Page 13 of Look at Her and Die

I would be laughed out of town.

My phone rang, and I picked it up without checking the ID.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“You Posy Hicks?” the female voice—one achingly familiar—asked.

“Yes,” I answered, trying to place why it was so familiar, and coming up blank.

“You need to get down to the high school,” the female said. “There’s been an incident involving your sister.”

Then she hung up without giving me any more information.

I, of course, tried to call the person back, but it went unanswered, which only had my heart beating all the harder.

I drove my old truck as fast as I could, barreling through the small town like I didn’t expect to see the asshole cops that usually patrolled the streets like they were guarding Fort Knox.

The city of Decatur was small compared to the DFW area with only about twenty-five thousand people. And the eight cops, four of which were on a volunteer basis, that manned the streets were all a bunch of assholes.

As the crow flies, Decatur is only miles away from Dallas. However, if you had to drive it, it was well over fifty minutes on a good day.

When I was growing up, I loved the small-town life, with the opportunity of big-city things to do within easy driving distance—driving anywhere in Dallas takes you at least thirty minutes to get where you’re going, no matter where you’re headed. Forty-five is a walk in the park, considering.

The only problem was, Decatur acted like they were Dallas when they weren’t.

I always got a kick out of the pushback the town would give when the city tried to enact some city law that they didn’t agree with.

Taking one last turn into the driveway of the school, I came to a stop near the only car that was parked in the lot—an older Buick that was made in the nineties.

I got out and rounded the car to see my sister sitting on the curb, glaring hard at a young girl that was being restrained by Diner Girl.

Ahhh.

That was why she sounded so familiar on the phone.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my eyes sweeping over Scottie to make sure that she was okay.

Other than her hair being slightly askew, there wasn’t much of an issue with her.

Now the other girl looked like she was about to lose her shit.

The sister doing the holding, she looked bored, as if she did this every day.

“Had to break up a fight between these two,” she said. “Was walking back to the diner and caught sight of all this red hair.” She shook her sister. “And knew that she wasn’t going to be doing anything good. Came over here to see her fighting with this girl.”

“Fighting how?” I asked.

“Verbally, with my sister doing the shoving,” Searcy answered. “I’d offer to just leave, but if I let her go, they’re going to go after each other again.”

I turned to my sister and pulled her up off the curb.

She stared at me with anger in her eyes and said, “I swear to you, I wasn’t going to fight her. I was just so mad.”

“What happened?” I repeated.

“I was headed home,” she said. “Bridge was going to give me a ride, and this one came barreling out of the school, so damn mad that I was talking to her boyfriend.”

I frowned, then turned to the other girl. “I pay Bridge fifty bucks to give Scottie a ride home.”

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