15
Veronica
My sister wasn’t asleep when I entered the garden last night. She was sitting on one of the lounge chairs by the pool, wrapped in a soft, fluffy pink blanket that matched the large, rose-gold headphones on her head. She nearly jumped straight into the pool as I touched her shoulder to let her know I was there. Then she had trouble slowing down her frenzied breathing for a very long time afterwards.
Especially after I told her why I was there.
She once again can’t breathe calmly, as we’re sitting around the large, meticulously polished dining table with my parents. The sun is just rising outside, slicing through the clouds in bright, wide, yellow lines and making parts of the table impossible to look at.
So far, I’ve only told them that I need to speak to them about something important, but now, as we’re all sitting here, each with a steaming white porcelain cup of coffee in front of us, and a plate of freshly baked cinnamon rolls in the center of the large table, I can’t find the words.
My sister already knows what I’m about to tell my parents, and that makes it marginally easier, but not by much.
“I went to a truck stop just outside of town last night to look for a woman I was supposed to interview yesterday,” I say and swallow hard. “And I was threatened and chased off by a biker gang. I managed to run away, but I think they might be looking for me now.”
My parents both have an almost identical look of disbelief and puzzlement on their faces. I rushed telling them this, because I needed to just get it out there, so it’s understandable they’re having trouble processing it.
“Why would you go to a truck stop?” my mother asks in a quiet voice. “You know how dangerous those places can be. Especially at night.”
She’s speaking in a very toneless voice, which makes her sound sleepy more than anything else. It’s as though she’s just stating a fact. Which she is.
“I thought something might’ve happened to the woman. I still think it did. And I wasn’t alone. Chance… the guy doing his community service at the foundation, was with me.”
I’m interrupted from continuing by a loud groan from my dad. When I look at him he’s glaring at me with his icy blue eyes bulging out of their sockets. His graying dark hair is sticking up all over the place because he hadn’t combed it before coming downstairs.
“I told you it was a bad idea taking him on,” he says. “Is he behind this?”
“No,” I say. “He saved me…”
I almost said, “He saved me from getting shot,” but stopped myself just in time. I can’t tell them I was shot at. I can’t tell them much of the truth at all. It’s not just that I promised Chance I wouldn’t, it’s also that I had a long sleepless night to think about it, and I now understand that nothing good would come of telling my sister and my parents the truth. They’d insist on getting the police involved and I couldn’t stop them. And Chance promised to take care of it all and I will give him the time to. I thought the lies would be harder to get out of my mouth, but so far, I’m lying smoothly.
My father groans in a disappointed kind of way again.
I look away from his eyes and out the window, directly at the blindingly bright morning sun. That’s painful, but not as bad as looking at my father’s accusing gaze. My parents never directly accused me of being responsible for what happened to my sister. But I am. And I know they know it.
“Saved you from what?” Mom asks in a choked sort of voice.
“Well, those bikers really didn’t like me asking about a woman that’s… that works for them,” I say. “They told me to leave. I told them I wouldn’t until I spoke to her and saw that she’s alright, then one thing led to another and we had to run.”
I’m leaving so much out that I’m sure the story makes no sense at all to them.
“So now what? We’re all in danger?” my father asks. He doesn’t mean to sound flippant about it, I’m sure of it, that’s just how he always sounds when he’s exasperated and doesn’t know what to do.
“No,” Ariel says in a quiet, but firm voice that makes us all look at her. I’m sure we all expected her to come apart in light of all this happening—I sure did—but she doesn’t sound like she’s coming apart. She didn’t last night when I told her all this either.
“We’re getting protection, right?” she asks, her voice a little shaky because we startled her. “Chance is getting us protection, right?”
“Yes,” I say and nod for good measure. “They’ll keep us under surveillance until the danger passes.”
My father’s eyes bulge out even more, and his face is quickly turning a light pink color as he shakes his head like he’s trying to force words out that just won’t come.
“You mean we’ll be watched and trailed by a bunch of outlaw bikers? And that they’ll just protect us if some other group of thugs comes for us?” he finally says. “You can’t be serious, Nic. That’s no way to handle this.”
“It’s the only way,” I say.
Mom and Dad are both shaking their heads now, but Ariel is nodding.
“It’s absurd, is what it is,” Dad won’t let up. “From what you told us, there’s not even a very high chance that anyone will be coming after us at all.”