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I had no place getting in a car like that. Especially not the way Lucas and his friend were leering at me.
I got it now. I could see exactly what was happening, even if I couldn’t believe it. I guess I’d already heard from a few people that I was turning out to be a bit all right these days. Not that I was sexy, like the sorts of girls Lucas was noticing for the first time at the age of ten were now, but I had breasts and hips and my face had apparently improved over time the way I’d been thinking Lucas’s had.
So now, Lucas had happened to notice me today after eight bloody years of nothing, and he’d happened to notice I was an improvement on the girl he remembered from primary school, so he was going to have a go. Play with me a little, while he was between girlfriends or whatever.
And I’d be lying if I said the thought of doing that sort of thing with Lucas Starling didn’t send a little bit of heat through me. But I was done bothering with him a long time ago, and I was also smart enough to know exactly where all of this would land me. The best possible outcome was that he and his friends would be laughing about me a few weeks from now, while I was a mess of regrets who’d given him something I had never wanted to hand away like that.
So, even if I hadn’t had a perfectly good reason to not get in that car, I knew better. “I’ve got to work,” I said.
Lucas shrugged. “Call in sick.”
“I just let my boss know I’d be there a little late.”
“Great,” said Lucas, “now you can say you’re not coming at all.”
“I’m not doing that,” I snapped.
“Why not?”
I resisted the pressure to answer that question with the lot of them staring at me. Nobody reasonable needed an answer to that.
Rob had stepped out of Lucas’s car and was looking from me to Lucas’s group. “Everything all right here?” he asked. I was pretty sure he knew exactly what was going on, but he had his reasons for not wanting to get involved.
“Everything’s fine, Rob,” I said. “I’m starting to be really late for work, so could I get my car back please?”
“Oh yes,” said Rob, “of course.” He hurried across the yard between our two warring camps, clearly delighted to have a
way out of this situation.
“I’m a little uncomfortable that you’re trying to pressure me to go with you when I need to work,” I told Lucas. “I’d like you to get in your car and leave now.”
I could tell right away he hadn’t liked the tone of that. “Oh,” he said, adopting a wide-legged stance like he was bracing for a storm, “do you tell me what to do now, Calista?”
“I just want you to leave me alone now, please,” I said. Of all the terrible luck I’d had lately, the worst might be having the money to get my car fixed right when Lucas Starling was needing his fixed.
“Let’s get out of here now, Luc,” said the other guy, Steven.
“Well I don’t understand why you’re trying to make out I’m doing something to you,” said Lucas, “but I’ve got better things to do with my afternoon than bother some girl who wants nothing to do with me. So I’m out. Have a nice time at work.”
He got into his car, started it up while the others piled in, and almost crashed into Rob driving my car out. I put my face into my hands until I could hear he was gone.
“Callie?” I looked up into Rob’s face, took the key he was dangling in front of my face. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I’ve made you very late for work now, haven’t I?”
He sounded bewildered, like he’d just found himself saying and doing a lot of things he hadn’t really wanted to. I wanted to be mad, but I understood. I’d learned a long time ago that Lucas Starling had the power to make people do things they wouldn’t do in their right mind. I was just lucky enough to learn when I was still young enough to also learn how to steel myself against him.
“Don’t think any more of it,” I told Rob. “I’ll still be back here whenever I need some work done on my car again. I just hope you won’t hold it against me if I hope that’s not for a long time.”
It was well after six by the time I had served out my two hours at Stacks Brothers. It was the wrong time of year for it to be dark that early, but it had been an unusually cloudy day and the world around me felt particularly grey as I stepped out to my car. At least I would not be home that much later than I’d been managing while dealing with the bus schedule.
Once I pulled out onto the street, I put on my radio and relaxed into the process of driving. It had been weird to have Lucas Starling pay attention to me for the first time in years, was weird to think that now he might actually be interested in me for real. But it didn’t change anything; it just meant if I did go out with him, he’d be wanting one thing rather than nothing. I was pleased with myself for standing up to him, for putting him in his place. He probably didn’t get told no nearly enough these days, it would be good for him.
As I stopped at a traffic light, the only car at the intersection when most other people were already home from work and starting dinner, a song came on the radio I was really enjoying at the moment. I was doing a terrible job of singing the correct lyrics as I pulled forward in response to the green light—and then there was a flash of something in my peripheral vision that I knew meant trouble, but there was no time to react. Suddenly I was spinning, and I hadn’t even heard the other car impacting into the back of mine. I did hear my own voice in my ears: high-pitched, sirenlike.
At some point, I realised it was a real siren I was hearing; I’d lost time. My car was in the middle of the intersection with the back of it horribly twisted in my rear view mirror, and though I was still sitting in the driver’s seat the door was open and someone was there beside me, rubbing my arm. Someone who gestured the paramedics in when they arrived, like they required his permission to go ahead.
The uniformed woman was putting her hands all over me, checking, asking questions. Her partner passed in a neck brace. Almost nothing I heard made sense to me. My mind was echoing with an impact I hadn’t heard in real time, and over that I could barely make sense of the voice of Lucas Starling talking to a police officer.
“I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have; I think she was distracted too. She was acting a bit weird when I saw her a few hours ago. We go to school together.”
