“She’s—uh. Well. She had a bad accident a little ways back. She won’t be out for a while.”Please, she thinks.Please don’t make me explain.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve heard of her company. It seems like they do a lot of cool stuff. I don’t want to overstep… maybe you want to go out for the first time with your friend when she’s better. But if you ever felt like it, I’ve got two singles we could take out.”
He reaches into his vest, finds a notebook, scribbles on a piece of paper that he tears out from a pad in another pocket. He walks down the bank and reaches over some brush to hand it to her, their fingertips touching for a second before coming away. Is this guy really asking her out? Out here in the woods? While she’s wearing her uniform, swearing at the bugs? She’s in no frame of mind to date. Her mother is missing. She works too many hours. She’s chasing down a drug ring. She’s taking care of Jane and Opal. And yet, she feels a little thrill taking the scrap of paper from him. Maybe there is one part of her life that should feel normal. One little pocket that isn’t touched by the shadows of everything else.
“I’ll check my calendar.” She gestures at the uniform. “Work’s been busy.”
“I get it. But get in touch if you’re up for it. I promise, I’m not as creepy as I seem when I’m sneaking around the woods.”
She surprises herself by laughing. “Oh. Here.” She holds up the bug spray.
“You hang on to that. So long as you tell me one more thing.”
She frowns.
“Your name?”
“Callie. I’m Callie.”
“Nice to meet you, Callie. Hope your day gets better.”
“Yours too. Can’t feel great to get shouted at by a cop in the middle of doing your job.”
“I think it worked out okay.”
She nods at him, a stupid grin on her face. She clutches the paper in one hand and the bottle of the bug spray as she follows the path back to Gary Hines’s lot.
Later that nightshe’s still on shift, backs up Collins on a call about a group of kids having a party in the woods. They arrive at the trailhead within minutes of one another, have to take the path on foot.
“They’re probably in the factory,” he says, nodding toward the sound of music, an occasional screech or whoop rising above the beat.
Callie knows the one he means. It used to be a brick baking factory, a whole little town. Schoolhouse, foreman’s home, tiny cabins for the workers. Not much left of it but the foundation of the factory building, one wall. But its where kids have been doing this shit since she was in high school. The owner died before it could open and then the property’s caretaker and his wife died on the site after they lit a fire without cleaning out the flue. Whole town went up in flames and now it’s another ghost story people tell about what used to be.
They walk the trail without turning their flashlights on—don’t want to give the kids a chance to spot them and scatter. The toe of her boot catches on something in the blackness—a railroad track, the rail line long defunct—and she hits the ground hard. Collins offers her a hand to help her up but she only shakes her head at him, her knees stinging and her face burning.
They approach the edge of the ruins, a bonfire in a trashcan lighting up the technicolor graffiti on the old factory structure. Thekids have their backs to them, a few girls dancing around a speaker propped up on a boulder, two boys passing a joint between them a few feet from the girls, eyes locked on their swiveling hips, three others clustered in what looks like the mouth of a tunnel, taking turns insulting one another. Collins kicks an empty bottle of lighter fluid.
“Idiots.” He steps ahead of Callie and cups his hand around his mouth. “Listen up. Everyone where I can see you. You run, you’re screwed, you understand? We got guys on all sides here, you’re bound to run from me and right into the arms of one of my colleagues, who will not be inclined to be gentle.”
For the most part the kids don’t look too alarmed at his bluff. No one shoutscopsand makes a break for it, tries to hide. No one pours out their beers, and even the kid holding the joint is slow to pinch it out. Callie glares at Collins, unbelieving. He should have waited for instructions from her, followed her lead.
Collins is undeterred. “Any of you morons over twenty-one here?”
“Eat shit!” one of the boys yells from the other side of the trashcan.
A girl with a long braid hisses at him. “Shut up, Ryan.” She crouches, sets her beer down at her feet. “Please take him in. He’s so annoying.”
“You love me, baby.” Ryan wags his tongue at the girl. Callie catches a boy in a tie-dye shirt and a pair of mesh basketball shorts slide a hand into his pants pocket, a flash of green between his fingers.
She aims her flashlight on him. “You. What do you have there?”
“My inhaler,” he says.
“Show me.”
He stares at her, weighing his options, then shoves his hand into his pocket, draws out one of the little green glassine baggies, the pine bough stamped on it.
“What is it?” she asks, keeping her voice light.
