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  We walked a bit more, and then Ozzy stopped and gripped my shoulders. “I need to leave you here for a minute.”

  “What?” Zeke said.

  “I don’t want you going in with me…just in case it’s a setup.”

  “It’s okay,” I broke in. “We can handle it.” Once I acted valiant, Zeke had no choice but to posture as well. “Yeah, we’ll be okay.” I reassured Ozzy with a smile. I looked five paces away at my newfound friends, all of us scarred for life.

  “You’re sure?”

  Not at all. Please don’t leave me. Take us back. “Absolutely.”

  “We’re fine,” Zeke chimed in.

  “I’m not,” Joy said. “Just hurry up.”

  “I will.” And then Ozzy disappeared into the inky black.

  A voice croaked out, “You’re too pretty to die!”

  I must have jumped ten feet. A chubby kid who looked no older than twelve gave me a toothless smile. “I’ve got something for you if you want it.”

  “Get lost!” Zeke said with a commanding voice.

  The kid disappeared.

  “You didn’t have to shout,” Joy said.

  “I’m only doing what Ozzy would have done.”

  Two teenage boys were laughing at us, their bulbous eyes mocking our fear. One of them had a soul patch; the other was clean shaven but had a wart on his nose.

  Wart chucked my chin and coughed. “Look at this youngness. They look ready to go?”

  “Beat it!” Zeke told them. But the boys were older and they ignored him.

  Soul Patch said, “Look at their hair, those eyes!”

  “Bright eyes.”

  “You may be dying, but we can help.”

  “Get the hell away from them, you amateur twits!” a deep voice shouted.

  I whipped around and saw it wasn’t Ozzy, but some bean-pole redhead with freckles and a black T-shirt. Whoever he was, he shooed the teens away.

  “You Kaida?” the redhead asked.

  “Who wants to know?” I said.

  The redhead chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I got your pain-erase. Look down.”

  I did. At my feet was a plastic bottle. When I looked back up, the guy was gone. I blinked, and a few tears escaped my eyes. Tears of relief, maybe. I picked up the bottle and sorted through the pills.

  “What are those?” Joy asked.

  “Hopefully antibiotics.” I shook my head. “The last time they sold James—that’s Ozzy’s friend—what looked to me like laxatives. They told him it would help your arm.”

  “Laxatives?” Zeke said.

  “Obviously, it’s an imperfect system. There’s as many cheats in spill dealing as there are in drug dealing.” From the distance, I saw Ozzy waving at us.

  “Hey.” Ozzy’s voice was tense. “We got it. Let’s blow.”

  And then we all heard it: the awful wailings of sirens getting louder and louder. Flashing red lights burned through the black sky. There must have been a dozen cars.

  “Damn!” Ozzy grabbed me and waved to Zeke and Joy. We all began racing back to the truck, but we were too late. Within seconds the streets were filled with a crowd of men in official uniforms.

  “This way.” Ozzy pulled me behind a building, with Zeke and Joy in tow.

  A megaphone blasted out, “Hands up, hands up, hands up!”

  I whispered, “Who are they talking to?”

  “Whoever they caught,” Ozzy said. “Shhhh…”

  “Individual evaluations here!” the megaphone continued. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, we have nothing against you.”

  Another megaphone. “Cooperate, people! It’s your only hope.”

  “Government police,” Ozzy said in my ear. “We’ll be fine if we just—”

  “Stay hidden?” someone said in my other ear.

  I could feel his wet lips against my face and I jumped up reflexively. From behind, a man grabbed my arms and smashed my hands together behind my back. Within seconds, I was handcuffed. “And the rest of you!” he snarled at us. “Don’t even think about moving!”

  Wasting no time, Ozzy lunged at the man and grabbed his head, smashing it against the building. “RUN!”

  I tried to run, but without my arms free I couldn’t move quickly enough. I turned around and saw that Joy was still crouched, weeping on the ground.

  “Joy!” I screamed, “Get out! Zeke! Get her out! Get her out!”

