North Sydney Police Station

Holding Cell 1A

So the party turned out to be the worst idea ever, and so did our getaway plan. I don’t know how Jack and Maria were feeling but as I sat in that tiny concrete holding cell, I was at an all-time low.

Thankfully, Kenji had been taken to a separate cell. I didn’t want to talk to him at that point because I was still angry. And I didn’t want to explain to Jack and Maria who he was because I just wasn’t ready. Although I was getting the feeling that they both wanted to ask me a whole bunch of questions about him. Like how I knew him, and why the hell was he hanging out in the bushes in Maria’s front yard? But since we were sharing our holding cell with a woman who was most likely an alcoholic and most definitely insane, they were both silent.

And I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this lady sitting across from me, making red-hot intense eye contact, was without a doubt bat crap insane.

I could tell Jack and Maria were just as scared of this woman as I was. They were both doing their best to ignore her. Jack was sitting on the floor, leaning against the back wall. Maria and I were sitting on the opposite bench to the crazy lady.

She started to plead her innocence to us. Well, to me. “It wasn’t my liquor they found in my car,” she blurted out.

She swore she was being honest.

“I’m being honest with you. I’m looking right at you and I’m being honest. I swear.”

I smiled politely and nodded my head.

“That was Tommy’s bottle. I swear. I was just holding it for him.”

I cringed. Why was she talking to me? There’s two other people here, why me?

“I’m being honest with you,” she said again.

Yeah, right. I knew she wasn’t being honest with me. But I continued to smile and nod because this wasn’t the kind of place where you wanted to make enemies. It was the kind of place where you wanted to agree with whatever anyone was saying, even if that someone was a complete lunatic.

“And,” she continued, “He left his bottle of whiskey under the front seat. So now it looks like I was driving drunk. But I’d only had like, five or six beers. I was fine to drive. I’ve driven after way more beers than that before and nothing bad ever happened.”

“So where did Tommy go?” I asked in a tone that said I’m totally on her side and that driving after five or six beers is cool.

“He ran off when the cops pulled us over. The car was still moving and he just jumped out and ran for it. The cop pulling us over didn’t see him jump. But I’m being honest with you. I’m looking right at you and I’m swearing on my mother’s grave.”

I nodded my head again and smiled again. I tried not to look at this woman directly but I couldn’t help myself. Her skin looked like wet leather and her teeth were all yellow and cracked. She kept tapping her feet and running her hands through her hair, unable to sit still.

Thankfully, she didn’t notice me staring back at her. She was way too buzzed. She kept scratching her arms and her neck. It also looked like her ear was bleeding.

“What happened to your ear,” I asked because I couldn’t help myself.

“Tommy bit me. He bit me right before he jumped out of the car. I’m so mad with him right now.”

The life of an alcoholic. Suddenly our predicament didn’t look so bad. Not that it was. It’s not like we’d done anything majorly wrong. So what if we broke curfew? The hardest part of this whole thing would be telling my mother that I’d been arrested. She worked so hard to put me in a good school, to put a roof over my head. How could I tell her that I had been arrested? What could I say?

“Hi Mother dearest. You’ll never guess what! I was at a party, right? And I know there was a curfew and all but I thought if I was home by 10pm it would be all right. And at the very worst I could just sleep over at Maria’s house but then I guess we had stayed out a little late and someone called the cops. And to cut a long story short, I’m at the police station right now. No, I’m not sure what bail is set at. Yes, they take credit cards. Yes, they take American Express.”

The crazy lady asked me if I was hot. “Are you hot? It’s hot in here, isn’t it? I bet this is all part of their mind games. They turn the heat up so they can try and get a confession out of me.”

“I guess it’s a little warm.”

I said it was a little warm even though the metal bench I was sitting on was ice cold.

“You know, none of this would’ve happened if it wasn’t for the damn quarantine and the 10pm curfew,” she said, slurring her words. “How are people supposed to have fun around here? I reckon it’s all a bunch of scare tactics.”

She went on and on about the quarantine and the military. She was convinced it was all a conspiracy by the government to cover up an alien landing in the outback.

I tuned out but she kept right on talking.

Maria leant over so she could whisper in my ear. “Why is she still talking?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Hey, Jack’s sister will get us out of this, right?”

“I hope so.” She turned to Jack. “Pssst, Jack. Your sister will get us out of this, right?”

Jack was sitting with his knees up to his chest. He did not look optimistic. “I don’t know. She’s been out on call for like, two days straight. Apparently it’s getting pretty wild out in the western suburbs.”

That is not what we wanted to hear.

“Oh great,” Maria said. “We are so screwed.”

“Relax. Worst case scenario is we’ll get a warning and a slap on the wrist. I’m the one who is screwed. Your dad is going to kill me when he finds out I tried to drive his car.”

