Pretty Wanted (6 page)

“Parent problems?” Sideburns chimed in. “I’ve got a guy who’s a wiz with day-trading—we could really mess with the old man if you want.”

Could he learn to mind his own business?

“No thank you,” I said firmly. “We’re done. Ready, Aidan?”

Sideburns’s friend stood up. “Wait. Before you guys leave, do you mind if we get some photos with you?”

“I really don’t think—” I started.

“Sure,” Aidan interrupted. “Let us put on our disguises, though.”

He slipped on his hat and sunglasses. Both of the kids already had their camera phones out.

“No way.” I stepped away, folding my arms. Even with disguises it was a terrible idea. “Aidan, come on. Don’t be stupid.”

“Please, Sly Fox,” Sideburns urged. “One photo . . . We won’t post them on the Facebook page.”

“It won’t kill us,” Aidan said. His green eyes glinted with rebellion. He didn’t seem the least bit worried.

I’d seen that look before and I didn’t like it. It was his father. His father had brought out the devil-may-care streak in him.

He was only posing a danger to us when he was like this. I had to put a stop to it, get him back on track.

“Yes, it could. Anyone could see it.”

“It’s just for fun,” Sideburns argued.

“Photos are encoded with info, and how do we know they won’t post it?” My voice was raised now. “The cops could trace us within hours.”

“Trust us. We’re fans,” Sideburns’s friend said. “We’re not gonna turn you in or anything.”

“Yeah, Willa, they’re fans.” Aidan asked. “It’s the least we can do.”

I cringed. He’d used my real name. That did it. I was up in his face. “Is that all you care about? Being famous? We can’t keep acting like this is a game. We’re in real trouble here!”

“You need to calm down,” Aidan said, holding out his hands, looking like a counselor talking someone off a bridge.

That infuriated me more, his talking as if he had cornered the market on rationality and I was the wacked-out one. “Don’t tell me to calm down!”

Now he had his hands on my shoulders. “You’re being way too dramatic about it—”

I shrugged him away. “I’m not being dramatic. I’m being practical and safe. Unlike you.”

A burly man in a navy blue security uniform appeared in the doorway. He had a shiny bald head and a few extra rings of flesh around his neck. “Something going on in here, folks? I heard a racket out in the hall.”

We fell silent then, watching as he stepped closer.

“Are you guys all Wash U students?”

We nodded.

“Can I see some ID, please?”

Think quickly.
“Mine’s in my room,” I said. “I don’t live in this dorm.”

He turned to Aidan. “You?”

Aidan made a show of searching his pockets and of course came up with nothing.

“They’re our friends,” Sideburns said, and for once I wanted to thank him for being so ballsy. “We’re just hanging out.”

“I still need to see some ID. Why don’t you come upstairs and sign in at the front desk?”

We followed him up the stairs. So okay, we’d sign some book with fake names and that would be the end of it, I told myself.

When we got to the desk we saw the girl who was sitting there earlier. She had a messy blond bun and a Victoria’s Secret PINK sweatshirt on.

“These two need to sign in. They don’t have IDs on them,” the guard said to her.

She looked at us, her eyes slowly narrowing. Then she gestured for the guard to come closer to her. “Can I have a word?”

Aidan and I watched as they whispered, her eyes flicking over in our direction. She knew, too, and she was definitely telling him who we were. I had no question this time, judging from the furrowed expressions on their faces. A minute longer here and we’d be cornered.

Aidan saw all of this happening as I did. In synchronicity, we bolted out of there, bursting through the double front doors. Outside, the cold air sliced us in the face like broken glass. We broke into a run.

The security guy was close behind us, shouting, “Hang on!”

He could radio for backup within seconds. We needed a faster way to get out of here. I made a beeline for the bike rack, quickly found two frames that weren’t locked up.

Sorry, bike owners, wherever you may be. But your no-chain is our gain.

I threw one at Aidan and he caught it against his chest. I got on mine, pedaling as fast as I could.

After a few minutes, I snuck a look back. Not good. The guard was almost parallel with Aidan. His arms were outstretched like he could grab on to the bike.

