“I’m not exactly normal, Daniel.”
I think about the time we met here in the middle of the night. I remember last night. I kiss the top of her head. “You are extraordinary.”
I feel her sigh.
“I’d settle for ordinary.”
What Maxwell said at lunch about her dating Dove comes back to me. Dove must be at least four years older than her, already graduated, with his own business. I say, “So am I your ticket to ordinary?”
“I want to be a normal couple, Daniel, more than anything. I want to hang out and watch movies and, yes, I want to walk around the school holding hands.”
“Would you go to the totally lame and ordinary dance with me next week?”
She grins. “Yes. And I’ll even wear shoes with heels.” She opens the passenger door and reaches behind the seat. She pulls out a bag. “Don’t worry. This time I bought stuff for me.”
I say, “You went across again today? For someone who hates shopping, you sure go a lot.”
“My dress came in. And I bought those sandals you liked.” She tugs the shoes out to show me. “So now I can go to the dance.”
I hug her. “You could wear a garbage bag and still be the most beautiful girl there.”
She slips her hands under my shirt. Her hands are cold, and I gasp. She laughs. “You are kind of extraordinary yourself.” She’s making me crazy with her touch. She says, “Anyone at your house?”
I groan. “Everyone is at my house. What about yours?”
She shudders. “I wish we could just go away.” She tips her face to look at me. “Right now. Tonight. The two of us. We could get a tiny suite in the city.”
I stroke her neck. “We’d both have to work two jobs to afford even a closet in the city.”
“I would.”
“And we’d have to take Livy.”
She smiles. “I would.”
By the time she takes me home, it’s getting dark. She pulls up in front of the house. “Come on up,” I say.
She shakes her head. “I’d love to, but I’ve got a ton of homework from missing class. Say hi to Livy for me.”
She kisses me, and it’s like I’ve always known the curve of her lips, the taste of her, the way her breath catches when I touch her.
I get out of the car and manage to drop my book bag. Then, as I grab my bag, my house keys drop out of the pocket and onto the ground. “Just a sec,” I say. I have to reach under the car for the keys. When I stand up, she’s looking at her phone, a small crease in her forehead. I say, “See you at school tomorrow, right?”
She looks at me and her face softens into a smile. “Ordinary, normal school.”
She drives off, and I head into the house. As I’m hanging up my jacket, I notice something stuck to the sleeve. It is a strip of gray duct tape.
“Weird,” I say to myself. “Where did that come from?”
It had to have come from the bottom of Cyn’s car.
Something had been taped to the bottom of the car. Cyn has had that car across the border a half dozen times. You hear about people shopping across the line having stuff taped to their cars. They drive the stuff through the border, and the drug dealer follows them home. Or their car gets flagged for a border
inspection and the stuff is found, and the fool gets charged with possession.
On the phone, Maxwell is unconcerned. I can hear the sound of a keyboard clicking—he’s playing a game while he talks to me. He says, “You’re the one who tells me not to overthink things, Daniel. I don’t know anything about cars, but it’s possible the tape was holding a broken tailpipe or something.”
“Megan says Dove used to sell drugs. She says the cops were at his restaurant. Maybe he still deals.”
More clicking. “And you really think Cyn is involved?”
“It’s possible, Maxwell. Don’t make it sound like I’m an idiot for thinking it.”
He sighs. “You should just ask her.”
“Ask her if she’s running drugs across the border? For her drug-dealing boss and/or ex?” I sift through a pile of papers on my desk until I find the card
Constable Nagle gave me. I turn the card over and throw it face down on the pile.
Maxwell says, “You’ve covered more with Cyn than you have in your entire life. It’s quite possible you’ll never get this far again.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Cyn is gorgeous. And she’s smart. I got an A on the Bio lab—I want her to be our lab partner forever. And she likes you. So what is your problem? Anyway,” Maxwell continues, “it’s not like you’ve done anything wrong.”
“Right.” I hang up. I’m not so sure about that.
I text Cyn.
We have to talk
.
An hour later she picks me up. She puts her finger over my lips. “We’ll go for a walk, okay?” So we go to Meridian Park. At the bench, she puts her arms around me. “This is our spot now.” She brushes my lips with hers. “Where we first kissed.”
