Life or death.
Mack lifts his head and points the gun at my chest.
Life or death.
I fight to turn it back on him.
Life or death.
Then panic and take a shot.
Blood seeps from his forehead and down the middle of his face, his dead eyes fixed to mine. I shove his limp body to the floor and drop his gun, rubbing my palms on my legs.
“Get on the ground! The three of you, on the ground!”
The cops shouldn’t have charged inside. They shouldn’t have torn through the house and kicked in the doors, or sent out gyrating waves of light with their flashlights. No-brained fools. We would’ve been out of here in less than five. Five minutes, just five more minutes.
They shouldn’t cuff us. There’s no need to walk us out with our coats over our heads and cram us into the back of Ed’s Tahoe. They should’ve let us dart out and vanish with everyone else.
“Autumn, what the hell were you doing there?” Ed pounds the steering wheel once we’re all inside. “Son of a bitch. Did you mess this up? Did you? Did you fuck this shit up?” He bangs the metal partition cage that’s between us.
“Rinky-dink cop. Uncuff us.” She kicks the cage.
The veins in his neck bulge, his skin turning cardinal red. “Who shot them? Who did it?”
“I did,” she admits.
“Me,” Sean says.
“I killed him,” I answer.
“Ed, take a breather before you have a heart attack.” His partner, Kevin, pats his shoulder from the passenger seat.
“That supply they had was nothing. Insignificant. Where’s the stash? Who do they get it from? How do we ask them when they’re dead?” Ed rages. “How do we account for the bullets? We didn’t shoot. I didn’t shoot. Did you think of that? What the hell happened up there?”
“You barged in!” I shout back. “It’s your fault!”
“Hey, I saved that cop’s life,” Sean says. “He would’ve been dead the second he reached the top of the stairs if I hadn’t shot the guy.”
“You’re pathetic, Dorazio. I’ll have someone take care of this if you can’t.” Autumn drops back and raises her feet to the seat. She lifts her ass and slides her hands under her backside, bringing her cuffed wrists under her feet to the front. Still cuffed, but no longer confined behind her back.
“Autumn, don’t you dare say a word to anyone,” Ed warns. “Not a word.”
She digs through my coat pocket for my cigarettes, lights one up, and offers me a drag.
“Don’t smoke in here.” Ed rattles the cage.
“Then pull over and let us out,” she says.
I’m sweating, and paranoid, and restless that I’m cuffed and confined in the back seat. Maybe we’re being arrested. Maybe Ed set us up to send us to prison. No, that’s too risky for him. I don’t trust him though. I don’t trust Autumn either. At this point, I don’t even trust myself.
Autumn whispers, and I ask her what she said, but she says she didn’t say anything. She whispers again, but it’s not her. I hear voices. I’m suspicious of her, of Ed, and his partner. The coke’s claimed me. My vision fills with floating spots of light, and my mind fills with thoughts of death. I can’t get the whispers out of my head, or the sound of Jake tapping the ice with his hockey stick. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He was using the stick to push the body toward the crack because he didn’t want to touch it. Then he tapped, and tapped, and tapped. I was frustrated but only turned away for two seconds.
Two.
“My heart is exploding from the coke!” I holler. “I’m dying!”
Autumn whispers again. I don’t know what she said. She whispers, but I can’t hear her.
“Jake wasn’t supposed to die. He wasn’t supposed to die!” I kick the cage.
The river swallowed him, and then I heard a sound. A whisper. Who whispered? Who is whispering? Is that now? Or was it then?
I slam both feet against the cage. “Let me out! Pull over and let me out!”
I had to wait for Sean to come to the river and take the body away. I couldn’t put the body in the river with Jake. I couldn’t call the cops until he was gone. I didn’t call for help fast enough.
Sean kicks the metal with me until Ed slams on the brakes and springs out of his seat.
We’re here. Home.
He yanks us out by our necks and pushes us onto the sidewalk. I land on my chest, get uncuffed, and then clubbed in the back.
