It’d be rude of us to look in the box.
I watched in the rearview mirror with horror-filled eyes as Vonnie finished with the tape and put her head inside the box with the top flaps opened. “Um, hun. This is not baby clothing.”
She lifted her head and then stuck her hand inside.
“What?” Of course it was baby clothing. It was for her baby niece.
Vonnie jerked around after a few seconds and then put herself properly in the passenger seat. In her lap sat a big white brick. Someone wrapped cellophane multiple times around it, so it was hard to see what was inside the packaging.
“Did you notice how heavy the box was?” Vonnie asked. “This thing has to weigh five pounds by itself.”
Yeah, I questioned the weight. It was a lot of baby clothing. “What the fuck is that?” I asked.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the item in Vonnie’s lap—something I had never been around in real life, but I’d seen enough similar items on TV shows.
Drug-related television shows.
The car swerved to the right, and I pulled to the side of the roadway so as not to cause a crash.
“What is it Vonnie?”
Please, please, please let her say baby powder.
Vonnie tapped the top of the package, and the cellophane crinkled. “Looks like a brick of dust, blow, nose candy, some snow.”
“English,” I yelled, too loudly for the small vehicle.
It wasn’t my fault. In the last few seconds, I’d fallen into sheer panic. My heart was racing so fast I worried it would beat out of my chest. My stomach rolled around as if I was going to lose my breakfast muffin. I rested my head on the steering, well because I couldn’t get far enough to stick it between my knees, and I wanted to make sure I was safe when I passed out.
“Coke.”
“Oh, no.” I didn’t question how Vonnie knew the substance because deep in my heart I did as well.
I’d been driving around with it! Holy shit. I could be in jail right now. A box of coke meant jail time.
I thought I was doing a favor for a friend, but in reality, I’d driven all over the United States with a box of cocaine in my backseat. Why was my friend even dealing with this many drugs? She didn’t even believe in smoking cigarettes. And why the hell did she ask me to deliver it? What if police had pulled over me and searched? I’d driven across state lines.
“What are we going to do?” I asked, tears already pricking the corners of my eyes.
Vonnie sat calmly in the passenger seat. She was definitely not experiencing any heart attack symptoms. “We deliver it.”
“What?” I screeched like a baby Velociraptor. Vonnie covered her ears. The question may have come out a little screechy, but no way were we delivering a box full of drugs to a weird house in the middle of nowhere.
Vonnie had lost her mind if she thought that was even somewhat feasible.
She held up her hands as if she read the thoughts going through my head. “Hear me out.”
“No.” There was nothing to hear out about the situation. “We’re going to the police.”
Vonnie snorted and I swear she held in a laugh. “And you’re going to tell them what?”
“The truth.” Obviously. We’d walk into the police station, tell them what happened, and they would realize it was one big misunderstanding. In a year or two, we’d all laugh about it at a family Christmas.
We were going to jail.
Vonnie nodded, and her tongue licked her top lip. She didn’t have to say anything to let me see she found my plan horrible. “Yeah, sure. Do that. They might believe you,” she said, and it was so heavily laden with sarcasm I almost had to roll down a car window for fresh air.
“You don’t think so?”
