The Wrong Side Of The Tracks (Leighton) (9 page)

Alex's feet hit the ground moving, but her efforts were pointless.  They were in
suburbia; aside from breaking into someone's home there really was nowhere to hide.  She heard the cops tackle Jarrod as he ran sloppily down the sidewalk.  She crouched on the other side of someone's Nissan parked on the street, and held her breath.  She was so busy straining her eyes in the shadows trying to see where Karter and Kenzie ran to, she didn't even hear the cop creep up behind her and drag her up on her feet by the hood of her sweatshirt.

He clasped her arms behind her back with cuffs while informing her she wasn't under arrest yet, he just had to cuff her because she was attempting to resist arrest
.  He led her out of the shadows back to the Explorer where it sat half on the curb with all four doors wide open.  Under the street-lamps she could see Jarrod and Kenzie both sitting on the curb surrounded by officers.  Behind her two more officers were marching Karter.  She glanced over her shoulder and seen him with his hands behind his back and his head bowed down staring at the ground.  The collar on his shirt was ripped halfway down the front, and he head some leaves in his hair, he had clearly put up a fight.     

"Which one
of you was operating this vehicle?" shouted a middle aged officer.  He stared at them with no sign of emotion, while a huge blue vein throbbed down the middle of his forehead.  Alex and her friends sat on the curb staring at the ground in silence.  There were several patrol cars gathered around them now, and you could hear everyone on the street gathering on their front porches to find out what the raucous was.

"All four suspects apprehended, we're just trying to sort out the situation," the officer spoke i
nto the radio on his shoulder.  Then he turned back to them, "Do you know how many laws you four broke tonight?  Failure to signal, failure to pull over for a police vehicle, driving without a headlight out, going double the speed limit, running a stop sign, underage drinking..."  The cop that was rummaging through the Explorer held up a plastic baggy and added, "unlawful possession of a controlled substance," to the endless list.

The officer lowered his voice, "Look, I really don't care who was driving or
who I arrest.  But you're not walking away from this.  Someone is going to the station with me, NOW.  You got thirty seconds to decide or I'm just going book you all and get this circus out of the street."  Alex turned to Kenzie next to her, ready to talk it over with her comrades, but apparently there was nothing to discuss.  None of them took their eyes off the pavement, or even acknowledged the officer's proposition.  She knew what she was going to do, she just wanted to enjoy the last thirty seconds she had before her life went to hell. 

"All right, that's it!" the officer grabbed a hold of one of Karter's arms and dragged him to his feet.  "Let's go Mr.
James; you're contestant number one..."

Alex struggled to her feet with her arms still pinned behind
her back, "Wait! He didn't do anything, I was driving."

The officer dropped Karter's arm and spun around, "What?" he growled.  Alex looked at Karter, and for the first time he looked back at her, not past her.  His face filled with raw emotion, not disgus
t, or irritation, or cockiness.  He looked back at her with nothing in his green eyes but fear and respect, mixed with a glimmer of hope. 

"Al
ex you don't have to do this," Kenzie whispered.

Alex looked down at her and smiled, knowing in her heart this wa
s probably going to be the last time she saw her.  Not only were her parents going to ship her to Antarctica when this was over, Kenzie was probably never going to forgive her for lying about her identity. 

"It's okay.  Trust me," she whispered back.  The
n she took her last breath of free air and looked back at the officer, "They begged me to pull over, but I thought I could out run you." 

He snickered degradingly at her, "Suit yourself sweetie.  Do you have any identification on you?"  She nodded her hea
d at her purse lying on the ground where the officer searching the car had tossed it.  He picked up the bag and fished out her wallet.  He held the wallet up and asked her, "You sure?"  She smirked back at him and nodded confidently.  He opened her wallet and pulled her cards out of a clear pocket.  In his hands he held the emergency credit card in her father's name, her student id, library card, and a coffee club card from the diner.  He stared at her ID for a moment, and then looked back up at her disgustedly.  He turned his back to them, took his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number.  After a few moments of excruciating silence he spoke, "Good evening sir, I apologize if I woke you.  Uhh, I need you to come down to Fayte Ave., we got a bit of a situation and we're going to need your assistance.  It's Alexandra."

WELCOME TO WEST VIRGINIA

Alex sat on the bench outside of school waiting for Mrs. Raker to pick her
up; attending classes had been the extent of her social life for the past six days.  Her parents had confiscated her cell phone and laptop the night her father had to pick her up..  The police agreed to not file charges against her and her friends, for fear of it jeopardizing Davis's campaign.  That was the last thing they wanted to do since he conveniently slipped up and revealed the police salary raises he had planned for his next mayoral term.  She was beginning to second guess whether trading her freedom for Karter's was really the wisest decision, although he was spared jail time she might as well be in jail.

Her Mother pulled up in her Mercedes and honked the horn, as if Alex hadn't already seen her and wasn't walking to the car.  She climbed in next to her and slammed the door as hard as she could.  Keri Raker didn
't even wait for her to put her seatbelt on.  Alex sucked her teeth at her as she struggled to hook the strap while her mother turned sharply out of the parking lot.  Why didn't she just tell her she hoped she'd fly through the windshield?  Hostile was a generous term to describe their relationship since Alex was nearly arrested.  After an hour of screaming at her that night, she hadn't spoken to her since.  Without her phone, or her Mom's constant babbling Alex was on the verge of a breakdown. She was so desperate for human interaction; she even caught herself trying to make conversation with the hallway monitor this afternoon.

