Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Lizzie, wake up!” someone called faintly. I looked around, but didn’t spot anyone. All I could see was blankness—vacancy and an oddly placed basketball hoop. Suddenly, an orange ball materialized in my hands, as if a magician had conjured it up. I brushed my fingers over the orb, feeling slightly hazy as I stroked the bumpiness, a smile forming on my face in recognition. It was a basketball.
“Lizzie!” I heard again from a distance away. I couldn’t quite discern where the noise was coming from, for all I knew was that I was handling a basketball and there was a basket right in front of me. I didn’t see anyone or anything in sight, and the pressure of secrecy was no longer a burden. Being myself wasn’t something I needed to fear or keep classified. Everything was at peace in my world, and the only thing I could logically think of doing was shooting the object in my hand into the slightly larger piece a ways away.
Grinning, I elevated the athletic article and my arms above my head, merely flicking it out of my grasp. It was as if I were playing a sport on the Wii—fake, and requiring little to no effort. I watched as the ball soared overhead, flying towards the tall net. My feet were weightless, neither touching anything, nor sinking down to a pit of nothingness. A sense of calm was set about in my mind, the situation feeling too surreal.
“Lizzie! Wake up!” the words seeped into my ears just as easily as they poured out. Nothing was real. I continued to watch the basketball, now just a fuzzy speck of orange smaller than a golf ball. The voice sounded again, more urgent than before, “Wake the fuck up, Liz! This isn’t funny anymore!”
I felt someone shaking me, but couldn’t spot a single individual insight. Everything was white. “Wake up!” I wanted to appeal to the request being thrown at me, but couldn’t figure out what was going on. Everything was one big muddle of misperception—
Abruptly, my eyelids were forced open by a set of fingers, also shoving me out of the fantasy in which I had been. Barely able to tell reality from what I had just experienced, I began frantically looking around, searching for answers. I needed something—an indicator to tell me what was occurring. Everything was so confusing and so hard to understand. It was as if I had been dreaming, and was rudely woken up, only to be placed in the state of perplexity. In fact, that was exactly what it was like. So much so, that I was fairly positive that that was what was happening.
“Lizzie, are you up?” someone frantically called.
“What?” I was barely able to ask.
“Fuck, yes! You’re not dead!” the same tone let out a breath of gratitude.
In a hazy state, I tried to look around, and quickly recognized my surroundings to be in a vehicle of sorts. I was seated, strapped in by the ordinary safety precaution that was a seatbelt. The interior of the automobile wasn’t new by any means, and looked worn down. I had been in this car before.
“Where am I?” I blinked, slowly registering that there was another individual inhabiting the same basic five-foot radius of me.
“Fuck,” the other person replied not as an interjection the word was generally used for, but rather as an answer to my question.
“Ex-excuse me?” I stammered, my voice croaking, as was acceptable for having just woken up.
“Fuck,” the phrase usually exclaimed after stubbing one’s toe or stepping on a Lego was repeated calmly, “my truck.”
As soon as the extra two words were added, everything came crashing down like being saturated in ice-cold water as a tactic to induce arousal, as my mother had so kindly offered to do at dawn for me this morning (assuming, of course, that I hadn’t been sleeping for over a day). The last thing I remembered was visiting my house to grab a few things (clothes and cash). Then, I went back to Dylan’s truck and conked out within seconds. He could’ve been taking me out to the middle of nowhere in the woods to do god knows what, but I didn’t care. When I was tired, nothing got in my way.
“How long did I sleep for?” I questioned, momentarily dropping my previous inquiry of where we were on the planet, presuming that we weren’t on Mars.
“Well, hello to you too, sunshine,” Dylan mocked, as I finally turned to face him. He didn’t look that drained, but it was clear as translucent glass that he wasn’t about to go do a series of backflips any time soon. I waited patiently, wanting a real response. Finally, he realized that I wasn’t going to speak, so he did instead. “Eight hours.”
“I slept for eight fucking hours?” I gaped, not in surprise, but rather in wonder of my own abilities. I knew I was a good sleeper, but, damn! Eight hours in the middle of the day? That was one big ass nap, even for me!
“Yup,” he nodded in confirmation.
“So, where are we exactly?” I tried my first question again.
“I don’t know, you tell me,” he said, a smug edge to his tone.
