Lulu widened her grin in a dopey smile for her mugshot. Drake’s expression remained flat. He could already picture it making the rounds on social media and the local news. It definitely wouldn’t make it to Miami news circles, but there was a small chance it would find its way online to his family. Someone was bound to come across it and tag Drake’s brother, Mark.
Following their mugshots, they were processed. Drake was first. He gave his full name, home address, handed over his driver’s license for verification, and in exchange was assured that this was all just for records. Come morning, they would be free to go without charges.
“But, y’all were still trespassing. So, I gotta book ya,” the cop said, and shrugged with his palms facing the ceiling in a what-can-you-do, dismissive gesture.
“Couldn’t really drive off, could I?” Drake asked. His hand rested on the metal table he and the cop sat at. Drake rubbed his thumbs against his fingers, feeling grateful that he wasn’t being cuffed, but still embarrassed to be detained at all.
“How many beers you say you had?” the cop asked, stroking his barely in-regulation mustache.
“Pffft, your guess is as good as mine.”
The cop pointed his pen at Drake. “Then consider this a courtesy. Look, no harm, no foul, but you were asked to leave the premises, and you didn’t. But you knew better than to get behind the wheel, and you didn’t resist tagging along with me. So for that, consider this a free hotel.” He laughed, then added, “No continental breakfast, though.”
“Coffee at least?” Drake asked.
The cop held his smile and nodded slowly. “Yeah, no, I can’t do that.”
It was Lulu’s turn for processing next, while Drake waited in an empty cell.
She gave the cop her full name, Marsha’s address in Miami, and handed over her passport for verification.
The cop studied it with a strained face, then asked, “Louise Pratchett?”
Lulu sucked in her lips.
“Oh my god! How’ve you been?”
When Lulu didn’t answer, too shocked and confused at someone knowing her legal name, the cop added, “Tim Wells! From High School! We both had Mrs. Craig’s English class.”
There was a name she hadn’t heard in a lifetime. She hadn’t even thought of her teachers until just this moment, and the first memory that came to mind was the last book she’d read in Mrs. Craig’s class. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. But the cop, Tim, she couldn’t place for the life of her.
She shook her head with pursed lips.
Officer Wells laughed awkwardly and looked down at his feet. “Yeah, that’s fine. You wouldn’t remember me.” He slid her passport back across the table. “A lot of us were always wondering what happened to you. You’d hate the rumors people were spreading.”
“Like what?”
The cop stuttered, feeling he had walked himself into a corner. “I mean, just stupid stuff. High school kids being assholes.”
Another memory came to mind. The girls on her cheerleading squad. Marsha had encouraged her to stay in touch with her friends back home, but that immature part of the teenager who ran off to Miami to kickstart her modeling career lived for a while thinking she was better than her old friends, and fell out of touch pretty quickly.
“What’d they say about me?”
Blood filled Officer Wells’s cheeks. “It’s nothing.” He signed something on the stack of processing papers, then clicked his pen and dropped it onto the metal table. “What’re you doing back in town, anyway?”
“I’m not,” she said quietly. “Just passing through.”
“Couldn’t have stayed at home?”
Her silence was answer enough for him.
“That your boyfriend?”
Lulu sucked on her lip. “No.”
Wells straightened in his seat. “Oh.” He paused, taking in the sight of this girl whose disappearance and resurgence on half their hometown’s incognito browsers sparked one of the biggest controversies anyone in a fifteen-mile radius had been able to claim personal involvement in. And now here that girl was, in his office.
He cleared his throat and covered his left hand with his right. “You know, those cells are pretty crappy to have to sleep in.”
Lulu took the statement like a sentencing. The prospect of ending up in a holding cell at some point in her life never seemed so far-fetched, what with the level of chaos some of the house parties she’d attended in Miami got to, or the number of nights she got locked out of Marsha’s apartment and had to slum it up with the transients just around the block. She knew she could take it if push came to shove. She just didn’t love the idea now that she saw it at her door.
“Yeah. I’ve heard.”