  But a beefy cop had already secured Zeke in a headlock. Within seconds, someone grabbed me from behind and yanked me backward. I almost tripped, but I managed to keep upright. My flight to freedom had come to a quick end.

  “You’re all under arrest!” a voice shouted.

  Something blunt and heavy landed on my head.

  Then the whole scene disappeared.

  17

  For as long as I can remember, my perfect way of waking up is with someone gently touching my hair. I opened my eyes and blinked. Colors and shapes danced before my eyes, and I was having trouble focusing. Everything was dark and murky. There was a rumbling beneath me, and I realized I was lying prone in a moving vehicle. How I got there was anyone’s guess.

  “Hey, honey,” a hoarse voice croaked.

  It sounded like a guy. “Dad?” I said. My voice was like a gasp.

  Different forms of laughter overlapped one another.

  “It’s Ozzy,” a scratchy voice said.

  “Ozzy?” I choked. “Ozzy, were you just touching my hair?”

  The laughter spilled over again.

  “No, honey…” The same croaky voice. “I wish I could. I’m cuffed.”

  Dreams could be treacherous. I blinked again and saw his bruised face, a gash tracing itself from his eye to his chin.

  There was more laughter.

  “Shut up!” Ozzy muttered under his breath.

  “What’s going on back there?” a man barked. When Ozzy didn’t answer, the man said, “Shut the hell up.”

  “Wha…?” was all I managed to get out.

  “It’s okay, Kaida,” Ozzy whispered.

  It didn’t feel okay. “Where are we going?”

  He sighed. “Jail.”

  I shut my eyes. As much as I liked Ozzy and would miss his smile and his voice, I was ready to wake up and have this whole scenario be one hellish dream. So why was I still handcuffed, lying in the back of a van, my head throbbing in pain?

  I started to cry, soft sobs that I was trying to stifle.

  Ozzy brushed his foot against mine. “I’m going to get us out of—”

  “That’s it!” someone in the front seat interrupted. “Shut up! Both of you. Not one damn word more, you got it?”

  Not one damn word more meant we couldn’t even respond.

  More than anything—more than wanting to go home or wanting the pain to stop—more than anything I wanted sleep. Sleep seemed like the only plausible solution in my grasp. And if I forgot about everything enough—forgot about how our cuts and gashes would probably get infected, forgot about how we’d probably rot away in some corrupt prison, and forgot about how this could very well likely be the end…well, then sleep wasn’t too difficult at all.

  I willed myself to close my eyes. A few moments later, I felt my consciousness drifting away until someone had opened the rear doors and light was shining into my eyes. Again the rude awakening.

  “All right, delinquents,” said one of the cops. “Up you go like good little ones.”

  The other cop snorted. I think he was the driver. “We’ve arrived at your new place of residence.”

  “Cheer up,” the first one said to us. “You two look like you have some rich mommies and daddies to bail you out of jail.”

  The driver chuckled. “Bail? There isn’t going to be any bail for this one.” He was referring to Ozzy, I think. “Spill-dealing, resisting arrest, assault of an officer—you got three marks against you. And this little witch isn’t much better.”

  “I’m only fifteen!” I gasped.

  �
��Did I say speak?” the driver barked back. “Fifteen doesn’t mean nothing. Fifteen means you’re a young criminal instead of an old criminal.”

  “But we’re minors,” I protested.

  “What the hell is she saying, Marty?”

  “Not a clue, Simon.” Marty yanked Ozzy out of the car. The other man grabbed me and pulled me out and onto the sidewalk.

  It was a strange time to feel weightless.

  “We got ourselves Romeo and Juliet here,” Simon told Marty in a mocking, overly sweet voice. “Getting themselves into all sorts of trouble.”

  I wondered if, in this world, the play would include the part about the poison and the antidote? If only the characters hadn’t been so impulsive. If only they’d had someone to stop them. Their friends, maybe? Their friends…

  “Joy.” I coughed. “Zeke.”

