lori’s eyes were desperately cajoling me. “What else is there to think about?” she demanded.
I considered the risks. There was everything to think about, of course. Getting caught by my dad, while horrendous in its own right, would probably be the least of my troubles. The place we were going was the real source of danger. The Dark Knights were not nice and normal like Dan. They were serious guys who did seriously bad things, at least according to the stories that circulated around school, and by going to this party, we would be stepping straight into the lion’s den. There was no telling what could happen if I agreed to tag along.
I pursed my lips. Lori could tell I had made up my mind. Her face lit up when I snagged her pinky with mine and squeezed. She flew into me and wrapped me in a big hug as she squealed, “Yay!” I laughed, though the pit of my stomach still crawled with nervousness.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her upright. “One more question,” I said with the utmost seriousness.
She stopped moving immediately. I could tell she was afraid I had changed my decision. She barely breathed as she waited for me to talk.
I waited a long beat before smiling and asking her, “What am I going to wear?”
Her worry parted and gave way to a beaming grin. She leaped up from the couch, grabbed my hand, and tugged me upstairs towards my room. “Come on, girl,” she said over her shoulder as we raced up the stairs. “We’re gonna have you lookin’ hot.”