Page 59 of Electricity

I blinked to life and found myself on asphalt, with Lacey looking down worriedly.

“What—” I looked around, first fast, and then as my headache hit, much much much more slowly, and saw that we were still in the confines of Mason’s parking-lot, what with the razor-wire halo behind Lacey’s head right now.

“I should’ve never left you alone—I should’ve gone in there with you,” Lacey was saying, mostly to herself.

I moved enough to attract her attention. “What happened?”

“You fainted!” Lacey protested.

“Ugh.” I strained to sit up and somehow managed. My head felt like it had a time-portal inside it and a T. Rex struggling to crawl out.

“And before that?”

“Mason ran out like he’d set a fire and raced away in his car before I could even get out. I came out and then you fainted. I thought he’d hurt you or something.”

Or something indeed.

She hauled me up by my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah—I think. How long was I out?”

She let go of me with one hand to grab her phone. “It’s just now eleven-ten. You were down for five—no, seven minutes.”

“God.”

A Corolla zoomed in, then squealed to a halt five feet away from crushing us both. Darius leapt out, leaving his blinding headlights on.

“It was him, or 911,” Lacey explained.

“What the hell happened? And why didn’t you tell me?” Darius demanded, kneeling down.

“You’ve missed a lot.” I put my fingers to my temples, trying to squish the T. Rex back in. “Mason’s gonna give me the pictures tomorrow.”

“What?” Darius said.

“It was that, or fail. I caught him cheating—I’ll fill you in later.” If we had a later.

“And this?” he said, gesturing to my current state.

“Mason didn’t agree so easily.”

“I told you not to do this anymore, Jessie.”

“You didn’t mind when I was doing it to save you now, did you?” I snapped.

“Jessie!” Without warning, Lacey embraced me in a body-shaking hug.

“What?”

“We did it!”

My head hurt so badly I hadn’t had a chance to think yet. Mason had agreed to hand pictures over. I hugged her back. “You’re right!”

She started to jump up and down but I held her still. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Come on, Jessie! We won! Come tomorrow we can go in and parts of it will still suck but at least we’ll have real evidence so fuck him.”

She took a step away from me and started doing a silly dance. I looked at her and laughed. If my head didn’t hurt so righteously, I’d be dancing too.

Darius, however, was still pissed. “You took on Mason, and didn’t tell me?”

My headache was too bad to have this fight now— “You seemed preoccupied the last time we talked.”

“Yeah, but I’m supposed to be your sidekick,” he protested, and I gave him a look. “I only said I needed some time, Jessie. Not that I was going away. I would’ve shown up for this.”

“Well you’re off the sidekick hook now, okay? I’m not a superhero anymore.”

“Says you,” Lacey said.

“No—I mean it. For reals.” I held my hands up underneath the streetlight. There was no power in them anymore, just marks where the gravel had pressed. “I used the last of it in there scaring Mason. I’m out.”

“Really?” Darius asked.

I reached toward him, waiting to feel the give of his charge and felt nothing until my hand touched the skin of his chin. “Yeah. It’s gone.”

“I’m sorry, Jessie,” Lacey said.

“It’s okay,” I lied. “It did what it needed to. Mason’s gonna give us Danny. We just have to come up with someplace not at school to meet-up, since he can’t be seen near me. I told him I’d text him where.” It wasn’t like we had a clubhouse, though.

“And we have to warn the other girls,” Lacey said. “Once we turn in pictures, the cops’ll have to figure out who they are.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve met the others?” Darius asked.

“Not yet. But we will. I hope. Maybe. I’m not sure,” Lacey said, while Darius thought.

“My uncle has a hunting cabin outside of Milford. It’s not nice or anything but it could work.”

It was just twenty minutes away from Redson. “It’ll do.” My mom worked again tomorrow night—could I just keep pushing my luck? “Ten-thirty okay?”

“Yeah. This is your number, right?” he asked, flashing Lacey his phone. “I don’t have the address memorized—I’ll text it to you tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I slowly deflated, despite my migraine, and smiled at Darius. “Thanks.”

“Honestly, it doesn’t feel like much. Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

I leaned against the hood of his car. “Does pot help headaches? And, if so, do you have any left?”

Lacey and I hugged again, more carefully this time, while Darius rolled a joint. She gave me a look and I nodded, sending her off, and after she drove away he looked around. “We’re probably on some security cameras here.”

“I’m pretty sure the show I put on earlier wiped them out.”

“Let’s only get busted for trespassing, not trespassing plus drugs.”

“Sounds good,” I said, and got into his car.

Halfway down the street he rolled the windows down, set the joint into his mouth and lit it with one smooth hand. “Ever done this before?”

“No.”

“You breathe in, and keep the smoke in as long as you can before you exhale,” he said, passing it over.

I did as I was told, and started coughing immediately after, feeling dumb.

“Happens to everyone,” he said, as I tried to pass the joint back, and he shook his hand. “I’m your designated driver tonight. Try again.”

I did, and was slightly more successful, besides, concentrating on breathing gave me something useful to do.

“I don’t feel anything.”

“You will. But it’s OK if you don’t. It’ll probably just make it easier for you to sleep tonight is all.”

I breathed in another long gasp, and the T. Rex in my head finally turned.

“So I thought you destroyed all this?” I said.

“I did. That’s the last of it.”

“Really?” I pulled the joint out of my mouth, where I’d been holding it like a piece of hay.

“Yeah. I was gonna save it. For a special occasion.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said, his eyes flicking up to meet mine in the rearview, as he pulled into the park.

I took one more long inhale before we reached my street and he parked in his traditional spot, safely down from my trailer.

The second the car stopped, the sound of singing cicadas became omnipresent, and the humidity of the night swirled in.

He turned toward me, and I saw him through a haze.

“Sorry I got scared.”

“You want to go back to California. I get it.”

“No—it wasn’t that. It’s just, I’d spent so long here being the guy who doesn’t give a fuck, finding out that I did was a surprise. Also—how the hell was I supposed to know how much trouble you could get in in less than forty-eight hours?”

I turned more toward him. “Forty-eight? You should see me in less than twenty-four.” I regretted it the second I’d said it. “That sounded way cooler on the inside.”

He grinned. “Blame the drugs.”

I grinned back. “Done.”

I wanted to ask him all sorts of things, silly and serious, but my brain was having none of it. The T. Rex had stomped it to pieces, or the pot had fogged it like a bug bomb, either way everything boiled down to what I really needed to know: “Are you staying this time?”

“Yeah. I don’t think you can get rid of me now.”

I smiled simply at him and for one second he—not the pot—chased everything else away. I leaned forward and—was stunned by the headlights of an oncoming car that looked all too familiar.

“That’s my mom!” I said, and hurled myself out the Corolla’s passenger side.