“We did this for you!” I shout.
“You did nothing but butcher this job.”
Sean’s hit next, two clubs to his lower back.
A neighbor’s porch light flicks on, sending a spotlight onto the sidewalk. Kevin whistles for Ed to get back in the Tahoe, pointing at the house next door.
“Autumn’s right, you’re a rinky-dink cop,” I tell him.
He strikes me harder, and I collapse on the ground. “You’ll be six feet under if you don’t stay away from her.” He kicks snow in my face before plodding away, Autumn smoking in the back seat as she’s driven off.
I’m left roughed up and on the ground with no answers for a second Friday night in a row.
I roll over and take a winded breath, sending Autumn a text that we need to talk soon. Then I send another that we need to talk tonight. And another.
We need to talk NOW. Make Ed bring you back.
Her response is predictable.
I’ll find you when I’m ready.
Sean turns over and places an arm over his face to shield the falling snow. “Dylan, she shot first. You caught that, right? She took the first shot.”
“I know.” I sigh.
“She pushed that guy in the alley into your blade, and she shot first.”
“I know.”
“She’s bad news, man.” He uncovers one eye. “You better be careful.”
I don’t need Sean to tell me Autumn’s dangerous, or to tell me I’m taking a chance, or that I’m getting in way over my head. I know. I know she’s like coke, the one in control.
And like coke, she’ll either kill my heart, or be the one who makes it beat again.
11
Jake and I were lucky to be raised by authoritative parents who were open and supportive. They set limits, yet gave us plenty of freedom so we didn’t become reliant on them. But since Jake died, my mom is now an overprotective helicopter parent, hovering over me, and my dad. She follows him to the bar, not because she thinks he’s cheating, but to make sure he gets there unharmed. And she bought me pepper spray a few months back, unaware I carry a knife.
Along with the spray came plates of pasta, part of her new routine of dropping off dinner at the bar. The pampering is out of control. She goes as far as to cut our food into small pieces, everything, including the pasta—itty-bitty pieces. Even pizza slices turn into one-inch squares.
I understand her excessive catering, and why she’s sheltering us. And I’m relieved I’m too old for it to do any long-term damage, but still, it’s another stressor, another reason why I chain smoke.
“Mom, I said I’m not feeling so hot. It’s a flu bug or maybe something I ate.” I switch ears and place my feet on the coffee table, scrunching my face at Sean while pointing at my phone.
“Tell your mom I said, hi.” He waves, heading out to meet Riley at the pool hall.
“Will do.”
“Dylan,” my mom cuts in.
“What?”
“When you’re feeling better, we should have lunch at that new restaurant down the street from the bar. The ‘beef on weck’ is amazeballs.”
“Amazeballs?”
Hitting a middle-aged slump, my mom uses slang to try to fit in. Old slang, like amazeballs, mega, cool beans, kickin’ it, to name a few.
“You have to try it,” she insists.
“Try what, saying amazeballs? Not gonna happen,” I tease.
“No, the beef on we
ck, silly. They put extra, extra beef on the sandwiches, and the buns are extra, extra salty. The food there is delish!”
“Super.” I wriggle my feet, glad that the coke has worn off.
Going through a bust with the cops shifted my high to a state of extreme agitation. Ed beating me with his baton didn’t do much for it either. Add the hallucinations of someone whispering, and I went nuts.
“Are you sure you’re okay? Should I come over?” she asks.
“And do what? Watch me hang out on the couch? No, I’m fine.” I rub my temples, dealing with another splitting headache. I told my mom I think I have the flu, but I’m just worn-out from the entire night. “Why are you calling here so late? Is Dad okay?”
“He’s fine.” She blows her nose, then sniffs. “Do you have a fever?”
“No. Stop worrying.” I switch ears and pluck a piece of lint off my flannel sleep pants. I hate lying to her about having the flu, but it’s the best excuse I have for not showing my face at the bar.