“The first time we kissed we were at the gas bar.”
“Details, details.” Her tongue flicks my upper lip. “Kiss me now.”
I want to kiss her. Every single part of me wants her. I have to make myself push her away. “Cyn, I’m probably crazy, but are you doing anything for Dove?”
Her eyes widen ever so slightly. “What do you mean,
doing anything
? He’s my boss, Daniel. I work for him.”
“I know. But are you
just
working? Like, just in the restaurant?”
She drops her arms. “What exactly are you asking?”
The night air feels suddenly cold without her arms around me. I say, “I know it sounds nuts. I’m sorry. It’s just that Mila said you and Dove went out, and I just wonder if you’re, you know, done with him.”
“Oh, that.” She laughs. “He thought I was older. I thought he was nicer.”
She loops her arm in mine. “You had me scared, Daniel. I thought you were going to break up with me.”
I wipe my hands on my pants. “Was he the boyfriend who bought you the car?”
She drops her arms to her sides and huffs. “You said I could tell you what’s going on with me, and then you just throw it back at me.”
“Don’t do this, Cyn.”
“Do what?”
“Don’t make this about something else. I’m here with you because I want to be.”
She puts her head against my shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I just have to know.” I turn so we’re facing each other. “Cyn, there was some tape on the bottom of your car.”
She tilts her head. “Tape?”
I say, “Earlier, when you drove me home, I dropped my keys when I got out
of the car. I had to reach under your car to get them, and a piece of tape stuck to me. And I was thinking about the guy at the Discount gas bar, how his shirt is always dirty, like he’s been lying on the ground where a tree has been dropping its leaves. Like where you always park. Like where I parked when I went there for you.”
She doesn’t look at me when she speaks. “Don’t think too hard, Daniel.”
I shake my head. “No. Tell me. What are you doing, Cyn? What am
I
doing?”
Now she turns. Her eyes seem icy. “If I tell you, then you’ll never be able to say that you didn’t know.”
It’s cold, but sweat runs down my back. “That’s the thing. I know something is happening. I know you’re involved, and probably so am I, and it is not good.”
“So you know. Great. Can we leave it at that?”
I take a big breath. “Cyn, are you running drugs?”
I wait for her to laugh, or to say I really am crazy, but she just shrugs.
“You are?” My stomach drops. “Jesus, Cyn.”
She avoids my eyes. “I know what I’m doing.”
I cannot believe she is saying this! “You could end up in jail!”
“Apparently, I’m a cute girl. Apparently, I like to shop. Border guards don’t bother with cute girls who like to shop. I go to the mall, make a purchase. If I ever get inspected at the border, I will just say someone made me their fool and planted it on my car when I was in the store. It happens.”
I shake my head. “It sounds like you
are
a drug dealer’s fool.”
She grabs both of my hands. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d leave me. I’m not a bad person, Daniel.”
“You have to stop.” I give her hands a tug. “I mean it. No more.” When she doesn’t reply, I say, “There is nothing that is so bad you can’t walk away from it.”
She sighs. “I’m not so sure.” She takes out her car keys and hands them to me. “Here. You drive. We’re going to my house.”
We exit from the main highway into a subdivision of acreages. The homes are well lit and neatly fenced, with long, winding driveways. These are the kinds of places where people have horses and gardens and sell fresh eggs at the roadway. “Nice neighborhood,” I say.
“Keep driving,” Cyn says.
We turn onto a driveway barely visible in a bank of trees. The car lurches into a pothole, and the headlights bounce up onto the wall of trees on either side of the road. From up ahead I can hear bass notes thumping, like we’re driving to a party. Cyn says, “This is far enough.” She unrolls her window. “Turn off the car.”
Cyn doesn’t make a move to get out. I say, “This is your place? I thought your parents were away.”
She gives me a puzzled look.
I say, “Mila said they were in Hawaii.”
She holds her hand up as if to shush me. Clearly, her parents are back, because I hear a man’s voice and a woman’s. I’m not sure if the woman is laughing or crying. A dog barks, and the man’s voice lifts into a curse. The dog stops barking. There’s a sound of glass breaking, like a bottle. The music stops.