  “Shut up,” said Simon. “You dunno what the hell you’re saying.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to talk to your Romeo,” Marty growled.

  The dynamic duo of Marty and Simon shuffled us like cattle into an ugly building that was peopled with men who doubled as gargoyles. It didn’t look like any police station I’d ever seen. There were no desks anywhere, just nasty-looking drones sitting in folding chairs, drinking beer and smoking. My head hurt and my shoulders ached from having my hands cuffed behind my back. I didn’t know what my face looked like, but it had to be better than Ozzy’s.

  Someone opened a door from the main room, and the two cops shoved us inside. They walked us through a series of ocher-painted hallways with closed doors on either side. Marty finally found a door he liked and unlocked it. He took the cuffs off of Ozzy and threw him into what seemed like a windowless closet.

  “Enjoy the last bits of light because you’re not seeing anything for a while.”

  From behind I felt my handcuffs loosen. Simon turned to Marty. “Sure you don’t want them cuffed?”

  “No need. There’s no chance in hell they’ll get out.”

  The door closed, and once again I was surrounded by strangling darkness just like in the cave. I had come out of one pitch-black hell to find myself, again, in a bleak, sightless void.

  “It’s okay,” Ozzy mumbled into my ear. “We’ll get out of this…somehow!”

  Then I thought of something. “Our one phone call,” I reminded him. “Don’t we—”

  “You watch too much television,” he said. “When it comes to spill dealers, they don’t really care whether we live or not.”

  “We’re not spill dealers,” I said wryly. “We’re spill buyers.”

  He kissed my nose. “I was aiming for your cheek. Can’t really see where I’m aiming.”

  “I can’t see anything either.” I felt hopeless. No light and no space.

  “There’s a crack at the bottom of the door,” he pointed out. “I’m going to sit up, okay?”

  “Okay, let me just…”

  I flopped over like a dead fish. My senses seemed to all kick in at the same time, and suddenly I was smelling the fetid stink of the room. The floors were sticky and the walls were uneven. I sucked in air and then immediately regretted it.

  I could make out a sliver of yellow at the bottom of the door. “Oh, thank God, you beautiful little crack of light!”

  “The crack?” a voice grumbled from outside. “The crack’s no more.”

  And suddenly it was gone. Our one source of light, our one slice of sanity, had disappeared. They must’ve put a towel or something in front of the door.

  “Shit,” Ozzy swore. Any hope he was holding on to had faded from his voice. We were both fatally screwed.

  My voice trembled as I spoke. “Our parents will come.”

  “I don’t know where the hell we are, Kaida. Your parents might look for you, but the guys here are corrupt. They don’t want us out. Eventually your parents will probably assume something bad happened, and that’ll be that.”

  I bit my lip. I’d never heard anything so fatalistic.

  “So you think they’re just going to figure I’m dead and leave it at that?”

  “Where you are now, that’s not that strange.” Ozzy exhaled. “We were driving for a long time. I don’t know where they’ve taken us. We could be hundreds of miles from where you live. And there’s no way my mother will be able to look for me. She can barely…” His voice drifted off. “I don’t know what to do, Kaida. I’m sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Here was the part where the tears came in buckets. “I dragged you into this.”

  “No, I dragged you into this.”

  “We can’t both be the dragger. Someone has to be the draggee.”

  We twisted and tangled until we were facing each other. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel his breath, the only thing that smelled human. He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me to him until our noses were touching.

  I had kissed people before and it had been fun: worry-free stuff by public pools. One time it was after French Club by the parking lot. Those moments hadn’t been especially passionate or especially enjoyable. But they hadn’t been rushed, frantic touches emerging out of despair.

  For what it was worth, I decided this time was better.

  “Kaida?” he whispered in my ear.

  “What?” I felt a hum spreading from my ear to my neck.

  “I’m going to get us out of this mess.”

  I rested my head on his chest. He ran his fingers through my hair and down my spine.

  “Are you crying?” he asked.

