Since we were sort of sneaking out, I sent Hang a text letting her know I’d find my own way home. We crept along the side of the house, avoiding most of the people. When the bitchy little voice inside my head said it was because he didn’t want to be seen with me, I shut it down quick. Twice now he’d sought me out.
Up close, his old Charger was even louder, the engine grumbling and growling. It had cracked leather seats and smelled of grease and a fading pine car freshener. No air-conditioning, so I followed his lead and wound down the window. Unlike me, John actually kept his car clean. No wonder Anders had been frightened by the amount of stuff inside my vehicle. But really, my car was just an extension of my room, locker, and schoolbag. That and a set of wheels to get me places, of course.
Outside of Sabrina’s party, the suburb was quiet this late on a Saturday night. Nothing stirred in the pools of light left by the streetlamps. A hot wind tossed around my long hair. To be safe, I leaned my elbow on the open window, covering my scar with my hand. I was really here, hanging out with John Cole. Hang would go nuts if she knew.
“Why didn’t you give any interviews?” he asked, eyes on the road. “After it happened.”
I didn’t hurry to answer. The subject sat in my head behind warning signs and flashing lights. But if I was ever going to talk about it to anybody, it would be John.
He shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. “You didn’t want the money?”
“I didn’t want the attention and I didn’t want to talk about it.” Uncomfortable, I fidgeted with the seat belt, set a black bra strap back atop my shoulder. “All of the facts had already been reported. What was there to add, and why drag it out, anyway?”
He made a noise in his throat. God only knew what it meant.
“People died. The thought of turning that into entertainment for the masses did not appeal.”
“Mm.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“Didn’t seem right.”
“Did you get hassled on Instagram and all that?”
“Yeah,” he said, pushing his hair back with a hand. “Just been ignoring them.”
“I shut my accounts down. I kind of miss it, though. I mean, I only ever really put up pictures of books, but still.”
He almost smiled.
“Hey. Did you have that guy from the local anti-gun lobby contact you?”
“No.”
I huffed out a laugh. “They wanted me to be their new face, to give public talks and help them rally the youth to their cause.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh yeah. I don’t know, maybe I should have given it a try. I’m no fan of the NRA, obviously,” I said. “But I do think meth had more to do with what happened than guns.”
“Think he would have gotten as far with a knife?”
“Good question,” I said. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Lunatic like him all agitated like he was . . . maybe, maybe not.”
“Hmm.”
The road went on and on before us, the headlights cutting through the night.
“I can’t even bring myself to talk about it to my mom,” I said. “She keeps asking, thinking it might help, and . . . anyway. God knows what made them think I could give a speech about it in front of a crowd of strangers.”
Nothing from him.
“I don’t even want to think about it. But sometimes, it just gets stuck in your head, you know?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”
In an hour it would be the four-week anniversary. Almost a month since I’d watched two people get killed and had a gun in my mouth, John had risked death to save me, and I’d nearly shot Chris. Funny, it felt like it’d been both years and a moment since I’d left my youth and naivety behind police lines and crime scene tape.
“It’s weird,” I said, staring out at the houses flying past. “Now I know how much there is to be afraid of and it terrifies me. But at the same time, I feel like if I could live through that, what happened to us, then I can survive anything. Like, what is there really to be afraid of? Weird, huh?”
“No. Not really.”
“It could have easily been us in the ground tonight.”
“Nearly was,” he said.
“And I don’t know about you,” I said, twisting in the seat, all the better to see his face, “but I’m probably not going to be curing cancer anytime soon. Why do we get to live while they died? It’s all just random.”
“It’s not all random,” he said, his eyes fixed on the road. “It was my idea.”
“What was your idea?”
“That moment, at the Drop Stop, when Chris dragged you to the door.” His eyes flickered over me, his gaze hooded with something that looked a lot like guilt. “I reached out and grabbed the neck of one of the unopened beers. To use as a weapon. Then I looked at Isaac to see if he’d back me up. That poor kid was white as a sheet, but he nodded. Just like that, in that split second, he made the decision to trust me. His drug dealer. Fucking insane, huh?”
“He was a hero,” I said. “You both were.”
“It’s not random,” he repeated. “He trusted the wrong guy, and now he’s dead. Guess that’s how it goes.”
“What about the poor clerk? What did he do to deserve getting murdered?”
“What about Chris?” he countered. “Every step he took since he reached out to take his first hit of meth led him to that Drop Stop. Every choice he made just pushed him farther down that path.”
I frowned in thought, my eyes scouring his face as he watched the road. “Is that why you gave up dealing?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, gaze shifting from the road to me, filled with guilt. I clamped my mouth shut. He didn’t need me psychoanalyzing him. Both of us had too much of that bullshit in our lives already. And yet . . .
“You’re not what caused that situation, John. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
He said nothing for a good long time.
Rock music filled the small space, spilling out into the streets as we drove. A female voice sang about the night belonging to lovers.
“What’s this song?” I asked.
“Patti Smith. It’s pretty old. Hell, the car’s probably older than both of us put together.” He glanced at the cassette slot on the stereo, sounding a bit relieved that I’d changed the subject. “But the, ah, the tape’s stuck in there.”