What is Your Emergency?
“Dude, knock it off,” Tim said.
“What,” Mike said, picking the bottle off the curb. They were standing outside Mike’s house, waiting for the girls to show. Tim had basically sprinted over when he got the call. It was like in the Marines, you don’t wait or ask why you’re being sent into combat, you say Sir, yes Sir! And you haul ass because that’s your duty and because your buddies are depending on you. He had just grabbed a couple of knives to stash and put on his boots and run over.
He said, “There’s has just got to be such a thing as a bad time for a bottle challenge.”
Mike said, “Relax, when they get here I’ll stop. I’m just messing around.”
“Exactly,” Tim said.
Mike felt stupid and un-crisis-competent so he picked up the bottle and put it in his pocket, which was ridiculous because it way stuck out, and then he just stood there looking unhappy. Tim looked at him, took pity, and said, “I guess it’s cool Maya texted you. I mean you were I thought not talking to each other.”
“I thought that, too,” Mike said. “Mostly it was Rachel. They were hanging out.”
“Plus Andrea,” Tim said.
“No,” Mike said, “She doesn’t hang out with them any more.”
“I thought they were all at this party.”
“No, just Andrea, I think she went with Vinh.”
Tim cracked his neck with a twist from side to side. “I hate that fucker.”
“I know. He’s bad news. He had a gun.”
“Did he … is Andrea … ?”
“Dude, I don’t know. Just that Maya and Rachel said meet here so we can all go down there.”
“Is that her? Fuck, she drives shitty.”
The silver mom car was sort of weaving as it turned the corner. It almost hit a parked car, then pulled up sort of near them, slowed, stopped, started a tiny bit more, then stopped suddenly. They could see Rachel’s head sort of thrown forward. They jumped in back.
“Hi, oh my God, thanks for coming so much,” Maya said.
“Want me to drive?” Tim asked. “I’ll drive.”
“Do you have a license?” Maya asked.
“No, but I’m way better than you.”
Maya looked at Rachel, who looked scared.
Tim said, “Let’s go,” and got out of the car to come over to the driver’s side. Maya got out and switched, getting in back, thinking that this might be either the smartest or dumbest thing she had done all night, she could no longer tell that kind of thing. She decided she would give him a minute to see how he drives and then take over if he got it wrong.
“I have the GPS,” Rachel said.
“Good,” Tim said, “Keep it coming,” and pulled away from the curb.
Rachel breathed a sigh of relief because already she could tell he was a way better driver. She said, “Left in one quarter mile, merge toward left lane when safe.”
Tim said, “Got it.”
In the back seat Mike said quietly, “Hey, Maya.”
Maya finally looked at him. She said, “Hey.”
Jerry was sweating horribly and his breath was coming in gasps but he thought this was the right house. This was the right house. If she still lived here. This was the right house.
He knocked on the front door, peeling green, no knocker, he knocked again, no answer, he checked his phone, nobody, he pounded on the door. Pounded again.
He ran around the side of the house. A gate with one of those latches. He reached up to unlatch it, worrying about a dog or something. Fuck it.
He unlatched it, nothing on the side of the house, a dead hose, he snagged his foot and half tripped. Around the back, a sliding glass door. He tugged at it. It slid, heavy. He tugged harder, making enough space for his body. He stepped in. Now he was a criminal. A dark kitchen.
“Sabrina? Hello? Sabrina! Sabrina?”
There was a light in the hallway. “Is anybody home?”
There was a small bedroom with a huge bed, messy with blankets and a quilt, but empty. The parents’ room? Possibly. Nobody in it.
He went back out into the hallway. There was a small room, maybe a utility closet thing? There was a light on in there. It was actually a tiny bedroom, obviously Sabrina’s with a single bed against the wall and her backpack and some clothes he knew she wore, but she wasn’t there either. There was nothing on the wall except one tiny crystal prismy thing hanging from a beaded chain from the window.
Back into the hall and there was only the bathroom and he could tell he had been hoping not to go in here but he had to inhale and do it.
“Sabrina?”
He pushed the door open. She was on the ground, flat on her back, her head next to the toilet. But the first part that Jerry saw was just her head, right up against the bottom of the toilet bowl, her hair a mess all over her face and on the bathroom floor. She was on the floor. He stood there, not doing anything. His first thought was that he wanted to move her hair so that at least she didn’t have it in her face and be like that forever, but then he thought that he had to do the right emergency things first and worry about that later. She was just lying there with her head on the ground and her body collapsed. They had one of those gross shag carpet covers on the toilet seat. Pink. He was still breathing hard. He leaned down to see if she was breathing. He couldn’t tell. He put his hand on her heart to see if it was beating. He didn’t want to touch her but he had to. He didn’t want to seem like he was grabbing her chest or anything like that. God, what if somebody walked in?
