Page 73 of Road Queens
Yes indeed, Sean, I’m sure you would.
Too bad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Operation Starfish: First run ...
“So just a reminder—”
“Amanda, we read your dossier.” Sidney was (probably) glaring at her. Hard to tell with the dark sunglasses covering half her face. “Your twenty-two-page dossier. Your twenty-two-page dossier which I had to read hungover, since we only graduated two days ago, and the booze has been flowing like wine.”
“First, why are you narrating? I’m aware Friday was graduation. Second, therin dossier is silent.”
“Speaking of silent, let’s all be that.” This from Cass, who looked only slightly less DOA than Sidney.
Amanda took a breath and tried again. “But I think it’s worth emphasizing—”
“We. Read. It.”
“—that the most dangerous time for an abused spouse is the first ninety days after they leave,” she finished in a rush.
“That sounds so familiar,” Cass said, straight faced. She took a sip from a travel mug big enough to hold a half gallon of (urgh) Mountain Dew, her wake-up drink of choice. “I feel like I might have read that somewhere. Recently.” To Sidney: “Cooler’s on the back of my bike.”
“Thank God,” Sidney moaned, then hopped down from the minivan and helped herself to Cassandra’s saddlebag. “I’m taking the V8, but I wouldn’t touch the Pop-Tarts if you stuck a gun in my mouth.”
“It makes sense,” Amanda said as Sidney made half the V8 disappear in three gulps.
“Don’t ask her any follow-up questions. Because she’ll answer them.”
“What makes sense, Amanda?” Cass asked with a grin.
“Dammit, Cassandra! Shit, my head ...”
“That whole hair-of-the-dog thing,” Amanda elaborated. “Like a Bloody Mary: it might be awful to contemplate at eight o’clock in the morning, but it’s got vitamins C and B, electrolytes; it helps replenish your fluids ... like that. The one thing in a Bloody Mary that won’t help your head is the vodka.”
“Thus ...” Two more gulps. “It’s a V8, not a Bloody Mary. But what’re the Pop-Tarts for?”
“To elevate your blood sugar,” Cass said. The “duh” was unspoken.
“Oh, sweet dear little baby Jesus in his holy onesie in heaven,” Sidney breathed. “Do not chase your Mountain Dew with a chocolate fudge Pop-Tart. I will barf, Cassandra. And not just dry heaves. It’ll be a lake of barf. And not a wimpy lake like Hiawatha. A Great Lakes–size lake of barf. The Lake Superior of barf.”
“Leaving’s a process, just like the abuse is a process,” Amanda put in, because she needed to get them back on track and didn’t want to giggle at a Superior lake of barf. “It doesn’t start with the abuser slapping them on the first date.”
“No, it does not,” Cass muttered. “Who’d ever agree to a second date?”
“And sometimes leaving takes a few tries, also.”
“We can’t help that,” Cass replied. In half a tick, empathy had been replaced with chilly pragmatism. “We’re giving them a shot. What happens after is up to them.”
Amanda and Sidney traded glances, but now wasn’t the time to work on that particular flaw in Cassandra’s logic/personality. “Okay, just a reminder. We’re not judging and we’re not confronting. We’re not social workers and we’re not cops. There’s no paperwork and no bureaucracy. We’re giving her a ride to the hotel-cum-shelter, where she can crash for a day or two and figure out what’s next. And that’sall.”
“You know what I won’t miss about high school?” Sidney asked. “The teacher making us read stuff and then telling us what we already read. It’s exhibit A for why I’ve got no interest in college.”
“Just for that, I’m not telling you about your V8 mustache. Okay, let’s go.”
After a short drive, they pulled into the half-mile-long driveway, Cass and Amanda on their bikes, Sidney driving her minivan. The house, which sat on three-quarters of an acre, was large enough to be intimidating—four bedrooms? Five? There was a barn on the property, the garage was big enough to be a house on its own, and there was a small cream-colored shed just a few feet away from the garage.
The closest neighbors were three miles away—Bobby had assured them her husband had an appointment and would be gone all morning. So they’d huddled up to talk about dossiers until it occurred to Amanda that they were stalling.
