The Things We Couldn't Forget

Chapter 8.

"I swear I was bringing him home."

"Sure you were." He replies with menace.

I try to grab my throbbing head but again I'm reminded of the handcuffs. You never realize how much you use your hands until you can't.

"Please, I just want to go home." I beg again. "Please, Frank, I just want to go. I found him out here alone and I was taking him home when you stopped me."

All of a sudden he's on me, his hands patting me down, emptying one coat pocket...my dead phone. And then the other...

The orange bottle's colors contort with the flashing lights all around. The pills inside turning red, then blue, then white.

"And what the hell is this?"

"It's for...it's for my anxiety." I try to explain. "I get panic attacks."

"We will just see about that." He won't meet my eyes. Not since he realized who I am. Is it guilt? Guilt that he is doing this to the sister of the guy who used to be his best friend?

Or is it shame?

Shame that he ever crossed the threshold of a monster...

The way he jerks me by my elbow and pushes me into the backseat of his squad car and slams the door makes me think it is likely the latter.

He's not Frank anymore. The kid who would let me half his bag of chips in the living room. The one who would call me a dork and laugh while I read books on the couch while they played.

He's Officer Gillian now.

And there is nothing an officer of Faulkner loves more than sticking it to the Jacobs family.

And I'm the only one this town has left.

Less than twenty minutes later I'm being dragged behind four other cops into the downtown police station.

"Empty all of your pockets." I'm told as we stop at a window to the left of the front desk while people gather around to watch.

I pass over my few belongings, and the man puts them into a sterile grey tub. I watch as Officer Gillian throws my pill bottle on top of my coat that I was also directed to remove.

"Found those on her." He tells the man on the other side of the window and they share a look before there is a buzzing noise and then the door at the end of the room slams open and I'm being passed off to yet another officer.

"Are you seriously booking me right now!" I'm starting to panic. This cannot actually be happening right now. Maybe I took too much.

Maybe I didn't take enough and this is all a bad dream.

But the cutting cuffs don't feel like a dream. They feel real. And if they are...so is this.

"Shut up." I'm told by someone around me. It's too hard to tell with all of the voices going at once.

It's like being at the press conference all over again. Too many people. Too many voices. Too many questions.

It's

All

Too

Much.

I go passed a booking station where other people with hands cuffed behind their backs sit in cold looking metal chairs awaiting their turns to get finger printed and led to a holding cell.

I, apparently, get to skip the line.

So much is blurring around me I hardly notice my fingers going into the ink or someone saying something about my right to an attorney.