Evan Adams, I'll Never Love You

PART THREE

PART THREE

White spots burst from behind my eyelids as I closed my eyes and threw my head back into the sunlight. I hollered at the top of my lungs as Marie hit the gas and sent us soaring across the Harbour Bridge, the wind ripping my beanie off and running through my hair with cool fingers. The radio was on full volume, a song I didn’t know, but could feel all through my body, a bass line thrumming deep in my stomach, a drum-beat pounding in my head.

Marie screamed something at me. She was probably telling me to sit down and shut up. But I was having my moment. 

I pumped my fist in the air, my legs hooked under the dash aching from supporting my weight. 

In the back seat I could just hear Archie roaring along with the music, his hoarse voice barely loud enough to be heard before it was ripped away by the rush of briny air. I could taste and smell the ocean on my lips and skin.

I’d never done drugs, and I’d never been drunk enough to lose any control, but I was pretty sure that this was what being high felt like. I was completely buzzed.

When Marie was finally pulled over by the cops, bright blue lights flashing, loud sirens piercing over the thudding music, we were all laughing like idiots, even though nothing was funny. We were just off the bridge. There were two police cars total, flanking our convertible. 

We were completely done for.

Marie was still on her P’s - and none of us were responsible guardians - and we were probably driving twenty ks over the limit. I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, it was the middle of a school day and Archie, though he’d now shoved the can under his seat, had helped himself to one of the beers Marie’s dad stashed in the dashboard.  

The cops, three of them in scary black uniforms and shiny badges, asked us all to step out of the car. Marie shot me a nervous look, not a trace of laughter left on her face, and I shrugged back at her, biting my lip. A flurry of panic had replaced the spaced-out feeling I'd had before. I wanted to reach out and squeeze Marie's hand.But then I thought about how stupid it would look, the two of us holding hands like we were little kids when we stepped out of the car.

No. We were going to face this like women. 

In the backseat, Archie made a choking sound, like he was about to cry. 

***

“This is a warning,” Constable Grace-June told me, watching me carefully with her watery -blue eyes. “You’re lucky you weren’t hurt. You’ve gotta realise, kid, that there’s a lot more out there for you. Cutting class and running off when no one knows where you’re is going to mess up your future one day, if you aren’t careful.”

I didn’t like her calling me kid. My dad called me kid, but that’s because I actually was his kid, obviously. 

“Yes, ma’am.” I nodded stiffly. They’d taken the handcuffs off a while back, but I couldn’t help but rub my wrists every now and then, as if their phantom presence were still there. 

I’d been cuffed. Only the really bad criminals got cuffed on TV; I almost fainted when they did it. The metal bands were colder and harder and heavier than I’d expected, but they were nothing compared to that weight in my stomach. 

“Did you - did you call my - uh - my parents? Do they know?” I really didn’t want to broach the topic. My mum would shred me for this. ‘Trashing the bathroom’ with the hair dye, as she’d put it, had sent her right off her rocker. 

If she found out that I’d been arrested for a total of four criminal offences in one go, not including cutting the last three periods of school… That would be the final and humiliating end of Cassidy Anne Keller.