“Until this asshole showed up.” She yanked on my arm. “C’mon, Lily. Come back inside with me.”
“We need to get home, Jane,” I said, trying to guide her unwilling body to the back seat.
She stumbled a bit and her whole body seemed to heave.
“Unh huh,” Stick said, now sitting behind the wheel. “She is not going to chuck in my car.”
“I don’t ‘chuck,’” Jane said.
“Yeah, sure you don’t. No college freshman getting hammered for the first time ever does,” he said, almost to himself.
“It’s not the first—”
“You’ll have to put her in the front seat, Lily,” Stick said to me, as if Jane was a bag of groceries. “Less chance of her getting sick than riding in the back.”
I was all for leaving the deadweight of Jane with Stick. I sat her in the front seat and Stick held on to her arm as I eased the seat forward as much as possible with her in it. I squeezed into the back, then put the front seat back into position, Jane flopping back with it.
I tried to reach through the opening, but couldn’t reach the door to shut it.
Noticing my inability to get us on our way, Stick softly swore, then moved across the bench front seat, reaching past Jane, and pulled the door close.
That perked the fading Jane back up. “Boob graze! Totally felt that boob graze, ya perv.”
“Yeah, highlight of my night,” Stick said with disgust. “Grazing your tits has totally made this shitty night worthwhile.”
“Well, they are very nice tits,” Jane said, letting her head fall back on the headrest and closing her eyes.
A tiny chuckle escaped Stick, almost unwillingly. “Keep your eyes open,” he said to Jane in an almost nice voice. “Less chance of getting sick. And buckle up so you don’t fall and crack your skull on my dash.”
Jane struggled with the seatbelt, needing several tries to make it click. Stick sighed with disgust.
I slid over behind Stick so I could keep a better watch on Jane. Remarkably, she listened to Stick and opened her eyes. Even managed to hold her head straight.
“Jane, how did you even get in there?” I asked. “Who were you with?”
She waved a hand in the air, like coming to be in a much-older club at eighteen was nothing. Maybe it was to Jane. I didn’t know a lot about her life before Bribury, though I was sure my father would have briefed me on anything…dangerous, if he’d been aware.
“Oh, my lovely Lily,” Jane said, not so much slurring her words as singing them. “You don’t get to know everything. Don’t want you reporting it back to Daddy, do we?”
I stiffened. “I thought we were good the night we did the True Confessions thing,” I said. “You know I wouldn’t—”
“Why the fuck would Lily tellherfather you got drunk?” Stick interrupted as he drove us away from Chesney and back to Schoolport.
“I wouldn’t. I don’t…” But I let the words trail off. I didn’t want to lie to Jane, and I honestly wasn’t sure what I would say to my father about this night.
“Because Lily—poor, poor, beautiful Lily—has been sent to Bribury to be my keeper. An unofficial Secret Service agent, if you will.”
“I…I’m not…” Again, I couldn’t finish.
“‘S’okay,” she said. “We’re good. All is cool. No worries.”
She looked over her shoulder at me, her eyes glassy, but I could still see the brilliant intelligence behind them. “You’re just a pawn in this game, Lily, and I get that.” She reached her hand across the back seat and I instinctively reached for it. She squeezed my hand, then released me, facing forward again. “You probably didn’t even want to go to Bribury, did you, Lily?”
I sat back in my seat, soaking in Jane’s words. “No,” I said softly. I had wanted to go to Maryland.
“Poor, beautiful Lily,” Jane said again.
I felt the beginnings of something stir in me. I had tamped down all my anger about not being able to go to the college of my choice, about having to go to Bribury, room with Jane. I told myself that I was just being a good daughter, that I was lucky to even have this opportunity that so many kids didn’t.
