My mom was going to kill me, I thought as the cop took down my details. He was very amiable as he filled out the citation, admonishing me gently on the dangers of underage drinking.
I was free to leave as soon as Mom got here. God, that phone call to her had been a nightmare. She'd been confused at first, then slightly panicked, and finally terse and angry. She'd hung up, saying she'd be here in fifteen minutes. Time was almost up, and I couldn't help the trepidation forming inside of me.
I'd never gotten into trouble like this before. Sure, I'd gone to parties, but I'd never gotten drunk, and I'd been home at a decent hour. Mom had trusted me. That was blown all to hell now.
Still, I thought, as I took the ticket from the cop, I was one of the lucky ones. There were dozens of arrests being made; some were people who'd tried to make a run for it when they saw the cops, others had been caught in possession of drugs. Somebody had overdosed in a bedroom upstairs, and paramedics had carried them out in a stretcher. It was awful, and I hoped that, whoever it was, they were okay.
Aiden was amongst those found in possession. I watched in grim satisfaction as he was handcuffed and led away. I hadn't seen Kane again, and wondered if he'd made it out okay. There were a number of people who had made a successful run for it out the back door and into the woods, and of course, there were those who were over twenty-one and didn't get into any trouble at all. Bella, the jock, and I, were among the few who were under 18, and waiting for a parent pick-up. Everyone else was being processed, ticketed, and allowed to leave. Or getting arrested.
I stared down at the citation, a little scared about what it could mean. A fine to pay, for sure, and I was gutted about it due to our strained finances, but were there other consequences? Would this be on my record?
I sat down on the couch, feeling a little weak at the knees. Bella was still on the phone to her mom, and judging by the pained expression on her face, what she was saying wasn't going over too well.
"I forgot my ID at home," some guy was saying desperately to a cop nearby. "I'm twenty-one, I swear."
"You can bring your ID to the magistrate and get your case dismissed. Until then-" The police officer handed over the ticket.
The guy took the ticket, shoulders slumping in defeat, as Bella came and sat by me. She pocketed her phone, looking wretched.
"I'm so sorry, Zoe. You never wanted to come tonight. I just had to insist on it."
"It's not your fault, you couldn't have known," I said, and I meant it. She'd just been trying to cheer me up, and take my mind off of things. There was no way that I could hold this against her.
"Zoe!"
I glanced up to see Mom storming into the house, fury stamped all over her face. A sleepy-looking Alice and Asher clung close to her side. Asher seemed to perk right up at the sight of all the police officers, his eyes going wide and darting round all over the place. He knew that his dad had been a cop, and he wanted to be just like him when he grew up.
I stood up. "Mom I-"
"I don't want to hear it, Zoe. I can't believe you. And you, Bella. I am so disappointed in both of you," she fumed. Bella looked at her feet, downcast, and I also found it difficult to meet Mom's eyes. She turned to the police officer who'd escorted her inside. "I'm so sorry about all of this."
"Just doing our jobs, ma'am." The police officer nodded. "You're free to leave with your uh-"
"Daughter," Mom said curtly, used to the uncertainty. The cop didn't disappoint, and glanced between us in surprise. I was tall, taller than Mom - and the cop, too, come to think of it, so people tended to assume that I was a lot older than I was. Mom also looked a lot younger than her 36 years, so people were always astonished that we we were mother and daughter. "Thank you, Officer. We'll be off now."
Mom jerked her head towards the door, a silent command to follow. She seemed too furious to say another word, let alone look at me again.
I muttered goodbye to a contrite Bella, and quickly hurried out after Mom and the twins. Asher was writhing and twisting in Mom's grasp in front of me, trying to slow down and look at all the cop cars in the drive.
Holy shit. I froze for a second when I stepped outside for the first time and saw that there were at least nine patrol cars parked in front of the house. It looked like a crime scene, and I could only imagine what Mom must have thought when she pulled up outside the house.
"Can we ride in a police car instead, Mom?" Asher asked, hopefully, as we approached our car.
"No, baby, only police officers, and people under arrest, can ride in it," Mom said, helping a disappointed Asher into his booster seat.
I did the same with a silent and sleepy Alice. As soon as she was strapped in, her head drooped, her eyes fluttering closed.
The drive back to the apartment was silent, a frosty tension in the air. Asher nodded off after a bit, and we had to wake him and Alice up once we were parked outside the apartment. It was a nightmare ushering them up all five sets of stairs, Mom glaring at me as though it were all my fault when Alice began to whine.
It was only once they were both safely tucked into bed, the bedroom door firmly shut, that Mom let me have it.
"Do you have any idea how reckless you've been?" Mom said, crossing her arms. "As soon as you realized people were drinking, you should have left, you certainly shouldn't have partaken!"
"I barely had one sip, Mom. One sip of a beer," I told her, indignantly. "I wasn't going to get trashed. I'm not stupid."
"You shouldn't have even been at that type of party in the first place! You're still in high school, you had no business going to a college party," Mom said, uncompromisingly. "There were drugs being sold there. Somebody overdosed, and we don't know if they're going to live."
"I know," I said quietly. "I'm sorry, okay, Mom? I won't do it again."
"You're too right you won't!" She shook her head, jaw ticking. "This is the last thing I needed right now."