I tried not to have flashbacks to the night in Paradise Valley where the cops had chased me on my bike until my tire gave out. Then I was toast. We would be now, too, if we couldn’t move fast.

C’mon, Aidan.

When I turned back again, he had pushed ahead by a few lengths, and the guard was a blue-uniformed blur.
Whew.

As Aidan pulled up next to me, we rode furiously down the path, moving side by side, looking for the street exit. We wove around students in between classes, passed through one quad and then another, the huge campus buildings hulking on either side of the lawn.

“Is he still with us?” I called to Aidan.

He looked back for me this time. Then nodded. Of course we had to pick the Lance Armstrong of bike cops to race away from. Of course it was weeks since I’d last been biking, and my quads burned with the effort. Of course there was snow and ice everywhere. Of course my brain was battling with my heart, yet again.

We couldn’t give up, though, not now. We just had to outride him.

A crowd spilled out on the pavement ahead. As we got closer, I could see it was an outdoor Christmas bazaar, with tables of crafts and things, bundled-up people standing around, examining the items for sale. Too busy to notice us.

“Look out!” I called as we careened toward the throng. A few shoppers reacted quickly, scattering out of the way.

One was slower than the others, though. He fell backward onto a table, arms flailing, sending all of the glass ornaments on display crashing. This was
not
what I had in mind.

“Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” I yelled. Damn. I wanted to stop, to see if he was okay. It wasn’t his fault he just happened to be in the middle of our getaway chase.

“Forget about it. Keep going,” Aidan yelled from my left side, reading my mind. “We don’t have time.”

Because the security guard was inching closer, moving through the path we’d cleared.

Make that
guards
.

There were three of them, riding in a triangular formation, one of them clutching a radio to his ear. Was he calling for more backup?

“You there. Stop where you are!” one called to us. “Stop or we’ll have to take you by force.”

Force.
This was not good. I had to get us out of here.

The rush of air froze my ears and nose despite the hat. My eyes were filled with wind-stung tears. If either of us slowed down at all, for even a few seconds, they’d be on us. I didn’t know what sort of force they intended to use, and I didn’t want to find out, either.

Through blurred vision, I made out a gate up in front of us, where the quad path gave way to an actual road. This was the exit we needed. At least then we’d be off this campus and out into the world where we could get ourselves properly “lost.”

There was one problem, though: a staircase between the gate and the street. And the only way beyond it was down down down to the bottom where patches of ice were spread across the cracked concrete.

Bodily safety or freedom?

I glanced at Aidan, and with a shrug he gave me the go-ahead.

It wasn’t much of a choice. I held my breath and let the bike roll forward, hitting each step with a violent jump.

Dunkdunkdunkdunkdunk
.

My whole body shook with each drop, the angle frighteningly steep. If I skidded, so much as rotated the handles by a fraction, I would lose the bike. My back would become plural.

I clenched the handles, gritted my teeth, and rode it out, feeling my bones thud and crunch, feeling my brain crawl into its cave of blank terror until the tire rubber hit the flat ground again.

Please let me get through this.

But when the landing came, it was anything but smooth—the bike frame wavered as I struggled for balance, the handles swerving out of my grasp. I had to stop for a second, throwing my weight forward and planting both feet on the ground to steady my body.

I had it, finally. Control. Until I remembered.

Oh God.
Aidan was still up there.

“Careful,” I called back to him, but my voice was lost in the sounds of traffic.

I was in the middle of the street, I realized then, because a pickup truck came by, honking loudly and cutting me off, its mirror just grazing against the sleeve of my jacket.

“Get out of the road!” the driver yelled.

In another situation I might have yelled back, but now I was just too stunned to do much of anything except push off the ground with the sole of my sneaker, attempting to regain some momentum and cross the road, silently praying Aidan made it down in one piece.

There was no red light, and no time to wait. My sweaty hands barely gripped the bike as I wove in and out of three lanes of traffic, hoping no one would speed up and pin me between bumpers.

I heard a scream behind me, a scared-but-not-staring-death-in-the-eye scream.