“How the fuck would I know!” I demanded, as my eyes immediately began to search around the world beyond the glass pains of separation. All I saw was a parking lot. We were in the middle of nowhere. Just like in my dream, it was a vast expanse of desolation. The only thing visible to me was aged cement, cracked in just about every place, and faint yellow lines that seemed to denote parking spaces that had faded away long ago. It was kind of depressing. In fact, it was depressing. “Seriously, Collins, where the hell are we?”
“Oh, come on, Lizzie, you should know this—you did grow up here, after all,” a broad smirk met his face, as I rewound his words back in my head, processing them. The second part of his sentence had me most confused. I grew up in Bost—
“Holy fucking goodness!” I exclaimed, as a metaphorical bucket of water was poured on me once again. “Why in fucks sake are we in Boston?”
“Because,” was all Dylan chose to say, as he blinked mischievously. Yes, the act of closing and rapidly opening one’s eyes could be done in a mischievous fashion. Well, actually, it wasn’t so much the motion of his eyelids that ticked me off to the trouble, but rather the gleam his eyes possessed. Shit was either about to transpire, or it was sure to come.
“Wait a minute,” I said, thinking rationally for the first time in probably thirty-six hours, “it only takes four hours to get from New York to Boston.”
“What’s your point?”
“If it was around ten in the morning when we left,” I paused, glancing over to the illuminated clock that was wedged into the dashboard, “then how the fuck is it seven at night, now?”
“Well, there’s this thing called time and it’s because of science and has something to do with the sun and—” Dylan began his response that I predicted would be marginally less than brilliant, only to be cut off by me. Though Dylan was a pretty chill human being, he wasn’t exactly “destined” for anything that involved the use of brainpower. Becoming the next Einstein wasn’t quite on his itinerary in life.
“I know what time is, but what I’m wondering is how it took us all of eight hours to get here,” I said, studying his face through the dim lighting.
“Delayed time travel,” was his astute response.
“Seriously, was there an accident that caused you to take only back roads? Did you get lost? Did aliens abduct us for four hours? What happened?” I wanted answers.
“Well, we were passing through Connecticut, and I got tired, so stopped, and took a nap. A long nap,” he gave the first piece of even somewhat reasonable information. “Couldn’t let you have all the fun, now could I?”
“Okay, so you slept. That still doesn’t explain what the fuck we’re doing here,” my heart rate accelerated as I remembered where “here” was. Boston.
The last time I had been in Boston was a few months back for Marcus Bianchi’s funeral, only to find out he wasn’t the good guy I had made him out to be in my mind. I saw Justin. I saw others. Being in a place like my hometown brought back so many nostalgic memories—some bad, some good. It was just strange being back.
“We’re here to go to this place that I hear has flowers and stuff,” he answered vaguely.
“Firstly, it’s the middle of the winter—hate to inform you, but flowers don’t grow during this time period. And, secondly, you don’t strike me as the flower-loving type,” I pointed out.
“That’s because I’m not,” his eyes glistened with an emotion I didn’t feel like contemplating, having much to do with my level of fatigue. It was because of that stupid flight and time difference in Europe. Yeah, I was so going to use the excuse of “Europe” for as long as I could in regards to my mental and physical health. It was a pretty great one. Why didn’t you turn in your essay that was due last week? Europe. Why didn’t you show up to class? Europe. Why did you throw water balloons at your math teacher? Europe. It was gold! Pure, pure gold—platinum, even.
“Where are we going?” I groaned.
“Someplace,” he said cryptically, as I realized that he had flipped on the ignition. We began to move out of the sketchy parking area, to a place that contained “flowers and stuff”—whatever that meant.
“You’re not going to give me a real answer, are you?” I sighed, knowing that I would totally make the best Sherlock Holmes with my highly skilled level of analysis.
“And what would make you think that?” he asked sardonically.
“Just shut up and drive,” I muttered, leaning my head against a headrest as I watched my city fly by in the blink of an eye. Though it was true that I no longer lived within the place known for its revolutionary revolts or slightly deranged sports fanatics, it was still my city. I could move around a hundred times, and it wouldn’t change a damn thing. Boston was, and always would be, my city.