What a stupid thing to think. Come on, come on, is she alive?
“Sabrina? Sabrina!” He thought about slapping her. Was that a thing?
“Sabrina!”
He tapped 911 and prayed. He never prayed. He didn’t know how to. He prayed, “Please God, let Sabrina be alive.”
He thought about his dad and he tried to remember what people told you to do when someone was dying or dead and he couldn’t remember.
“911, what is your emergency?”
Tim seemed to actually know how to drive and Rachel was all over the navigation situation, so Maya just chewed on her fingernails and obsessively checked her phone. She looked over at Mike. He was just sitting there, giving off the energy of trying to be helpful but not having anything to do.
Maya realized that this was a decision. This was what they looked like. She had made a decision somehow, already. When?
She leaned over quietly and said, “Hey, so, I was thinking that when this is all over maybe you and I could talk and just sort some things out.”
He looked at her, half surprised, half feeling stupid because he should have said it, especially in that completely mature way, but now she had said it and he couldn’t be the one to go first and break the ice with his mature thinking.
“Prepare to make a right turn at the next light, which is Thaker Boulevard, in 500 feet,” Rachel geekily told Tim, who nodded grimly, sort of amusing Mike, as though making a right was a major military endeavor and Tim had to focus his hardcore badass Marines black ops training on it. Hoo-ah!
He said to Maya, “That’s a good idea.”
“Yeah.”
“What you said,” he clarified. “Before.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I mean, but just not right now, that makes sense.”
“Yeah,” Maya said, thinking, I just said that.
“Do you -- what exactly is this party?” Mike asked.
“God, I don’t even know. I didn’t even really hear about until she texted me to get her.”
“What are we supposed to do when we get there?” Mike asked.
“Locate and recover,” Tim said from in front.
“What?” Maya and Mike both asked.
“Get her and leave,” Rachel translated.
“Basically,” Tim said.
Mike nodded, but he didn’t think anyone saw him do it. There was a se
cond or two when he thought that maybe Maya had seen him nod and he would feel stupid adding an I get it, but then again maybe she hadn’t and they were all maybe waiting for him to say something? But then it got to be too many seconds and he just said nothing and felt ridiculous for messing it up and even more ridiculous for obsessing about it.
“Listen, I don’t want to be a wimp?” Rachel said after a while. “But honestly I think it’s better if I just stay in the car? Like we don’t need all of us and someone should stay --”
“Yeah, no,” Tim said. “I’ll go.”
“I’ll go,” Maya said.
“Us three, Rachel you watch the car?” Mike said.
Rachel looked back and said, “I think that makes sense, is that okay, Maya?” Staying alone in the car didn’t sound all that much safer, actually.
“Totally fine. I’ll go in with you two guys. But nobody try to hassle anyone or anything like that,” Maya said.
“I’m not going to hassle anyone,” Tim said.
“I know,” Maya said. “It’s just --”
“That was different,” Tim said.
Maya said, “I’m not saying you --”
“We just want it to go peacefully,” Rachel explained.
“Yeah,” Tim said. “That’s already the plan.”
Maya said, “Good.”
But Tim added, “The boxer? Mike Tyson? He said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Ten seconds of quiet passed, then Rachel said, “Prepare to park, your destination is on the right.”
Where the fuck was Ray, where the fuck was Ray? Where the fuck was Andrea, too? Malik had gotten sort of crushed up against the fence and he couldn’t see shit. He had to push two guys, big, they looked like probably college or something, they gave him these nasty looks but he needed to figure out what the fuck was going on. Vinh had a piece. You were supposed to say piece, not gun, for some reason. Fucking Carson and his racist friends were trying to start something and Ray had basically called out that Jonathan guy for macking on Andrea but then the whole party had freaked out. For a minute Malik had been with Andrea and even though it had been in the middle of a riot it had been kind of cool, just the two of them in that mess, and he thought that he could maybe sense something between the two of them. Like, she had been hinting that for a while, maybe? Like, why else go to a party with him? But then that Jonathan dude had liked carried her off like in some caveman movie.
Malik needed to find her, or find Ray. He tried to be smart about it, he climbed on a patio chair onto this outdoor glass table, it looked thick and solid enough, so he stood on it, holding on to the pole of the umbrella in the middle. He scanned the back yard. He couldn’t see her, but she was short and there were a fuckton of people. He tried doing it again, slowly. There was Ray. Vinh was next him. Carson was on the ground, in front of them. Oh, shit.
I gotta get the fuck out of here, he thought. But then he thought, you can’t ditch Ray. He jumped down and started to push his way over to Ray’s side and thought don’t worry about Andrea, she can handle herself pretty good.