Wells played with something on his finger. “Didn’t tell anyone you were in the area, huh?”
She looked up at him, feeling suddenly cold. “With the rumors about me going around? You don’t have to tell me what they are. I know.”
He leaned in and crossed his arms on the table. The ring that he was playing with on his left hand was now visible. “I can call your parents if you want. I’m sure they’d be happy to hear that you’re safe, at least.”
“Is that my one phone call?”
Wells chuckled uncomfortably. “That’s just something from the movies. You’re not really owed one. But I’d be happy to give ‘em a call for you.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s fine. Really.”
“No!” Lulu shouted, sitting up straighter. Her eyes were wide open, feeling more awake now in the middle of the night than she had all day. Then, more resigned, she added, “They probably wouldn’t even care.”
Wells made a clicking sound with the corner of his lips, and stretched. “Aw, now things can’t be that bad back at home.”
“You’d know better than me. With all the rumors going around, have you ever heard anything from them?”
The cop rubbed his hands together, meeting Lulu’s challenging gaze. Admittedly, he hadn’t heard anything from Lulu’s parents’ side of the ordeal. Maybe there was something a decade ago when she didn’t show up to school one day, but until pictures of the missing girl in her underwear started making the rounds among the old group chats during his college days, it was as if she never existed. Then, once everyone had their fill of the pictures, she once again never existed.
“Like I said,” Wells was eventually able to eke out. “Those cells get pretty cold. Uncomfortable, too. There’s a couch in the chief’s office if you wanna crash there. I’ll find you a blanket and in the morning we can take a drive back to Newton Falls. Say hi to the parents. Maybe they’ll surprise ya.”
Lulu rolled her eyes. The man just wasn’t listening. Even the tone of his voice felt like he was talking to the high school girl he knew years ago. Except for the way the words lilted off of his tongue, she was still a wide-eyed high schooler who would get lost if she tried walking herself home after cheerleading practice. She could accept the graciousness of the comfortable couch and the blanket which Wells definitely already knew where to find, but it came with a cost and a half. The obvious one being that accepting the couch was accepting defeat. She was allowing him to treat her like the girl he sat behind and next to in fourth period, and once that dynamic was established, it could not be broken. She would not have the power to argue any more.
The other cost was up in the air, but ever present. It was the same cost for a hotel room down the road from the bar, and every other favor she asked for. Whether it was on Wells’s mind as well, Lulu couldn’t tell for certain. But in her experience, it wasn’t a far cry to assume.
She tenuously reached out a hand for her passport, and slid it back into her pocket.
“I think I’ll survive the cell for a night.”
Wells pursed his lips. Her message was received clearly. Lulu hadn’t passed through town. She never got taken into the department. It must have been some other girl with her boyfriend.
He rose with a gesture of his hand to silently tell her to follow. She did, and was escorted to a cell just as cold as Wells repeatedly told her it would be. But there was warmth radiating from the cell next door where Drake sat hunched over on the metal cot, rubbing his fingers with his thumbs.
Wells slid the gate shut. His lips stayed hidden underneath his mustache.
Lulu didn’t react when metal slammed against metal and latched into place. She took in her surroundings, catching Drake’s defeated stare. These cells weren’t meant for long-term visitors. They were for brief holding periods as people were processed and awaiting an initial hearing.
As Wells locked the gate, Lulu asked, “Think I can still get that blanket?”
“I’ll see if I can find it,” Wells sighed, then sauntered off.
When the sounds of departing footsteps lost their echo, Lulu tested out the cot in the cell. Cot, actually, may have been a very generous description of a slab that hung on the bars. She could already picture herself lying like a corpse on a mortuary table. Come morning, her back would be so stiff she might have to break one of her rules to afford a chiropractor.
She lolled her head to the side and saw Drake still sitting there, still playing with his fingers.
“What are you in for?” she asked, forcing the vibrancy back into her voice.
Drake huffed.
She tried again. “Hey, it’s better than sleeping in the car, right?”