  “No,” I lied.

  “You’re crying.” He kissed the top of my head. “I can feel it.”

  “Ozzy, how many girlfriends have you had?”

  He stroked my hair. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about that right now.”

  “A lot, right?” I persisted.

  “No, not a lot.” He chuckled. “And I’ve never had a girlfriend named Kaida with whom I got arrested.”

  “We need to get out of here,” I stated.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Any ideas? I’m certainly open.”

  My eyes flicked around, unable to adjust to the blackness. “We should both just think about it.”

  “Good idea.” He lay down and pulled me on top of him. I rested my head on his chest, turning it sideways. With one hand, he walked his fingers up and down my back, giving me the chills. The movements became slower until they stopped and I rose and fell with each of Ozzy’s breaths.

  “Snack time!” a voice boomed.

  My body was jolted awake.

  I hadn’t slept long enough to forget where I was, nor did I feel any better about it.

  Something clicked and popped and then the door opened. A paunchy guy in what looked like yellow pajamas held a tray. “You can eat it with the lights off alone.” He switched on the electricity. “Or you can eat with the lights on under my supervision.”

  With the room lit up, its true repulsiveness was finally illuminated.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Lights on.” Ozzy was still lying on the floor.

  “Lights on for me, too,” I told him. Anything was better than suffocating blackness.

  “You got it, chickadee.” The man seemed more cheerful than the other two had been. When you get yourself in a bad way, you learn to count your pluses. He entered the room and closed the door, ducking because the ceiling was so low. Miraculously, he managed to sit in such a confining space.

  “We got biscuits, crackers, jam, and some lukewarm tea,” the man said. “I can get you extra if you want.”

  “Thank you very much.” I was shocked by the humane treatment we were getting.

  Ozzy said, “Thank you, sir.”

  “It’s Officer Maurice.” He added, “I also brought a couple cans of soda.”

  “Thanks.” Ozzy sat up. “Thanks a lot, Officer. We really appreciate it.”

  “Anything else I can get you kids?” Maurice offered.

  The truth is, there was a lot he could get us, than
k you very much, but nothing we were stupid enough to ask for. I shook my head.

  “This is fine, thank you.”

  Ozzy sneaked a sidelong glance at me. He was as mystified as I was. Maurice set the tray down on the floor. I picked up a plastic knife and slathered jam on my biscuit. Ozzy followed suit.

  We ate everything on the tray. Maurice just kept smiling like we were old chums dining out after a high-school basketball game. When we were finished, he again offered us anything we wanted.

  “I think I’m okay.”

  Ozzy nodded. “Thank you.”

  A smile slipped from Maurice’s lips. He rubbed the side of his face. Picking up the tray, he attempted to get up, but couldn’t do so without opening the door. “If you need some more grub, just knock.”

  “Thanks so much,” I said. My voice was absolutely dripping with gratitude.

  When he closed the door, he did it gently. Again we were encased in darkness.

  I said, “What was that all about?”

  “He was treating us like jailhouse royalty,” Ozzy said. “Not that I’m complaining.” He burped. “Man, that stuff’s even worse coming up.”

  “At least we’re full.”

  “I hope he didn’t poison us.”

  “God, I hope not.” I slid into his open arms. “If so, it’s been nice knowing you.”

  “Ditto.”

  “He seemed genuinely nice.” I waited a beat. “Could be wishful thinking. At least it’s easier to think on a full stomach. I wonder where Joy and Zeke are.”

  “No idea.”

  “If we are going to re-create the exact-same scenario as the accident, we’ll need them.”

  “Right now, Kaida, our brains need to be thinking about the present and not the future.”

  “Agreed.”

  We thought and thought and thought.

  We thought ourselves to sleep.

  18

  When I was little, I used to rub my hands against my closed eyes to see what colors would pop into my brain. I’d get a headache afterward, and I was never sure that a few seconds of kaleidoscopic images were worth the pain. But in jail those patterns were the only ones I could see, and even those came in dark colors.