But “Dad”—she only called him that with air quotes and irony—had seen her and there’d been a lot of shouting in Dingo’s car until they’d figured out what to do. And thank God Dingo’s friend Daryl had been riding shotgun, because if it was up to Dingo, he might’ve just pulled over, gotten out of the car, and laid down on the sidewalk in total surrender.
Dingo was funny, and kind, and stupidly sweet, but he didn’t seem to have that much of a backbone. But with Daryl’s help, Maddie managed to convince him that if he let her father follow them into the garage at the mall, they could bluff their way out of this.
And their bluffing was really only possible because Dingo had rigged his ancient, giant car for boondocking, which was another word for urban camping, which was another way of saying he lived in his car like the pathetic homeless loser that he was. But the worn-out cushions of the backseat were easily removed, which opened up the entire back of the car, trunk included, into one large space. Dingo had a foam mattress, and he slept back there, albeit at a creative angle.
And because those seat backs easily pulled out, Maddie could—and did—crawl into the trunk from the backseat while the car was in motion. Daryl then replaced the seat backs. Which meant when they parked here in the mall garage, when “Dad” had looked in Dingo’s car windows, Maddie had been in the trunk, safely hidden from view.
Her fate, however, was then in the hands of Dingo and Daryl’s ability to lie to her father’s grim face.
Her phone finally vibrated.All clear.
But she still hesitated.Are you sure?she quickly typed with her thumbs.
There gone.Dingo didn’t have the greatest grasp of spelling and grammar, but he was proving himself to be a good friend. Although it didn’t take much for him to be a better friend than his stupid, stupid ex—evil Fiona—who’d intentionally and malevolently gotten Maddie into this shitty, shitty mess.
It had started day before yesterday, on Monday, after “Dad” dropped her off at school. As was her father’s usual total Stormtrooper MO, they’d arrived a half hour early, so she’d wandered over to the parking lot to wait for Fiona. The older girl—Fee was a senior—had left school somewhat mysteriously last Friday morning, after which she’d completely stopped answering her phone.
On that Monday morning, Maddie had tried calling Fee again, but she’d gotten a weirdThis number is invalidmessage. Which wasn’t allthatstrange. In the few months since Maddie first met Fee, the girl had changed her number twice. Once because some weird guy was stalking her, and once because the old number was getting “stale.”
Whatever that meant.
So Maddie had hovered near student parking, expecting Fiona to show up in her aunt Susan’s shiny little Fiat, with a brand-new phone in hand. Instead, Fee was nowhere to be seen, and Maddie had gotten pointed at and beckoned to by a man in a black truck—one of those giant ones, with a back passenger seat—that was idling just outside of the school grounds.
She recognized him immediately. His name was Nelson and he traveled with a posse of creepy minions. He was older than his boyz by several decades—older even than Maddie’s stupid father.
She’d gone with Fee once, a few weeks earlier, to pick something up from Nelson’s auto shop—drugs probably, but Fiona didn’t tell and Maddie didn’t ask. Still, while they were there, the way Nelson looked at Maddie had grossed her out. But later, in the car, Fee just laughed and said, “He stared because he thinks you’re pretty, spaz. Lots of guys are super into Asian girls—in fact you should use makeup so you look more like your mother and less like your father—and you know what else? You actuallywouldbe pretty if you didn’t dress like an eighty-year-old homeless man.”
Monday morning, though, Maddie had backed up, fast, and run for the safety of the school. By the time classes were over, she’d come up with a rational explanation for why Nelson might’ve gestured to her—he was probably looking for Fiona, too.
So when she started her walk home, she wasn’t all that concerned at first when that big black truck pulled up alongside her and Nelson’s ugly face appeared as he lowered the window in the cab.
But she jumped as two men—bigger, older, shaved-headed men—materialized on either side of her and roughly grabbed her by the arms.
“Hey!” she said, ready to fight, but then Fee’s boyfriend, Ricky Dingler, whose nickname was Dingo because he was from Australia, appeared, too.
“It’s okay, Mads,” Dingo said in his lilting accent as he took her heavy backpack off her shoulder. She tried to hold on to it, but he gently pried her fingers free. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
The skinhead with the intricate neck tattoo said, “Mr. Nelson would like the pleasure of your company.”
Maddie wasn’t an idiot. She knew that the dead last thing she should do was get into that big black truck—talking to Nelson while standing outside of it was one thing—but somehow before she could open her mouth to scream, the man with the neck tattoo and his buddy with the nose ring had hustled her over there, with Dingo trailing behind, still holding her pack.
Nelson had gotten out so that when they pushed her up into the cab she was sandwiched between him and the XXL driver, a man she recognized because his younger clone was some big deal football-playing asshole at the high school.
As soon as Nelson slammed the door shut, the big driver jammed his truck into gear, and they were zooming away from the school.
The skinhead twins and Dingo were riding in the bed of the truck, so at least they were going wherever she was, but that didn’t make it any better. Especially when she turned to look through the back window, and realized Neck-Tattoo was rifling through her backpack.
“Hey!” she said, but then Nelson got her full attention when he put his fat-fingered hand on her knee and let it slip down to the inside of her thigh. She was wearing jeans, but still it was disgusting.
She jerked her leg away. “Don’t touch me, Grandpa! Stupid, back there, who apparently isn’t above stealing my lunch money, said you wanted to talk? So talk already.”
Fiona had told Maddie that Nelson imagined himself to be San Diego’s version of Walter White, like fromBreaking Bad, but he wasn’t even close. He had graying hair and a mustache that didn’t do much for his too-fleshy face. He had a beer belly and bad breath, and he wheezed when he laughed. And he laughed now at her words.
“Feisty,” he said. He leaned across her to tell the football player’s older clone, “I like her.”
“I’d like her better naked, with my dick in her mouth,” the clone said as he looked down at her with his weirdly dead-seeming pale gray eyes. “I bet she’s good at that.”
That coldly appraising look he gave her actually scared her, but she covered her fear with an enormous disgusted eye roll. “I hope you also like vomit,” she said before turning to address Nelson directly. “I have a math test to study for. Is this bullshit going to take long?”