“Lizzie!” I heard someone say loudly, directly into my eardrums. A light pressure was applied to my knee, rubbing it softly. My eyes swiftly flicked open to view Dylan staring down at me intently. Unlike the last time I had awoke, I was more mindful of everything around me this time. We were still in his truck, but I could longer spot the city consumed in darkness, lit up by skyscraper upon cascading structure. “You’re cute when you sleep, you know that?”
“Yeah, whatever,” I mumbled, my eyes not waiting for my brain’s permission as they spun around.
The rolling of the eyes. Ah, yes. It wasn’t an act associated with my concealment of the sport I breathed, but rather a habit I had been trying to break for a while now. It started in about eighth grade. I was playing in a basketball tournament, and was about ready to collapse towards the last couple of games. I was irritated with my team for not playing hard enough, and cross with myself for not pushing beyond my extreme, like I so often did. Basically, one of the referees made a bad call in favor of the opposing team, and, like any “normal” thirteen year old, I rolled my eyes.
Because of the minimal deed my eyeballs had preformed, I was forced to sit out for the rest of the game. I was livid. My coach then taught me a very important lesson that stuck with me: rudeness wouldn’t get you anywhere in life. It was better to take the high road, no matter what. And that, was why every time I rolled my eyes, it ended up becoming a life decision, not an automatic response. Being insolent was never the way to go.
“We’ve reached our destination, so, if you’d like to get out, I’d do that,” Dylan said, leaning over me to unbuckle my seatbelt. We got out of the truck, and only then did I further my scrutiny of our surroundings. The surface my feet had landed on was hard, flat, and of a color most commonly associated with the material of concrete. There were gray pillars every hundred or so feet, and a jumble of cars parked. A light smell of cigarettes and gas loomed its way into my hapless nostrils. We were in a parking garage. Where the garage was located, though, was the true question.
“Where are we?” I questioned, following Dylan as he began to walk.
“And to think, I thought you were the smart one,” he remarked, taking my hand, and leading my bewildered, live corpse past cars, until we reached a small cell leading up to elevators.
“I got stuck in an elevator when I was eleven,” I blurted out randomly, mentally blaming Europe for my weirdness.
I was with Justin, at the time. The building may have been a mall, actually, but, anyways, we were in an elevator. After pressing the desired floor number, up we went… until, of course, it stopped. We were about halfway up, in between floors when the mechanism suddenly stopped. There was an assortment of people with us, and, thankfully, one of them immediately called for help. In a matter of minutes we were safely rescued. Though it wasn’t the most monumental thing to have happened in my life, it did cause we to be marginally apprehensive about boarding the mechanical alternative to stairs.
“Well, on the bright side, if we get stuck in it right now, at least you’ll have me with you,” Dylan said in a comforting tone, as we continued to advance towards the discussed machine.
“Why would it matter if I have you or not?” I scoffed.
“Because, with me, at least you’ll have someone to make out with,” he said sheepishly with a smirk, but then quickly added, “completely platonically, of course.”
“Nice word. Where’d you hear it?” I snorted, nudging my elbow into his side. After recoiling, he repositioned himself, so that his arm swathed around my shoulder, bringing me closer to him. It was an odd feeling. As if I was holding another up, and, yet, being protected in a way at the same time. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not—something else for which Europe was at fault.
“English class. I think it was a vocab word a few weeks back,” he said after thinking about it quickly. “Did you know that when you’re paying attention, you actually learn a lot?”
“I’ve heard rumors,” I mocked in a scandalous tone.
We then proceeded to cram into an elevator with a group of people, mushed into the back wall. Wherever we were going, it had to have more than flowers to attract this type of interest. Don’t get me wrong—I liked flowers just as much as the next person (actually, I probably didn’t), but this amount of people just seemed a little bit excessive for daisies and sunflowers. Dylan tightened his grip around me, pulling me into him, more so than I already was. His chin rested on my head, and, fearing any movement would cause the elevator to break, I didn’t move it.
“Your hair smells good,” he mumbled into my ear.
“I’m going to assume that was a compliment, so, thanks,” I said, as the doors to the elevator closed, and we ascended to the unknown. After a matter of seconds, the packed elevator stopped, meaning that we had reached our endpoint. Everyone scuttled out, and Dylan kept his arm over my shoulder to not lose me with the whirl of the crowd.
