Page 104 of Her Dark Lies

I didn’t want to leave. I don’t know that I could have walked, I was so fixated on the couch, but he grabbed my hand and dragged me upright.

I put my arms around his neck and kissed him, but he was in a bad mood and pushed me away. I don’t know what had gone wrong with his evening, but mine was great, I was rolling hard, and had no desire to be put off.

I still remember the pain when he grabbed my ponytail and yanked. “We’re leaving now. I want a fucking Coke and they don’t have anything but this pansy diet shit.”

I didn’t have enough room, or energy, to fight. He dragged me to the car, and we got in.

There are parts of the night that I don’t remember. But this part I do. Shane was in rare form, ranting, frantic. Someone had screwed him over, reneged on paying for their drugs, leaving him dangerously short. He had to pay it up the line that night, or he faced “consequences.” Even I, in my stupor, knew what that meant. A broken leg, a broken arm. If he showed up short, his distributor was going to take it very badly. I’d met the guy once, and trust me, he was terrifying.

But Shane had a plan. “We’ll take it from your parents. Your dad will have money at his office.”

I recall the intense alarm at that idea. I may have been a fuckup, but I wasn’t stupid enough to jeopardize my already-precarious relationship with my parents like that. I was perfectly happy getting high on Shane’s dime, but I wasn’t willing to steal from my family for him. Besides, my head still hurt from his mistreatment of my hair, and I had a massive bruise on my bicep. I wasn’t feeling generous.

“He doesn’t. It’s Saturday. They would have taken everything to the bank last night.”

“We’ll go by your house, then.”

“Shane, there’s no money there, either.”

“Then get your fucking ATM card out, bitch.”

The bank haul was meager, two hundred measly dollars. He needed upward of two thousand.

He yelled at me then, how I was ruining his life, how I was responsible for...well, everything that was bad in his world. I tried to get out of the car, and he pulled me back in and took off, driving erratically. We made it all the way out Highway 70 to Bellevue when he remembered his vital need for a Coke. He pulled into the Mapco. Threatened to kill me if I got out of the car. He left it running. He always left the car running when he went into a store. I thought it was dangerous, but whatever. It was his thing.

He wasn’t in his right mind that night, I testified to that. Though the word of a screwed up fifteen-year-old was hardly enough to sway the jury in his favor.

He came out of the store at a run, shouting, “Drive, drive, drive!”

I remember his eyes, flared so wide I could see the bloodshot whites around his brown irises. He looked like one of the hounds of hell I’d seen in one of my mythology books. Slavering at the jaw and utterly enraged.

I scooted over to the driver seat and he dove inside.

“Go, for fuck’s sake. Go to 40.”

The interstate was a mile west of the Mapco. There was only one problem. I didn’t know how to drive. I hadn’t even gotten my learner’s permit yet. Add in sheer panic, a beer, two doses of Molly, and an irate boyfriend?

I put it in Reverse, gunned it, and backed straight into the dumpster. He howled in fury at me and slammed it into Drive. “Drive, now.” That’s when I realized he had his gun out, and it was currently pointed at me.

“Did you rob the Mapco?”

“What do you think? Drive.”

We didn’t make it far. The police nailed us by the Taco Bell, and despite Shane’s screams to gun it, I took my foot off the gas. We coasted to a stop against the curb, and they were on us moments later. Honestly, I was relieved. Shane was out of control; who knows where the night was taking us.

Shane wrestled with them like a prize fighter, but a quick jab with the Taser had him down on the pavement a heartbeat later.

I stood and shook, tears coursing down my face. The car was mangled. I was still high as fuck and terrified into silence. The policeman wasn’t gentle when he slapped the cuffs on me and shoved me into the back of his cruiser. It was fear that made my adrenaline rush so hard it blotted out my memories. But I did hear the wordarrestbefore I passed out in the back of the car, sitting awkwardly on my hands.

Then my dad was there.

They called him.

He came for me.

It was three in the morning and he came without a moment’s hesitation. The policeman took the cuffs off me and I heard him talking quietly to my dad. I caught only a bit of it, but the gist was Shane told them he kidnapped me from the party.

I will never, ever understand why he lied for me.