Drake’s head dropped, and he ran a hand through his hair, hoping to press the growing headache out of his frontal lobe. The last traces of a buzz were wearing off, but the dehydration and rapid turnaround of sleeping too soon and waking up too fast ensured his body didn’t let him off the hook that easily.
Lulu strained to pull herself off of the cot. Her bones ached as the joints pressed against the metal. But she made it up without anything locking into place and crossed the short distance to the bars of Drake’s cell. She wrapped her hands around the metal and dropped her chin in the space between.
“Or are you just upset we didn’t get to share a cell?”
“Give it a rest, Lulu.” Drake turned over and curled up on his cot.
Lulu bent down to his level and reached through the bars, resting a hand on his arm.
He didn’t flinch, and he didn’t shoo her away.
In a softer voice she added, “I’m sorry I got us into this.”
After a beat, he turned over. Drake stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was only speaking platitudes to fill the silence. But the look on her face told him there was more to it than a simple word of guilt-ridden comfort.
“Sorry for what?”
She shrugged. “Probably could have gotten us out of this mess if I was, I don’t know… braver.”
Drake reached for the bars to pull himself up and meet her at eye level. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Her eyes fell. “To get a room. I could have-”
Drake cut her off with a laugh. “Fucking hell, Lulu.”
“Look, I know!-”
“Like that would have been the brave thing to do? Sleep with a random guy just so you can be in a warm bed? Holy fucking hell.”
Her face hardened. Had he guessed it from the beginning?
Drake was now fully spun around, sitting on the edge of the cot. “Here’s the thing. Since you took my seat on the plane, and you did, this trip has been an absolute fucking mess. I could have been in New York by now. Hand to God, I honestly believe that your being on that plane caused this storm. If you didn’t get on, smooth flight from Miami to JFK without a single layover. But you did get on. And I got stuck in a crappy hotel in Chicago. I had to get a crappy rental. My phone was destroyed. I have no money. I have to listen to crappy music all day. I got kicked out of another crappy hotel, and now I’ve got my first arrest on record. All because of you.
“And at the end of it, is it crazy that I’m glad I got off that plane in Chicago? Because if you didn’t steal my seat in Miami, I wouldn’t have gotten stuck in Chicago with this girl I don’t want to take my eyes off of. I wouldn’t have walked in on a sight I’ll never forget and gotten a scolding from a girl who’s more grounded than anyone I’ve ever met in my life. I wouldn’t have had my phone obliterated and forced to get to know someone else’s story. I wouldn’t ever have road tripped across the country, or gotten drunk and danced to Irish folk music with the girl who has the stupidest haircut and the brightest smile. I’ve never slept in the backseat of my car before. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never talked to another human being like this before. Because I’ve never felt like anyone would hear what I have to say and not blow it off.
“You wanna know what bravery is? It’s this. Embracing the suck. Just rolling with it. It’s not giving in and selling yourself short to take the easy way out. Apparently it’s what you’ve been doing for a while now.”
Drake reached through the bars and rested his hand through the bars. Maybe it was just the alcohol talking, but he felt brave doing it.
Lulu wiped her cheeks with the cuff of his sweater. “You’re kinda a dick when you’re trying to be nice.”
“I’ll work on my speeches. You do them better, anyway.”
She pressed her body against the bars. Drake leaned in and slid his arms through, holding her as tightly as he was able to.
“Do you really think my hair looks stupid?”
Drake laughed. “Yeah, I do. But in a good way. I’m never gonna forget it.”
He let go first, then she did, and they both retreated.
“You mean after New York?” she asked.
“I guess. You’ll be working your modeling there, and I’ll be heading back down to Miami.”
“But we’ll keep in touch.” She said it almost like a question. More accurately, almost like a challenge.
“Well, sure. I don’t know if your kind of parties are my kind of parties, but maybe we can catch up at an Irish pub. Miami’s known for them, you know?”
“Maybe we can.”
He added, “Just don’t bring any of your new celebrity boyfriends. I don’t think their egos could take me.”
“Probably not,” she laughed. “Just you and me. It’ll be a date.”
“Sure. If we ever follow through, we’ll call it a date.”