“I saw your truck on my way home from visiting your dad at the bar.” She speaks at a slower pace. “Did you know there was a shooting on that street? I saw it on the news.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“A big shooting, Dylan. Why was your truck there?”
“I got drunk at a party. Sean gave me a lift home.”
Another lie.
She pauses.
I sigh.
“I worry,” she says.
“I know you do.”
“You shouldn’t be out drinking when you have the flu. You’ll get dehydrated.” Her voice cracks. A bottle opens. She pours a drink and sips. “Are you dehydrated? Maybe I should take you to the hospital.”
“I’m not going to the hospital, Mom.”
“Dylan.”
“What?” Slouching lower on the couch, I wave my hand through the glistening dust motes dancing under the table lamp, knowing what she’s about to say.
“I can hear you smoking. You’re not sick. You never smoke when you’re sick.”
“Sometimes I do.”
“I worry.”
“You just said that.”
“Did you see what happened? Did the shooting happen at the party you were at? Tell me the truth. Why was your truck on that street?”
“Mom, I was at a party and I got drunk, but not the party on the news. Can we talk about something else?”
“No. Were you too drunk or too sick to drive home? Which is it?”
“Both.”
She takes a break from the harassment to sip her drink, giving me a chance to enjoy a quiet drag of my smoke. The table lamp next to me flickers when I ash my cigarette. The strobe effect not unlike the laser display that threw hearts onto the Andersons’ house the night I dropped Heather off. She glanced over her shoulder and blew me a kiss while hiking up the long drive, wearing black sneakers, not boots like Ed said. Black sneakers.
“You’re twenty-two and shouldn’t be at house parties anymore. What were you doing there?” My mom starts in on me again.
“What do you think I was doing there? It’s a Friday night. People drink on Friday nights. Chrissakes, Mom, stop it.”
The line falls silent. She’s annoyed I raised my voice at her.
“Okay,” she whispers. “Well, say yes to dinner this Sunday. I’m making mashed potatoes and galumpkis, one of your favorites.”
“Can you please call them cabbage rolls?”
“Why? They’re galumpkis. We’re Polish. Guh-lump-keys,” she criticizes. “Will you be here? I want to see you, and not just for two minutes at the bar. Bring Sean, too. I’ll open that box of wine he gave me for Christmas.”
The box of cheap wine was a joke. My dad laughed when she unwrapped it, but she thought it was wonderful. She said she’d save it for a special occasion.
“We’ll be there at five,” I say, zoning out when she starts to update me on my younger cousins. I love her and let her talk because she’s lonely, but it’s late, and she’s adding to my headache.
“Your cousin Holly isn’t doing so well in English, but her science and math grades are exceptional. I think she may go to college and become a computer scientist.”
My head more than just aches, the pressure feels like it’s in a clamp. If I had it, I’d take another snort of coke to ease the pain. Addictions are my nature, but so far I haven’t picked up any drug habits, which is incredible considering I drink every night, can’t live without a cigarette hanging out of my mouth, and I’m obsessed with Heather’s note.
“Holly quit the swim team and started taking ballet, but I think she may be too old to start that now. Don’t you?”
I place my hands on my stomach, bouncing the cigarette up and down in my mouth, admiring the shag carpet Sean vacuumed when we got in. Coke does that to him. He can’t slow down until the rush is over, going way beyond his normal edginess.
“Dylan?”
That party was a disaster, but we did the right thing. One of us would be dead if we hadn’t shot those two guys. And lucky for us, there were only two.
“Dylan, wake up! Don’t you?”
“Don’t I what?”
“Think she’s too old for ballet?”
“Maybe.”
I doubt any of the kids who scattered from the party will talk. Northlanders know to keep their mouths shut and mind their own business. And I know the shady cops and corrupt detectives will put a spin on what happened. They’ll come out on top, and the honest cops will remain blind to it all.