"It'll be fine-"
"Will it? How am I going to pay that fine, Zoe?" she asked. "Or more appropriately, how am I going to pay for rent, gas, and electricity on top of the fine?"
I shrinked inside, feeling awful. "I'll get a job. I've been meaning to look anyway-"
"And how will that fit around all the extra school work you have to make up? Or the community service you'll probably get?" she demanded. "I talked to the police officer outside. It's going to take commitment from you in order for you to get this dismissed without a record."
"I'll do it. I'll do whatever it takes," I said, determinedly.
"And Bella-"
"It wasn't her fault," I jumped in. "She was just trying to cheer me up."
"Well, she went about it completely the wrong way," Mom said, but I could tell she was starting to calm down now. "I can't... we'll discuss this further in the morning. Go to bed."
I did as I was told, guilt heavy in my stomach.
The weekend was dismal. Mom grounded me, and then barely spoke to me for the rest of the weekend. The twins were so bored stuck in the apartment that they were soon acting like little lunatics, and driving me up a wall. By the time Monday rolled around, I was actually looking forward to going to school. Anything to get out of the apartment. The lack of privacy, and having Mom and the twins all up in my space, was driving me crazy.
When I got to school, Bella was by our lockers, talking to the jock from the party.
"Hey, Zoe, this is Finn," she introduced us. I recognized the sparkle in her eyes, the slightly shy yet inviting smile she sent his way.
Huh. That was surprising. I mean, he was cute. His smile was big, his jaw strong, and he had lovely blue eyes. But he was far from Bella's usual type, which tended to consist of dark hair, multiple piercings, and a shitty attitude. This guy looked... clean cut. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a white t-shirt... the opposite of what she usually went for. And he was a Junior. Bella was normally hard pressed to date someone the same age as us, let alone younger. She always went for older guys.
He kept glancing down at her, even as he nodded at me. "Hey, hope everything turned out okay with your mom?"
"As good as can be expected," I said with a sigh. "She's not happy about the citation."
"It's no big deal, really. You pay the fine, do some community service, and they drop the case," Finn assured me. "My uncle's a magistrate, so he knows."
I was relieved. Even though Mom had pretty much said the same on Friday night, it was good to have some reassurance.
"Have you heard anything about the people that got arrested?" Bella asked him, curiously.
"Not much. I don't usually hang with that crowd. I was just there because of my brother. He goes to Grenward, and got invited. The girl that overdosed... well, she died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. So, the cops are being really tough on anyone who was caught in possession. They're trying to find the dealer."
"That's awful," I said, thinking about the poor girl and her family.
"Yeah." Finn nodded, frowning. "There was a really big drug problem at Grenward last year. This isn't the first time something like this has happened, so I think they might be harsher than usual on the people caught."
"What do you mean?" Bella asked.
"Well, last year there was a deadly batch of heroin going round, killed like twenty people in the area. I think fourteen were college-age students."
"I think I remember hearing about that," I said, vaguely recalling people talking about it last year. I hadn't paid much attention to it at the time, it not really affecting me. But now I wondered. "Have you heard anything about Aiden? Aiden Mills?"
"Mills? Yeah. He got released on Saturday, I think. He's a first time offender, so it really just depends on what type of judge he gets," Finn shrugged. "He's definitely out of college though."
Aiden had been a pretty shitty boyfriend, and I really didn't think much of him as a human being, but I couldn't help thinking of what a waste it all was.
"And... Kane?" I asked, unable to help myself. "Do you know him?"
Bella's eyebrows shot right up into her hairline. I hadn't mentioned that I'd seen him at the party.
"Kane Mathews? I know him. He's a friend of my brother's. I didn't know he was at the party, though. He definitely didn't get arrested, and I doubt he even got ticketed. He's eighteen, but from what I remember, he doesn't drink at all."
The bell rang while I was still absorbing this new information. Bella looked coyly up at Finn through her eyelashes. "See you at lunch?"
"Yeah." He smiled.
We dispersed, Bella and I heading in the opposite direction to him.
"So," I said. "What happened to Dev?"
She rolled her eyes at me.
"He's old news. I mean, I did go to the party hoping to see him, but he was pretty lame, wasn't he?" she said, and without waiting for an answer, continued, "Finn's not really my type, but I don't know. He's nice, and funny."
"And he's cute," I said, teasingly.
"Yeah," she said, a secret smile on her face. "He asked me out."
"That's great!" I said, happy for her, even if I felt a little bit sorry for myself. My mind strayed back to Kane. He was gorgeous, and he obviously wasn't interested in me.
"So, Kane was at the party, was he?" Bella raised an eyebrow at me.
"I saw him across the room, for like a second, before the room exploded into chaos," I told her.
"You think he would have come over and talked to you, you know if the cops hadn't busted down the place?" she asked.
I wasn't sure. Aiden had been next to me at the time. But the way Kane had looked at me... no. I was reading too much into it.
"I don't know," I told her, as we headed to class.
Later that day, Mom wasn't waiting for me outside school. She hadn't texted to say she was held up anywhere, so I gave her a call, wondering if she was running late.
No answer. I hoped that meant that she was in an interview, and it had run over, so she hadn't gotten the chance to text me.
Hitching my backpack up my shoulder, I started the trek to Elizabeth's.
Once I was there, I worked on my essay for a bit, and then watched TV with the twins. I gave Mom another call. Then waited.
And waited, and waited.