We had come to a place with concrete flooring and people. Dylan guided me over to an escalator along with a long line of people, as I vaguely tried to pinpoint where we were. It was like my mind had hit a brick wall (another thing to attribute to Europe), as I couldn’t quite place where exactly we were. I knew that I had been, but something wasn’t clicking. I was missing a puzzle piece. So, maybe I had been too soon in assuming that I would make a good Sherlock. We went up the movable stairs, and I saw a curving hallway that most likely surrounded the entire structure, lined with vendors, entrances, and more people.
“You want anything to eat?” Dylan questioned as we approached one of the built-in food retailers.
“I don’t know, do I?” I was hesitant, unsure of what was going to happen.
“Yes,” he nodded in verification.
“Then just water, I guess,” I said, reaching for my wallet in my back pocket.
“Lizzie, I got it,” he restricted my hand from moving. “I don’t want to get into a fight with you, let me pay.”
I crossed my arms over my chest in a huff, withdrawing from under his limb, as I stared at him in disbelief. “Fine,” I gritted my teeth, “but next time we’re in this situation, I’m paying.”
“As long as there’s a next time, I have no problem with that,” he said happily. I didn’t say a word after that, as we joined a line leading up to a register.
After an awkward silence filled with the clamor around us, our turn finally came to order. A young guy with a goatee and the thick Boston accent that I so often missed addressed us behind the counter, “What’dya want?”
“Water for her, two pieces of pizza, and a coke,” Dylan said, his back arching slightly as he stared up at an illuminated menu above.
“Yo! I need a watah, coke, and two pizzas,” the guy called to someone behind him.
“Thanks,” Dylan said, handing him the required amount of money.
“Your girlfriend’s hot,” the guy said to Dylan as if I didn’t have functioning ears. Oh, how I loved the typical Boston etiquette… Though New Yorkers had quite the reputation for not being the, uh, warmest of individuals, nor possessing the politest of manners, Bostonians weren’t that much better.
"Firstly," I said, “I’m not his girlfriend—”
“Yet,” Dylan interjected with a smirk, earning him a smack on the back of the head from a girl by the name of Liz Turner.
“Secondly,” I said, trying to shove away Dylan’s teasing comment, “it’s a dick move to call a girl hot, in addition to being demeaning, dickhead.” I glared at the male behind the counter who couldn’t have been more than twenty.
“Hot and a talker. Sexy,” the guy said, making a point of scanning every visible inch of my exposed body. Dylan possessively put his arm tightly around my shoulder. I quickly removed it, knowing that I didn’t need the fortification of anyone else in a situation like the one in which I had somehow managed to land myself. I could handle it.
“Look who’s talking,” I snorted, “the guy who works for some lame-ass pizza place and probably won’t amount to anything other than getting paid minimum wage for the rest of his life. Real classy dude, right here.”
“Two pizza, a water, and a coke,” counter douche said, scowling at me, as I had clearly struck him where it hurt.
“Uh, thanks,” Dylan said, taking the food.
“Good luck on scoring with her, bro,” the guy kept glaring at me, a gesture of which I returned, “you’ll need it.”
“Fuck you, dickhead!” I said, as we walked away, my mind a bubble of fury—something I would not be accrediting to Europe.
“Glad to be home?” Dylan joked once we were a ways off.
“It’s like I never left,” I muttered. Ignorant people irked me.
“He wasn’t wrong, though,” Dylan then said thoughtfully.
“Yes, that douchebag wa—” I started.
“You’re pretty hot,” he smirked.
“Pretty hot?”
“I’m sorry, let me rephrase that: you’re pretty and hot,” he corrected, not making it any better. I told him that I didn’t like compliments, and what he do? He continued to compliment me. It was in a light-hearted, teasing manner, but still, I didn’t like receiving praises for my exterior. Deep inside, I would never truly be completely okay with it.
“Shut up,” I pushed his shoulder, sending him flying all of two inches away from me.
“Just stating a fact,” he said impishly. I smiled, shaking my head at his utter absurdity.
After moving with the mob of bystanders around what felt like half the building, Dylan led me into one of the many entrances, placed every hundred feet. We went into a small corridor with a high ceiling, and walked into an arena. Slanted seats of black and yellow lined the majority of the space, but, in the center, there was a glossy, wooden floor. Above the court, two basketball hoops were suspended. A blur of green was the emblem placed in the middle of the court. Yeah, I knew where we were.