“Come on, he won’t find out,” Maria said unconvincingly. “Daddy will understand.”

“Won’t find out? The cops wrote it in their report!”

“I’ll just tell him the cops got it wrong and I was the one who tried to drive it away. I’ll tell him the place was being ransacked by looters or something, and we were trying to save the car. He’ll buy it. Then it’ll look like we’re the good guys.”

Jack smiled at this suggestion, like he thought it might actually work.

Meanwhile, the crazy lady was still talking. I think she was telling me about the time she accidentally stole a bottle of bourbon from a bar and was wrongly accused of being a thief.

“Are we going to have a permanent record?” I asked Jack and Maria while still making eye contact with the crazy lady and nodding my head.

“God, I hope not,” Maria said. “That will seriously affect my ability to get into university. Did you know you can’t apply for medicine if you have a record? Or law, or teaching for that matter.”

“Why would you want to be a teacher?” Jack asked. “You just spent the best years of your life at school. Why on earth would you want to go back and be a teacher?”

“I didn’t say that I wanted to be a teacher. I’m just saying you can’t apply to do that course if you have a criminal record. It’s not a good look for a school to have ex-crims teaching the kids. But I think I would make a good teacher. Plus, you get at least two months’ worth of holidays a year. More for private schools. Tell me another profession that gets that kind of benefits.”

Jack was silent for a moment. “Paid holidays?”

“You better believe it.”

“Wow. I never thought of that. Not that I’d ever be able to be a teacher. I wouldn’t be able to deal with all the smart ass kids.”

“You mean, kids like you?”

“Hey, I know I’m not the easiest student to deal with. But I’m not that bad.”

“Guys, can we focus here?” I said to get them back on track. “When they let us use the phone, who should we call? My mother has been working some crazy hours at the hospital. I’m not sure if we’d be able to get in contact with her. Should we call your parents, Jack?”

“Yeah, we can probably call my parents. But they are not going to be happy.”

“It would be weird if they were,” I replied.

“Speaking of weird, who was that guy we nearly ran over in my driveway?” Maria asked. “And why did you jump out of the car and start yelling at him? Do you know him?”

Maria had been dying to ask me about Kenji. I guess there was no real point in trying to hide the fact that I knew him.

“Ah, yeah, I kinda know him,” I said. “He’s just some loser from back home. I don’t know what he was doing. I told him not to follow me.”

“He followed you? You mean like, he stalked you?”

“No. He didn’t stalk me. Well, not really. He used to be my next door neighbor. We used to be close. But we’re not anymore.”

“Yeah, you’ve got an international stalker,” Jack said. “You must feel so popular right now. He’s come across international waters for you.”

“Shut up.”

It was weird how they could still joke around at a time like this. I guess that’s why they were such great friends.

An hour or two later we heard the jingle jangle of keys and approaching footsteps. We all turned our heads to the side and listened, like dogs.

“Finally!” Maria said. “It’s about time.”

Amazingly, the crazy lady was still talking. “But enough about me,” she said. “What about you? What did they get you for?”

“We were out past curfew,” I said as I listened to the approaching footsteps.

“Typical. They can’t just give you a warning, can they? Oh no, they need to make an example out of honest hard working citizens like you and me and your friends.”

The footsteps were close now. A second later, three police officers appeared at the entrance to the cell. One of them had the keys, another one was carrying a baton in his hand and a look on his face that said he was ready and willing to use it. And the last one was escorting this guy who had obviously had way too much to drink. I wondered if the drunk guy was Tommy, the crazy lady’s friend.

The cop with the keys cleared his throat. “Everyone remain seated. Keep away from the door.”

“Come on, Miss Stephanie,” the cop with the baton said to the crazy lady. “It’s time to answer a few questions about what we found in your car.”

The crazy lady lifted her head slowly. Her bloodshot eyes focused on the drunken man. “Tommy! Tommy, you coward! I can’t believe you ran off on me like that! I can’t believe you bit me! We’re supposed to be friends. Friends don’t bite each other and run off.”

Tommy didn’t seem to acknowledge that he was being yelled at or if he even knew this lady, which just made her look even crazier.

She screamed and kicked and flailed her arms. The officer with the baton threatened to use it. He then handcuffed her and took her away. She screamed all the way down the corridor.

They sat Tommy down on the bench where the crazy lady had been sitting. When the police officers let him go, he just drooped over to one side and fell asleep on the freezing cold bench. The only way anyone could’ve slept on such a cold surface was if they were drugged to the eyeballs, or unbelievably drunk. And judging by the color of this guy’s skin and the drool that was coming out of his mouth; I’d say he was one drink away from liver failure.

The police locked the cell and started to walk away. Maria ran over to the bars and yelled out. “Hey, what about us? Are you going to let us go?”

There was no reply.