I stood up, and easily pulled Karen with me. She didn’t protest. Instead, her eyes flickered open and she smiled at me like a programmed robot brought happily back to life.
“We’ve gotta go,” I said to no one in particular. Ritchie looked up at us, and made a pathetic pout. Karen laughed at him and we shuffled out of the basement.
“I’m not driving,” she announced, once we’d successfully made it down their lawn.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Let’s just walk back to town. It’ll be fun.” I thought about it. The idea sounded like it just might be fun.
It turned out that it was, except for the fact that we wound up walking around the block four times. In our defense, the block may have been a circle. The streets in Laughton Hills were infamously windy and curvy.
Karen said they were made that way on purpose, to confuse poor people and outsiders, so that they wouldn’t be able to find their way around and wouldn’t want to come back. In my state, her logic had seemed completely likely.
A car honked at us, several times. It sounded impatient, but Karen and I were too caught up in our conversation about the roads, the socioeconomic landscape of small towns, and how dead Ritchie Jamison would be if Luke ever found out about the move he’d tried on her back at the house, to pay attention.
“I think…I’ll tell him anyway,” she said defiantly. “I really hate that guy. I hate both of them! Hell, I hate all of them, even the old man! Crotchety, grumpy, old scarecrow-pervert bastard!”
I was partially aware of the creeping hum of the vehicle behind us, but still not particularly concerned. So we were walking, arm in arm, in the middle of the street of the exclusive and winding Laughton Hills, so what? It only made me want to walk on the sidewalk that much less. And the more the car honked, the more Karen and I raised our voices in disagreement, the more we bad mouthed those slimy Jamisons, and, “all those rich pricks who think they’re better than us!” she shouted.
The car honked again, and held it.
“What?!” we shouted together, turning to glare at the driver. It was Bobby, in his white van. He had been keeping pace behind us, and pulled up beside as we slowed.
“Get in,” he ordered. He looked mad. He’d probably had another bad game night at Rudy’s.
Karen dropped my arm and made her way around the front to climb in the side door. Luke got out of the passenger side and joined her in the back. I stood at Bobby’s window grinning.
“Jenny, get in,” he ordered.
“Did you lose another game to Angelo?” I asked.
His eyes flashed, and part of me knew I shouldn’t have said it. But another part of me resented being ordered around, just because he’d had a bad night. I wanted to be happy to see him, and I was, but his tone was changing my mood, and fast.