“The Garden?” I verbalized my conclusion about the place I had been to an innumerable amount of times to watch basketball games. It was where the Celtics, Boston’s basketball team, played, and had changed a lot over the years. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had been. Europe (cough, cough).
“Oh, is that what you call it?” Dylan stated knowingly. I couldn’t look up to meet his eyes. He knew.
“Why are we here?”
“To watch a basketball game, of course,” he said, not yet giving up his hand by showing me all of his cards. I knew that he knew, of that I was sure, but how he found out and when he would inform me of his awareness was the true question.
I inhaled a breath as we scooted into one of the many rows of seats. We squeezed by people until we came to the desired spot. Taking our seats, I noticed that though we were a ways up, we had a perfect view of the court. Fuck.
“Ever been to basketball game before?” he asked in a tone that was practically rhetorical.
“Yeah,” I said, mindful that any other answer would cause me to do even more explaining than I already predicted would be required.
“Cool. The Knicks, my team, are playing your team, the Celtics, tonight, so I figured you’d like it.” Ha. And to think, I had originally planned on camping out on my couch in the living room tonight, only to scream at all the bad plays made in this exact game.
An announcer’s voice boomed, and everyone stood and took the typical stance as a lady preformed a dramatized rendition of our national anthem. She was good, but I had heard better. Everyone either sat back down or returned to their previous state as players came out, and, after a brief introduction, sat down on the benches.
I saw my boys. Paul Pierce, KG, Ray Allen, Bass, Rondo—they were all there. It felt like seeing an old friend… who happened to be unaware of my existence. These guys were way cooler than most of the loser celebrities the girls were always drooling over, for they actually possessed real talent. You couldn’t fake being good at a sport. Well, actually, you probably could, if steroids were involved, but even then you still had to be an adequate player. Who the fuck cared about Larry whatever or that Harry guy that the girl were always talking about? No one. Meeting someone like Kevin Garnet was about a million times more awesome than meeting Justin Bieber in my book, any day.
“See any players you know?” Dylan inquired. I kept silent, recognizing that bluffing was no longer an option at this point. Eventually, I was going to have to fold.
The players began to warm up, and I tried to keep my gaze as disinterested as possible. Attempting to look apathetic when professional basketball players were right in front of you was like claiming to be overheated when wearing a bikini in Antarctica. Dylan too looked mesmerized by the sight, not looking away.
A horn blasted, and the players were deployed to their appropriate positions to start the game. I slouched down in my seat, and secretly wished I could engage in an active conversation with Dylan about the game we were about to see. I peered over to Dylan, and he smirked at me. He hadn’t cracked me yet, and he wasn’t about to fold either. He was going all-in on this one; there was no turning back now.
The buzzer blared, indicating halftime. People began to shuffle about, and move every which way. I remained seated beside the boy who was unwittingly on his way to destroying everything in my life. Fun.
“You’re losing,” Dylan said about the score, though it applied to my façade as well.
“Isn’t our side of the scoreboard the one with the higher number?” I mumbled quietly, disgusted by my false stupidity.
“Cute,” he said, putting an arm over my shoulder.
A picture of a man appeared on a large screen overhead. He was standing on the court with a basketball in his hand and two cheerleaders by his side, each lacking the majority of their clothes. It was the middle of January; one would think that warmer clothing was the way to go, especially in a place like Boston…
“For five-hundred bucks, is there anyone here who thinks they can shoot a basket from half court?” the man challenged into a microphone. People’s arms began to flail and wave, trying to attract his attention. Dylan took my arm and raised it as high as it could go. Holy. Fuck.
“I can’t!” I objected, trying to yank my arm down, only to fail.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” Dylan said lightly. I sighed, stopping all resistance. There were about a million other people raising their hands, so there was no way in hell that I—
“Yes! That’s you, Lizzie!” Dylan called, pointing to the electronic configuration of high-definition pixels. I looked up to see our faces zoomed in on, an arrow drawn at me, and the words, “Come on down!” Shit. Dylan released my hand as I sat, awestruck. And there that metaphorical author was again, making my life hell as they wrote down the story that was my life.
“I can’t,” I reiterated.
