“Through the doors. Cash or credit card payments only. No checks,” he says, as if he’s said it a billion times before.
Janie hears them before she pushes open the doors. There is a short line of sleepy-angry parents in front of her. Some of them are carrying on more pathetically than Carrie did on the phone. She peers around the corner and sees the bars of a holding cell.
She wonders if this is it. The bust. And then she sees Melinda, being escorted by a cop and her father. Her face is smudged in mascara and tears, and she looks terrible. Her father grabs her angrily by the arm and marches her out. Janie looks at the floor as Melinda goes past. She feels sorry for her. The next three students she knows as well, and she can see their humiliation. Finally Janie is the last person standing at the desk. She sets one thousand dollars cash on the counter.
“Who you here for?” barks the guard.
“Carrie Brandt and Stu, ah…” She Googles her memory for his last name. “Gardner.”
“I.D., please.”
Janie pulls out her driver’s license and hands it to the guard, who checks it closely. He looks up at her for the first time.
“You’re not eighteen.”
Janie’s stomach thuds. “No—not for another month,” she says.
“Sorry, kid. Gotta be eighteen.”
“But—” Shit.
The guard ignores her. She stands there. Thinking of all the things she knows but cannot reveal. She sighs and sits down in the chairs to think. She puts her head in her hands. Does she dare try to approach Rabinowitz, see if he’ll vouch for her? But, no…Captain said not a word to anyone. That didn’t exclude other cops.
“Can I at least go back there so she knows I tried?” Janie pleads. The guard looks up. “You still here? All right, fine,” he says. “Two minutes.” Janie smiles gratefully and walks to the holding cell.
And she sees them. Sitting or lying on the benches.
Carrie and Stu. Huddled.
Shay Wilder and her brother. Looking extremely pissed, drunk, high, wasted, whatever. Mr. Wilder. Looking fucked up in more ways than one.
And Cabe. Who is lounging on the bench like he lives there. And Shay, Janie notices gleefully, is as far away from Cabel as she can get.
She bites her lip.
Carrie rushes to the bars.
Janie looks at Carrie. “Honey,” she whispers. “They won’t let me. I’m not eighteen till next month. I’m working on it, though, okay? I promise. I’ll figure something out, if I have to drag my own mother down here.”
Carrie starts bawling. “Oh, it’s so horrible being locked up in here,” she whines. Janie, who ran out of sympathy about a minute after the phone rang, just glares at Carrie. “Jeez, Carrie. Shut up already. Or I’m liable to leave you stranded.”
“No!” chime the drunken voices of Shay, her brother, and Stu. Stu and Carrie start fighting. Janie steals a glance at Cabel, who is watching her, the slyest of smiles on his face. He winks, and then nods, ever so slightly, in the direction of Mr. Wilder.
Janie looks.
He’s leaning.
Falling.
Asleep.
She feels a rush of adrenaline. “I, uh, I gotta go back up to the chairs, Carrie, but I’ll get you out as soon as I can, okay?” Janie doesn’t chance another look at Cabe. She sits in the chairs nearest the holding cell, out of view of the guy at the front desk. She can just barely see Cabel’s feet on the bench. His legs are crossed at the ankles. And she remembers him back when his jeans were too short, standing alone and greasy at the bus stop, less than two years ago.
She can hear Carrie and Stu arguing, and Shay and her brother raising their voices, telling her to get over herself and shut up—
And then she’s whirling and blind, gripping the chair, hoping nobody walks by. She doesn’t see Cabel stand up in the midst of the Carrie distraction and come to the edge of the cell bars, trying to catch her eye. Trying to tell her something.
She only sees what is in Mr. Wilder’s hopes and fears. Or are they memories?
The dream intensifies and turns nightmarish. Janie is whipped around inside it. Beaten, and blasted.
And she’s trying to see everything. Everything. From the eyes and the mind of a criminal.
She doesn’t see Cabel at all during that two-hour dream, pacing, burying his head in his hands. She doesn’t see him watching her, horrified, as she’s falling sideways off the chair, deadweight. Slamming her face on the corner of the coffee cart.
6:01 a.m.
Her head is pounding.
She’s clammy. Cold.
Her face slides in blood on a cold tile floor.
She thinks her eyes are open, but her vision is taking a long time to return. She can’t move her body.
In the distance, she hears Cabel, calling her name, calling the guard. Carrie is screaming.
For Janie, everything is black as night.
6:08 a.m.
Janie is being lifted onto a stretcher. She concentrates. Tries to wake up. Her head pounds. They wheel her out into the hallway of the police station.
“Stop,” she croaks.
Clears her voice, and says it again.
“Stop.”
Two paramedics look down at her. She opens her eyes. Only one wants to. But she can see shadows.
“I’m fine,” she says, and struggles to sit up. “I get seizures now and then. I’m fine. See?”
She holds her hands out to show them how fine she is.
And sees the blood.
Her eyes grow wide as she strains for her vision to return in full. She feels her face. The blood is dripping, streaming, from her eyebrow onto her lashes.