Cyn looks straight ahead. “Wait for it,” she says.
There is the sound of someone being slapped—hard. Cyn winces. The woman cries out. Another slap. The man is swearing, using words even Maxwell and I don’t use. There’s a whining sound from the woman or the dog, I can’t tell which.
I move my hand toward the car door. Cyn stops me from opening it. Her eyes are half hooded, and she’s shivering. “No,” she says. “We need to go.”
Another slapping sound, and something crashes onto the floor. I say, “We should call the police, at least.”
“The neighbors have probably already called.” Her shoulders slump. “Just go.”
I start the car and she closes the window. I turn the car around and make our way out to the highway. In the rearview mirror, the light from the house gets smaller and then disappears. Cyn pulls her knees up into her chest. Her hair falls across her face like a curtain. I think about the bruise on her arm.
I say, “You have to leave.”
“Exactly.”
“You could leave tonight. Stay at my place.”
“No. I’ve got things under control.”
“Are you sure, Cyn? You cannot trust some drug dealer to fix your life.”
She rubs her temples.
I say, “Just turn him in. The cops will protect you.”
“He knows where I live, Daniel.”
“So? Let your parents figure it out.”
She taps her fingers against her forehead. “He knows where I live because he supplies my mother with heroin. I work for him, he gives my mother what she needs, and my old man doesn’t look so bad. And as bad as my old man is, he’s better than my mother turning tricks to buy her drugs.”
I am having a tough time imagining a soccer mom, possibly with a Hawaiian tan, working the sex trade. But then,
I can’t imagine why Cyn’s mom would stay with a guy who beats her up. None of it makes sense.
“So you carry stuff across the border for him?”
Cyn nods.
I have to ask. “And that time I went, was I carrying something?”
She hugs her knees. “I couldn’t really say.”
I slam the dashboard with the heel of my hand. “But you just let me go? What if I’d been pulled out for inspection? I am not exactly a cute girl, Cyn.”
Sitting like she is, she looks so small right now. She says, “They wouldn’t have pulled you over.”
“How do you know that?”
“You weren’t afraid,” she says, “You didn’t know you were taking anything across. You looked normal, like a kid going across for gas. They wouldn’t suspect you.”
“But you’re afraid, so you got me to do it. You sent me to do some scumbag work for some d-bag drug dealer you used to sleep with, and maybe are still sleeping with, because what the hell do I know? What do I know about you at all?” I downshift and floor the gas pedal, burying the tach. “Well, I know this. If you don’t have a car, you can’t run drugs.” I pull into the fast lane and blow past three cars.
Cyn grabs the dash. “Slow down!”
The speedometer reads twenty over.
“I mean it, Daniel. Slow this car down!”
I shift and grind my foot into the gas pedal. Ahead, blue and red lights start to flash.
Cyn starts to cry.
As I go through the speed trap, the speedometer reads forty over. Cops are jumping into their cars, and sirens
are blaring. I let the car slow to a crawl and pull over to the side.
Cyn looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. She says, “You have no idea what you just did.”
Cyn is a no-show at school the next day, and she ignores my texts. Last night, she was so mad she wouldn’t speak to me. The car got impounded for seven days. I have to say, I wasn’t expecting the impound fee to be so expensive. But if Dove wants the car, he can pay the fee. Or the car can sit in the impound
lot until it gets sold for non-payment. I really do not care. And I don’t care that I got a speeding ticket that will take me a year to pay. Cyn’s not driving anywhere for a while—that’s what’s important.
After school I’m heading out to the bus loop when I hear a horn toot and see Megan pulling up beside me. I jump in her car.
“Shh,” Megan says, motioning to the backseat. I turn to see Livy asleep in her car seat. One of her shoes has fallen off—that kid cannot keep both shoes on when she’s in her car seat. Megan talks as she drives. “I had my last class yesterday, so Livy and I had the day together to celebrate. She wanted to surprise you and give you a ride home after school.” Megan looks in her rearview mirror. “I must have worn her out at the playground. She was asleep as soon as I put her in her seat.”
Livy’s hair is tousled from being outside, and her cheeks are pink. I say, “I’m glad you guys could hang out.”