“Go, it’ll be fun!” Dylan pressed. I sighed, figuring I could make a shit shot if I tried hard enough. Standing up, I moved out of the row, and ran down the stairs until I was let onto the court. Thankfully, I had worn normal sneakers today, knowing that if I tried to wear heels, I would not only injure my feet due to clumsiness (as athletes went, I wasn’t exactly the most graceful), but also be too tired to even take a single step. Europe. I went over to the guy who had introduced the task, and he greeted me.
“Hi, sweetheart, what’s your name?” he asked, holding the microphone up to my mouth.
“Uh, Liz,” I answered shakily.
“Where ya from?”
“Boston,” I gulped.
“Great city,” the man commented, as the crowd erupted in applause. “So, what you’re going to do is try to shoot the ball from half court. You have two tries. Think you can do it?”
“No,” I lied.
“Oh? Where’s the good ol’ Boston confidence?” As far as I knew, the city wasn’t known for it’s “good ol’ Boston confidence”, so I hadn’t the faintest of clues. “Well, let’s try it!”
One of the cheerleaders handed me an orange basketball, returning to her post besides the guy after. I took it in my hands carefully, my palms taking in every indentation the ball held. I backed up to the half court line, and I looked up at the hoop in the long distance away. It wasn’t an easy shot, but I could make it if I truly tried.
I took the ball with two hands, and kept my legs taut. I couldn’t do it. Bringing the ball up, I eyed my target, and snapped my arm, sending the ball a mere twenty feet. I didn’t dare look to see if it made it or not, fully aware that it hadn’t.
“Oh! Good try!” the guy said. “Better luck on your second one!”
I was given yet another ball, though this one was blue. My hands held it nervously, as adrenalin pumped through my system. It was like in the dream I woke up from—as if it had been foreshadowing my future. Though, unlike in my dream, the pressure applied to my mind was existent. Screw Sherlock, I would make a much better psychic. I could make a choice to either reveal everything, or continue lying, knowing fully well that Dylan knew. I looked up to the swarm of rowdy individuals, most of whom were most likely a little bit on the tipsier of sides, and my eyes locked with Dylan’s. He nodded, and held my gaze. He knew.
I bent my knees, and held the ball with only a hand, the other merely guiding it. As I extended my arms from the ninety-degree position, I flung the ball to the basket, openly declaring defeat.
“Wow!” the guy beside me said, as I watched the ball circle around the rim once, before making it— swishing in. Not my best shot, but not bad. “Let’s hear it for Liz!”
The audience that had remained cheered as I was given five, hundred dollar bills by one of the slu-cheerleaders. Cash. Sweet. Well, more bittersweet.
“Um, thanks,” I said, stuffing the green blends of cotton and paper into my back pocket.
“That was awesome, great job, hun,” the man commended before I returned to the steps. I hiked up the mountain of stairs, and stopped at the row where Dylan still was.
Dylan looked at me, a mixture of astonishment and satisfaction spread throughout his face. “Happy?” I demanded harshly.
“Liz—” he began.
“Here,” I said, tossing him a key ring from a pocket of my jacket’s.
“What’s this?” he questioned, holding up the jingling gadgets of entrance.
“See the red one with the big ‘B’ on it?” I neglected to answer his initial query. He nodded slowly, finding it among the other swarm of keys. “It goes to the condo my mom bought the last time we were here. I’ll text you the address later.”
“Where are you going?” he sounded alarmed.
“A friend’s,” I said. “Just give me some time to cool off. I’m mad right now, and acknowledge it, so I’m trying to distance myself from the problem, that being you, before I punch a wall or your face. I don’t generally hold grudges. We’ll talk tomorrow.” And with that, I walked away, proud that I had actually listened during two of the many hours of therapy I had been subjected to as a child. Anger management issues, my ass!
“Liz!” he called after, doing the one thing he shouldn’t have: he followed me. I began to run, weaving myself into the multitude of fans, hoping to lose Dylan in the process. I wanted to run away. I wanted to keep up all I had accomplished over the year. I wanted Dylan to think that I was the girl I was trying to be. This couldn’t happen. Not now. I was so close.
My feet carried me away from the mass of people, and all I could think to do was duck into a bathroom—a girls’ bathroom. As I stepped in, a few girls who were talking, texting, and admiring or perfecting their image in the mirror stopped. They looked at me for a brief moment, before resuming. I went over to a corner and got out my phone, dialing a person I knew wouldn’t let me down.
“Hello?” a gruff voice answered after four rings.
“Justin, it’s Liz.”