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My heart races. I’ve never hit anyone before, but it just came so naturally in the moment. Joey just has a hittable face. But I don’t know if I have it in me to strike him again. I also left the bat inside. Trying to find something out here in the dark to protect us with will be impossible. We just need to get to the car.
I practically drag Pianna over to my vehicle. I help her into the passenger seat quickly, click on her seat belt, and slam the door shut. As I race around to the driver’s side, Joey throws open the front door and comes barreling toward us. He stumbles at the top step and falls down the other two. Dust kicks up around him as his body hits the ground.
“You bring back my girl right now! I’ll fucking kill you, do you hear me? Pianna! Get back here!” he yells as he scrambles to his feet.
I ignore him as I yank open the driver’s door and climb in. I fumble with my keys as Joey runs toward us.
“Bri, he’s coming! He’s coming!” Pianna shouts.
She reaches in front of me and locks the door just as I get the key in the ignition. My car roars to life. Rather than back up, I peel forward and make a large circle in the dirt driveway. As my car comes around and faces the street, Joey stumbles into the way a few feet ahead of us. I rev my engine as a warning. Joey doesn’t move except to pull something out of his waistband and point it toward us.
“Oh my god,” Pianna gasps, her hands covering her mouth. “He has a gun!”
Before I can react, the sound of the weapon going off booms through the night. The first bullet hits the hood of my car. The second bullet hits the grill. My heart leaps up into my throat as terror causes my body to freeze up.
“Go, Bri, go!”
The gun goes off again. My left side mirror is blown clean off the car. We both scream as Joey swears before stumbling toward us. Without thinking, I hit the gas. My tires spin and the back of the car whips side to side. Then we’re jerked forward, going zero to sixty faster than I ever thought possible.
I make eye contact with Joey just before my car strikes him. He disappears, almost like he was never there. The grotesque thump, crunch, and bounce of my car rattles my bones and soul, the moment imprinting on the very fiber of my being until I know I’ll never forget it.
My foot hits the brake. The car skids to a stop a few yards away from where I started.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” Pianna squeals in horror.
I stare straight ahead, my fingers wrapped tight around the steering wheel.
“Is he dead? Bri,is he dead? He has to be dead, right?”
“Stop saying that! He can’t be dead.” My eyes flicker to the rearview mirror but I can’t see anything except for floating dust in the dim red light of my brakes.
“N-no, I felt him being crushed. He has to be dead! If he’s not, he’s going to kill us.” Pianna wails. “We have to get out of here!”
I gasp, trying to stop my head from spinning and my heart from slamming so hard against my rib cage.
“What? No! We can’t just leave him,” My breathing comes in gasps as I try to figure what to do. “W-we need to call the ambulance or something!”
“No! We can’t do that! The EMTs will report this to the police.” Pianna whips her head back and forth. “Joey said that some of Cassy’s guysarethe police. That’s how the FirebirdsownCohawk. It’s why the gang gets away with anything and everything! And if Cassy finds out we killed Joey, a.k.a.one of his guys, he’ll come after us with everything he has. They don’t take lightly to this type of thing. Wecan’tcall for help, Bri!”
“No, you’re wrong. There has to be someone on the police force we could trust.” My body is trembling so hard that everything seems to vibrate around me. “Someone can help us.”
“Get your head out of one of your books, Bri. There’s not going to be a knight in shining armor coming to save us now. We have to save ourselves!”
A loud bark of hysterical laughter slips past my lips. One of my books? God, if only this was one of my books. Then maybe there would be a happy outcome. Now? It looks like we’re about to do some jail time.
“T-then what do we do? This is your house, Pianna. We can’t just leave his body here!”
Pianna wipes a shaky hand down her face. “We can take him back to his place?” The suggestion comes out more as a question but then her body stiffens as her determination solidifies. “Yeah, we take him back to his place and leave him there to rot.”
I stare at her in horror.
“Don’t look at me like that, Bri! He was going to kill us. This is all his fault!” Pianna snaps, wiping away the trickle of blood running from her nose. “I was trying to help him. He stole so much coke from Vincent’s gang, I thought that if I could return it, hell wouldn’t come raining down on him, and subsequentlyme. It would’ve started an all-out turf war between the Firebirds and the Brown Scales if I didn’t take that shit back.”
My mouth opens but only a squeak manages to make it out. Pianna groans as her fingers dig into her hair.
“This is so bad, Bri. Like,really bad. We need to come up with a story or something.”
How about the real story where your boyfriend was beating the shit out of you and then tried to stop you from leaving but ended up accidentally getting hit by your best friend’s car?I want to scream.