There was a pounding on the door. No, not on the door because she would hear that louder, she was slumped against it, crying, sitting on the bathroom floor of fucking Carson and Madison’s house, why had she even thought this would be at all a good idea, she was crying and texting and they kept saying they were coming but nobody was here and Malik had ditched her and she was all alone and not high at all anymore, just feeling horrible and her clothes were drenched from the pool and if somebody died or something from the fight it was going to all be her fault and fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! He was pounding on the wall, that was what it was, he didn’t even have to get up, he was pounding on the bedroom wall next to the bathroom and yelling out her name.
She couldn’t really hear it exactly, it was muffled, like, “An-ee-ah, An-ee-ah!”
She yelled out, “Hold on, I’ll be there in a sec!” Which was like what? Why was she even saying that? She wasn’t going back in there, he was a fucking rapist, but she had to say something, she had to stall him.
“An-ee-ah!”
“Hold on!”
“Andrea!”
“Hold on!”
“Is that you?”
Oh, what?
“Who is that?” she called out, because she realized it was in the hall right next to her.
“It’s Tim!”
“And Maya!”
“Open up!” Tim called out.
“Okay, just a sec!” she called out.
“And Mike!”
She felt so stupid they had all come and even more stupid for pausing now that they were here but she had to at least check her hair in the mirror before opening the door, but that turned out to be a worse mistake so she just unlocked it. Tim immediately pushed in.
“Are you okay?” he demanded, not even saying hello, but Maya was there and Andrea hugged her and was suddenly crying super super hard, shaking like crazy, Maya hugging back but not crying, just saying nice stuff like, “Okay, it’s gonna be okay, it’s all gonna be okay now.” Mike was standing there doing nothing and Andrea didn’t even make eye contact with him.
The three of them led her out of the bathroom and Tim said, “this way,” but then Jonathan came out of the bedroom, just a towel around his waist, and Andrea sort of gave a little shriek, then stopped it with a hand at her mouth.
“You going somewhere?” he asked Andrea.
“She was just leaving,” Tim said.
Mike said, “Just heading out.”
“Nobody talking to you,” Jonathan said to the guys.
“Come on,” Maya said quietly to Andrea. “Let’s go.”
“Who is this guy?” Tim asked Andrea.
“Who the fuck are you?” Jonathan demanded.
Maya said, “Look, we don’t want any trouble. We’re just trying to get our friend home. She’s had too much to drink.”
Jonathan said, “No, she hasn’t.”
Tim said, “You’re blocking our path. Please move.”
Jonathan just laughed at that.
“We’re friends,” Mike said. He looked at Tim, then back at Jonathan, and added, “Of hers.”
Maya looked backward and asked Andrea, “Can we go around?”
But then Maya saw that Tim had pulled a giant knife from somewhere and was saying to the giant guy in the hallway, “I said, move.”
Jonathan immediately straightened up and sneered, and Andrea grabbed Maya tighter.
Mike said, “Tim, maybe put that away,” like not a question, but just saying it, firmly. Maya thought it was just the right way to say it.
It wasn’t exactly clear what was supposed to happen next. There was a very long second or two and then Jonathan shook his head and said, “Fucking freshmen,” and went back into the bedroom.
“Shit!” Mike said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m not done with that asshole,” Tim said, slipping the knife back into his boot. “Was he --” he looked at Andrea now.
She felt horrible. She wished he would look away already. God, she felt like such an idiot, her hair was still wet from the pool and she was holding her wet bra crumpled up in her fist. She had kept her underwear on, though, and it was soaking through her jeans, which was even stupider, she didn’t even want to look down there to see what that was looking like.
“Can we just go?” she asked quietly, looking at Maya.
“Definitely,” Maya said.
“What’s his name?” Tim asked. “Did he -- did he, like, do anything to you?”
Mike said, “Tim, maybe we should let Andrea decide what we do?”
Maya nodded at Mike gratefully.
Andrea felt like crying for about eight reasons. She said to Tim, “Can we just go? Nothing happened.”
“Nothing?” Tim asked. He felt stupid constantly asking the same thing over and over, but he also felt like just because she had said nothing happened
didn’t mean it was true, people always denied that something happened the first time you asked them even if something actually had happened.
“Well, it wasn’t great,” Andrea said. “But nothing, like -- can we just go?”
“Let’s just go,” Mike said, but then he felt bad for saying it, because of guy solidarity, and if Tim’s guess was right and something had happened, then it was probably better if they dealt with it right away. So he said, “There’s a lot of sketchy people around here, we should probably sort this out later.”
Tim looked at him, looked toward the bedroom door that Jonathan had slipped behind, and shook his head. “Okay, let’s go.”