Phew. He’d made it.
Freaked out, yes, but alive. I turned to see that his face was spread into a grin of pure relief.

When I turned back, a bus pulled into the far right lane, blocking me. With only milliseconds to spare, I braked, hard, just missing it by inches.

My bike flew up onto the curb, dragging me with it. I did a donut and paused, straddling the bike and waiting for Aidan to cross so we could figure out where to go from here.

“Willa, they went another way!” Aidan called, dodging a VW and then an SUV.

“Which way?” I yelled back.

“I don’t know. But they didn’t take the stairs.”

Another bus was coming.

I called out to warn Aidan. He sped up—and it must have been
too
quick, he must have hit a slick of ice—the bike spun out from under him and he went flying, catching himself on the winter-gouged asphalt with his hands. The bike landed with a clang a few feet away.

He cursed. It was a killer spill. It hurt just watching. I rushed to his side as traffic continued to flow around us. “Are you okay? Can you get up?”

He did, wincing.

“Is anything broken?”

“I don’t think so.” He reached for the bike, nervously looking behind him. No sign of the cops but we were less than a block away from campus. They could pop out anywhere.

“Leave it,” I shouted. I dumped mine, too, and we ran, huffing in the frigid air as the pavement underneath us became a gray-and-silver haze. We ran until our lungs burned and our legs gave out and we were sure that the security guys were no longer behind us. Soon we were away from Delmar Loop, out of University City, and closing in on an area with a large park.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I said, finally. “Photos, Aidan?”

If I expected remorse, I wasn’t getting it. “Meeting us was the highlight of their day. Didja see how bored those guys were?”

“It doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t have been in that situation. Security never would have come if we weren’t fighting.”

“You were the one yelling.” His palms were hoisted up to his armpits. “You have to learn how to trust people, Willa.”

No, I didn’t. Not after everything that had happened to me. “And why should I?”

I was furious at him, so mad I could barely speak. How could he just put us in jeopardy like that, over something so stupid? Did he care about what we were doing? Did he care about our freedom at all? I was getting the feeling I’d had back in California, that Aidan’s “charms” were the exact qualities that threatened our well-being.

“Because some people deserve to be trusted.”

Maybe so. But how could you tell who fit into that category? For the first time in a few days, I felt despair bleed through the numbness and exhilaration. It was an impossible task to get to know my dead mom. And as soon as we learned anything, I was going back to juvie or I’d have to live the rest of my life as a fugitive. Either way, I was an orphan. Either way, the future for me was bleak.

He, of course, couldn’t see that. “It’s so easy for you,” I said, spite creeping into my voice. “You have parents waiting at home. Anytime you feel like it, you can just give up and go home to Mommy and Daddy.”

“That’s not true,” he said angrily. “You don’t understand what it’s like with them.”

“You’re right. I don’t. Because I don’t have any family anymore, Aidan. This is all I have. And I can’t go taking risks like this because you’re feeling pissed off or rebellious.”

He was rubbing his hand, not saying anything. I saw that it was inflamed, embedded with gravel. Road rash. I’d been there before and it was the worst.

And then my fury subsided some. He was injured. His feelings were clearly hurt. Snapping at him didn’t help matters.

“Do you need a bathroom?” I asked. “Should we get some cold water on your hands?”

“We can stop if we see one,” he muttered into his collar.

After a few more minutes, he spoke again. “Don’t be mad, Colorado. It’s going to be fine.”

I looked up and gave him a weak smile—not because everything felt fine, but because I wanted it to be.

He took this as encouragement. “God, the look on that security guy’s face.” He laughed as he mocked the guard running with his arms out. “The way he was trying to grab the bike? Priceless.”

It
did
seem funny in retrospect.

And just a few short weeks ago, I might have laughed with him. I might have seen lots of humor in the situation. But this time I couldn’t.

I was mad, and it wasn’t only at him. I was mad at myself. How had this whole thing become a game? When did I stop knowing the difference between right and wrong? When did I start letting us take such crazy risks? It was becoming clear to me that being lawless and free, as exciting as it once seemed, wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be.