Family Law by Gin Phillips (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

with Tamara in front of everyone? He is so going to regret it tomorrow.

Taylor held out the bottle. “Want some?”

“I put it in Seven-Up,” Tamara said, looking at me, her face round and pretty and needing to please. “You’ll want to mix it with something.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know,” said John, his hand still on my thigh where everyone could see it, and I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

What if something happened? What if someone noticed?

“Rachel?” he prompted.

“What?” I asked.

He scooted me closer to him, his arm lifting from my leg and settling around my shoulders, and I had seen endless boys do this with endless girls, and I had wanted it. More than I wanted the kissing. I relaxed against him, and I thought about what I wanted.

“I will if you will,” he said. “One shot each?”

Tamara giggled. She was propped against Taylor, unsteady. John ran his hand down my bare arm, and goose bumps rose all the way to my wrists. The pleasure of that touch knocked the fear out of me.

The purses were scattered across the floor, like they’d hailed down from the cottage-cheese ceiling. I thought of Lucia, her feet hitting the sidewalk, crushing pinecones, never a pause. I thought of the ducks in Oak Park, startled, as she called out to strangers. Never afraid of anything.

“Yes or no?” said Taylor, and his voice was slurred.

“It’s up to you,” John said.

He nudged me, jarring me loose, and that was a good thing. Taylor held out the bottle, and John reached for it. I put my hand above the waistband of his jeans and felt the muscles of his back stretching, and I could do anything I wanted.

II.

I wasn’t an idiot.

I settled behind my steering wheel, letting my head fall back against the headrest. Eventually the overhead light went off, and I was left in the almost-dark and the almost-quiet: I could still hear the stereo playing inside Tina’s house.

I had never been so happy to shut myself inside my hideous old-lady car. It had been smelling inexplicably of bananas, but now the familiar, sickly sweet smell was almost welcome. The pattern of my seats reminded me of ice cream sandwiches, and I ran my finger over the shallow holes. I did not want to drink whatever was in that bottle, and I did not want to get naked with John, at least not in the middle of an empty bedroom surrounded by purses and jean jackets. Really, if he wanted to get naked with me, he could at least ask me on a date, and why hadn’t he done that anyway?

I could do anything I wanted. I had no one to ask me where I was going or what I was doing, and I didn’t want to waste that time drinking awful liquor or trying to decipher John Henderson. So I’d left.

I was going to Lucia’s. Maybe she would be asleep, and maybe she would be watching TV or reading a book, and maybe I would tap on the window and she would wave me inside and she would be so glad to see me.

I didn’t think that would happen. It was nearly midnight.

Still. I had not looked into her den in months. I could at least look. That would be enough. And if Lucia were sitting there on the sofa, it would be a sign, wouldn’t it?

The streets were nearly empty, and it must have rained earlier because the roads were black and shining wet. I had never driven this late at night, and the city looked different with the houses dark, the shadows dense, and the streetlights reflecting off the pavement. I’d found a new world hidden behind the old one, like Narnia inside the wardrobe.

By the time I reached Lucia’s street, I was assessing logistics. More than once she’d heard my car door slam, and she’d spotted me through the front window before I made it up the driveway. I didn’t want to give her a warning tonight—I wanted to be the one deciding what to do. I parked several houses down from hers at a rose-brick ranch where every window was dark. My winter coat spent most of its time wadded up in my backseat, but I didn’t want to face Lucia with my cleavage on display, so I grabbed the coat and buttoned it over my halter top.

The air was cold and electric as I eased the car door shut. I didn’t rush. If anyone was looking, I didn’t want them to see a suspicious girl running down the sidewalk. I moved slowly enough that I couldn’t hear my own footsteps. The stars were bright overhead, and the street was completely silent. Even the leaves on the trees were still.

I was two houses away from Lucia’s when headlights flared along the pavement, and at the same time I heard music thumping. I glanced behind me, and I could see the headlights coming toward me fast. I couldn’t make out anything about the car, but the music was so loud—“Elvira”?—that the windows must have been rolled down. The car veered into the other lane, and quickly corrected, but that swerve left me nervous. Who was out at this time of night, playing loud country music and drifting into the wrong lane?

The headlights came closer.

They’ll drive by, I told myself. They’ll drive by. And yet I thought of a few months earlier, when Tina had been bringing me back to my dad’s after we’d gone to a late movie—Dad never gave me a curfew—and some guys in a pickup truck started honking. They pulled up next to us and shouted through the window, but we didn’t want to know what they were saying. Tina sped up, and the truck dropped behind us, riding our bumper all the way down the Southern Bypass to Dad’s house, even pulling into the driveway behind us. We ran to the front door, praying it was unlocked, which it