Alex broke the silence when her Mom passed their street without turning, "Where are we going?"  She had a sudden paranoia the last
few days that her parents were going to ship her off to boot camp like without warning her like on a corny ABC Family show she saw.

"Well you
r father, Donavon, and I are going to Philadelphia for the weekend like we planned months ago.  YOU are going to go stay at your grandmother's for the weekend.  And don't try anything, she knows you are grounded and what you did."

Their family had a weekend trip planned to Philadelphia for weeks, at one point Alex had actually been looking forward to it.  Nobody had
spoken of it since her incident so she just assumed it was postponed.  Her mother was trying to punish her even more by taking the trip and leaving her behind, and that hurt a little.  But the idea of spending a peaceful weekend without her parents ignoring her and slamming things around whenever she was in their presence sounded like the ultimate vacation.

"I don't have any clothes with me," she said in a tiny voice.

"Yes you do,” her mother gestured to a black trash bag in the back seat.  She probably had poured bleach in it before she tied it off.  What kind of a mother packs their kid an overnight bag in a trash bag?

Mrs. Raker pulled into her Grandmother's long driveway and Alex grabbed her trash-bag and hopped out without even saying good-bye or asking wh
en she would be back for her.  Hopefully her Grandma would have a little more heart than her parents did; she rang the doorbell as her Mom peeled out of the driveway.  After a few moments her Grandma came to the door and opened it, making room for her to get through, without saying two words to her.  Alex shuffled in and headed toward the den.

"Where do you think you're going?" her Grandma called after her.

Alex stopped in her tracks, was it possible this was going to be worse than her own house?  At this house she wasn't even allowed to go in the den.

Her Grandma sat at the kitchen table and gestured for her to join her.  Alex couldn't take another
lecture.  She contemplated walking out the kitchen door with her trash bag of clothes, but really where would she go?  She didn't have a single friends' house to run to.  Feeling defeated she dropped into the chair across from her Grandma.  After a long awkward silence she look up at her, but her eyes weren't filled with anger or disappointment, just tears.

"Do yo
u know what I regret most about my relationship with your Aunt Sandra?"  Alex shrugged, she had an idea where this was going, and she prepared herself for another lecture about how her parents were grounding her to protect her, not punish her.  Her Grandma was going to say something along the lines of if she had kept a closer eye on Sandra then she would still be alive.

"I wish I talked to her, and knew who she really was.  When I sat at her funeral looking at my beautiful baby's body about to be laid to re
st, I realized I didn't know the person inside it anymore.  I was so worried about how everything appeared to the outsiders looking in, that I didn't even know what was inside anymore.  I spent my whole life trying to make everything seem perfect; my children, my marriage, myself..."

"Grandma, nobody is perfect and nobody expects you to be."

"What I'm trying to say is deep down I knew my daughter was in trouble and acting recklessly but I was more worried about trying to hide it from other people than fix it.  I thought if I ignored whatever was going on with her then it would just go away eventually.  Maybe if I actually accepted her imperfections and sat down and talked to her about them I could have saved her."

"Accidents
happen; you can't blame yourself for Aunt Sandra's death."

"They do happen.  But if my daughter thought she could confide in me and come to me for help she wouldn't have felt the need to steal a car she didn't know
how to drive and go somewhere at three in the morning.  Just humor me Alex, let's talk.  Be completely honest and open with me, I'm not here to judge you or yell at you.  What happened last weekend?"

Alex took a deep breath.  She really didn't want to
talk; she had tried to explain what happened multiple times. Her parents weren't interested in the truth.  As far as they were concerned they had enough facts from the police officers.  She didn't have the heart to say no to her Grandma though, maybe letting her think she was helping her would put her thoughts of not helping Sandra to rest.

"My friends picked me up from the school, I was in the library.  This guy was driving the car, and he realized it had a busted headlight.  Then he started freaking out because he was on probation and didn't want to get pulled over since he didn't
have a license.  We were sitting at a light and a cop pulled up behind us and turned his lights on.  The guy driving was scared to pull over, so he drove a few blocks through town with the cop chasing him.  Then he stopped and we all got out and ran.  Obviously we got caught.  The cop said if one of us didn't confess to driving we were all getting arrested, and I felt bad because my friend was going to go to jail so I lied and said I was driving.  I knew they would just call Dad when they realized who I was.  Either way I was going to get busted and grounded for life, I figured I might as well take the fall so my friend didn't go to jail."

Her Grandma looked a little lost, but nodded attentively.  "So you're kind of like a modern day martyr?  The boy that wa
s driving, he's your boyfriend?"

"No.  We've only hung out a couple times.  I kind
of like him, but he's not going to talk to me anymore."

"Why?  You just saved his butt!"

Alex laughed; her Grandma was too cute sometimes.  "Yeah, I did.  But I didn't tell him or his sister who I was.  Their Mom even asked me if I was related to um, the Rakers, and I said I wasn't.  I didn't want them to treat me different because I was the mayor's daughter.  They live in The Boxes, and they don't like private school kids. I can only imagine how they feel about me now that they know I not even go to Leighton Prep, but I’m daughter of the mayor of Leighton."

"Your Aunt Sandra went through a lot of that too.  She didn't really fit in with the kids at Leighton Prep."

"Can't say that I blame her.  Okay Gram, it's your turn."

"What do you mean sweetheart?"

"Can you be honest with me?"             

"Of course, you were honest with me.  You deserve the same."