“Oh, and remind me to show you the photos from the concert. She looks all grown up.”
The dryer buzzes. I keep my fingers crossed that the blood came out of my clothes. If not, I’ll burn the jeans and coat.
“Are you listening?” my mom asks. “I finally downloaded the photos to my laptop.”
“What photos?”
“She won the fourth-grade spelling bee! Isn’t that great?”
“Mom, that was last spring.” I roll my eyes.
“I know, but I was just reminded of it when I loaded the photos. The spelling bee, Dylan! Maybe she can help her sister in English. What should I send as a gift? You think maybe a gift card to Applebee’s? You know, Applebee’s? Spelling bee? Is that funny?”
“It was last spring,” I repeat. “It’s too late for a gift.”
“Oh, phooey. Party pooper. I can still send something, can’t I?”
My mom teaches third grade but took the last school year off to deal with the loss of Jake. Then that year turned into a second. Now she drinks all night to ease the pain because the pills she pops for depression aren’t doing their job. She’s turned into a rambling drunk and a prescription drug addict, lost in time like the rest of us.
“I’ll go with the Applebee’s card. I think she’ll understand it’s meant to be funny.”
There’s a soft knock on my front door. I lift a brow, a second passes, and Autumn walks in. Just like that, she steps right in like this is her home.
I sit up and put my feet on the floor. “What are you doing here?” She takes off her coat and hangs it in the front closet, kicks off her boots, and gestures for me to follow her upstairs. “Mom, I gotta go.”
“Which bedroom is yours?” she calls down.
“Is someone there?” my mom asks.
“A friend just stopped by,” I tell her.
“Never mind. I found it!” Autumn shouts.
“Dylan, stop lying to me.” My mom’s heated voice erupts through the phone. “I knew you weren’t sick.”
“I’m suddenly feeling a lot better. See you Sunday.”
“Wait—”
I snuff out my smoke and walk over to the stairs. “Autumn, get down here.” I wait and listen, the upstairs thick with silence. “Hey, get out of my room and come downstairs!” I listen again.
A deadness falls throughout the entire house.
“Autumn?”
12
/> And so it starts.
The girl I’ve fallen for is in my bed, her upper body propped up by her elbows, knees bent with one leg over the other, a foot bouncing in the air. The sight of her leaves me paralyzed. I thought I’d spend another night depressed and alone, staring at the haunting knickknacks in my room: trophies, photographs, a corkboard plastered with the past. But she’s here. Autumn is here.
“Too bad I can’t press a button and put you on pause,” I say in my lowest, sexiest voice. I fold my arms and lean alongside the doorjamb, taking in her beauty.
“That’s a better pick up line than the one at the party.” She grips the front of her purple sweater and repositions her bra, eyes gleaming, a flush creeping up her face.
I’ll take this moment as a gift but proceed with caution.
“You can’t just waltz in here like you own the place.”
“That sounds so trite, Dylan.”
“I know, but—”
“The door was open,” she says.
“Still, that doesn’t mean you can—”
“You invited me.”
“When, Autumn? When did I invite you?”
Her pouty lips jut out as she taps her chin. “Hmm, you don’t remember?” She slides her cell from her pocket. “You sent a text that we needed to talk.” She waves it in the air. “I responded that I’d find you when I was ready. I’m ready. I’m here. Let’s talk.” Her foot bounces faster. “By the way, you’re super cute when you’re shocked.”
“I’m not shocked. I’m being cautious. This has to be a trick.”
“No trick.” She puts her head on my pillow and pats the bed for me to lie next to her. “Join me, please. I’ll only bite if you deserve it.”
In less than two hours I went from snorting coke, to killing drug dealers, to taking a beating from Ed and a reprimanding from my mom, to this, her, Autumn in my bed.
My brain is mush.
“Ask me anything you want to know.” She pulls her sweater over her head, removes her jeans, tee, bra, and socks.
The Lost Night Page 9