Zoe parked outside the police station, and took one of those “deep, cleansing breaths” her mother was always talking about.
“What do you want me to do in there?” said Val. “Can I play a character? Can I improv?”
“Just be my friend—and don’t let me get arrested,” said Zoe.
Val made a pouty face.
“What if I want to get arrested?” she said.
“We’ll come back another time for that,” said Zoe. “With costumes and stuff. Cool?”
“Very.”
She and Val high-fived. They pretended to do it ironically, but the truth was that they just liked high-fiving. The only time they had ever tried fist-bumping neither of them wanted to make the stupid explosion sound.
The station was bustling, but the one cop Zoe liked, Brian Vilkomerson, stood up behind his desk when he saw the girls enter. He must have seen the tension pouring off them, like a vapor trail.
“Is this about Stan Manggold?” he said, before Zoe and Val even reached his desk. “Because—”
Stan Manggold! Zoe hadn’t thought about that psycho in days, and hearing his name threw her off balance.
“No,” said Zoe. “Stan’s been taken care of.”
Fortunately, Brian didn’t ask what she meant. What could she have said? You guys had your chance. Now my boyfriend’s taking him to hell.
“This is more important,” Zoe said quickly. “This is about my father.”
She told Brian she didn’t want to talk to Chief Baldino. She referred to him as “the mean one—the one who looks pregnant.”
Brian pursed his lips to kill a smile.
“Why don’t you and your friend sit with me for a minute?” he said.
He gestured to two green chairs by his desk. Zoe could hear Baldino back in his office, noisily unwrapping a sandwich and laughing on the phone about something that probably had nothing to do with police work.
Brian reached out to shake Val’s hand. Not everybody was that respectful to teenagers. Also, Brian didn’t do the patronizing triple take that virtually all adults did when they met Val. First, they’d see the half-shaved hair with orange streaks, and grimace as if they were passing a wreck on the highway. Next they’d notice how hot Val was. Finally, their brow would furrow, and they’d wonder why on earth a girl that pretty would blah yadda blah. It never bothered Val. She had the same opinion of people that Zoe had of trophies: that they were both ridiculous and awesome and all you could do was collect the coolest ones.
Zoe was grateful that Brian just stuck out his hand and said hello and didn’t treat her friend as if she were some Object of Interest. There was already a star next to his name in her head, so she added a second one, along with an exclamation point.
“Hey, there, I’m Sergeant Vilkomerson,” he said.
“And I’m Val,” she said. “I’m Zoe’s attorney.”
Brian tilted his head at this, but let it go.
Now that Zoe was sitting there, with a sympathetic audience leaning forward, she found she no longer wanted to scream or make threats. She just wanted to be heard and to be taken seriously. She tried not to be too rattled by the noisy everyday life of the station—the radio squawking, the baby crying, the officers jabbing at their keyboards. The hardest thing to block out was the sound of Baldino on the phone, doing impressions he thought were funny. The sound of his voice repulsed her.
“It’s been months since my dad died,” she said.
She stopped for a second, surprised by how much emotion that one sentence kicked up in her.
Val put an arm around her shoulder, which made her even sadder somehow. She shrugged it off.
She told Brian that the thought of her dad’s body lying in a cave was eating away at her family. She told him about Jonah locking himself in the house, about the notes he’d passed under the door. Brian looked pained. Zoe could tell he was trying not to look at the pictures of his daughter that stood like monuments all over his desk.
“Look,” he said. “This is so, so complicated—and not just because that particular cave is so dangerous.”
Zoe waited to hear why it was so, so complicated, but as Brian was searching for words, Chief Baldino ambled heavily out of his office, like a bear. Zoe’s stomach did its tightening thing. She prayed that he wouldn’t notice her. If he said one rude thing to her, she’d lose it.
She watched Baldino out of the corner of her eye. He crumpled up his lunch bag, compacting it into a tight ball as if it were a feat of strength. Then—though Zoe could count at least four garbage cans in plain sight—he handed it to Officer Maerz and said, “Throw that away for me, would you, Stuart? Can of Coke Zero on my desk, too.”
The chief yawned, stretched, and surveyed his kingdom.
He noticed Zoe.
He grimaced and moved toward her. It was clear he hadn’t forgotten that nasty night at the house. It was clear that he loathed her as much as she loathed him. She just prayed he wouldn’t say anything to set her off.
Baldino came so close that all she could see was his gut. Crumbs from his shirt fell onto her lap.
“I thought I smelled teenager,” he said.
Zoe sprang out of her chair. She began talking too loud, her hands shaking all the while, as if they wanted to disconnect from her body. The whole station got quiet. Everyone stared.
Just as Zoe finished shouting—and just before Baldino, whose face had swelled with anger like a balloon filling with water, began yelling, “You’re a disrespectful brat, and your old man can stay in that hole for all I care”—she heard a microwave ding preposterously in the silence. Somebody’s burrito was ready.