Things We Didn't Say_ A Novel - Kristina Riggle [58]
And Tiffany is pissed at me.
“Come on,” barks the cop who called the house. “You can come sit in here.” We follow him to a beige room with a table and a few chairs. He tosses some magazines down, crusty, wrinkled ones probably borrowed from the waiting area in the lobby or maybe the break room. I see a Glamour, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek.
He gives us a hard look before he leaves. “You two try to go anywhere, you can wait in a jail cell. Don’t think I won’t do it. I’ve got better things to do than babysit a couple kids who run away because Mommy and Daddy are meanies.”
He slams the door, and Tiffany jumps in her seat. Then she starts to cry. Again.
“Why did you have to do that!” she yells at me through her tears. “You dumbass.”
“That” is get busted shoplifting.
Tiffany had dragged me back to the mall. After risking our lives to dash across the street and risking our lives further by eating these horrible wet hot dogs rolling in this machine for who knows how long . . . she talked me back into the mall.
We couldn’t think of anywhere to go after our brief failed attempt at hitching a ride. I was trying to talk myself into it, thinking we’d be in a warm car, there are two of us, so that was safer. But it’s so snowy I don’t think anyone could see us, or they didn’t want to stop for a couple of school skippers. Plus it was a really busy road—even if someone had decided they wanted to stop, someone who didn’t look like an ax murderer, someone willing to take us south, the roads were so bad they would have caused a pileup.
When Tiffany said she wanted to go into the mall again for a while, I was so relieved I almost fell down, and I gave up on the hitching idea for good.
I’ve done a lot of stupid-ass things the last few days, but getting murdered by a psycho was one stupid-ass thing too far. Plus I feel responsible for Tiffany, who, as Mom would put it, is “not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
So we were back in a different part of the mall, and I said we should look like we’re shopping so it doesn’t look so weird that we’re just walking endless loops. So we went into JCPenney, and Tiffany looked at earrings.
I saw someone watching us and got worried about getting caught, until I decided that getting caught might not be the worst thing ever.
I took a pair of earrings and slid them up my sleeve. And when Tiffany was ready to go, we walked out into the mall to the sound of blaring alarms, and that same someone—plainclothes security, it turned out—came to say, “Come with me, please.”
“No!” Tiffany wailed, and tried to run away.
I was so embarrassed.
Tiffany is calling me a dumbass again.
“I mean, why did you even take the earrings? I didn’t even want some, I was just killing time. I didn’t know I was running away with a thief.”
This is so ridiculous on so many levels, I don’t bother to answer.
She tries a new tactic.
“I thought you loved me.”
“I thought I did, too.”
It came out too fast, and too late I realize I should have softened that. She’s wailing again on the table. I come around to her side and put my hand on her arm, but she shakes me off.
“I’m s-s-sorry. Didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, you did. And you don’t love me because I’m fat.”
“No!”
I look up at the ceiling, trying to organize my thoughts. I don’t like a lot of talking. It’s hard when I’m nervous because I stammer, and I get embarrassed, and it gets worse. That’s why I’m better at writing, and why I like Facebook so much, or really anything on the computer. I’m really fast at typing.
In my backpack I have a notebook. I always have a notebook because I like to draw, and sometimes I write little poems when I’m bored. So I take out my notebook and start writing.
I don’t know you very well, is all. I thought we could get to know each other in messages and we’d be close that way. But real life is different. I still