I reached out my hand for her. She looked down at it and then back up at me. She shook her head slightly. She didn’t want to be touched, and I could understand that. I held out the sweatshirt for her. She pulled it over her head without a question. I moved to the sink and turned on the water. Josephine stepped up to it and washed off her face. Even with the sweatshirt and the dirt off her face, Josephine looked like hell.
“Ready?” I asked.
She nodded.
I pushed open the bathroom door and began to speed walk down the hall. I just needed to get her out of there. And quickly. The less people who saw me escorting a frazzled Scary Carrie through the hallways the better. We almost made it the entire distance to my car without anyone seeing us. Almost.
If I had been using my brain at all I would have realized the reason the hallways were empty was because most after school activities had ended during the five minutes I was in the bathroom. There was no one in the hallways because they were all in the parking lot.
“What the hell, Middleton? Do you know what coach is going to do to you?” Alec’s face was flushed with anger as he called out to me across the parking lot. A few of the drama club kids and band geeks stopped to watch.
“I had to take care of something,” I yelled back.
Entirely wrong thing to say. Alec’s eyes looked from me to a very disheveled Scary Carrie. Alec clenched his jaw and looked Josephine up and down in disgust.
“I think we’re going to have to have a discussion about your after school activities, Middleton.”
“Sure. But not today.” I pushed past Alec and only turned around once to make sure Josephine was still following. It was hard to ignore how many people had stopped to stare at the two of us walking to my car. I knew how it looked, and I knew the rumors were going to be in full swing tomorrow.
I wasn’t prepared for Jenna who was waiting for me by my car. I felt my throat close up at the sight of her. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth either.
Jenna looked from me to Josephine and back to me again. Her smile was pulled tight. I knew what it meant. She was struggling to remain civil despite whatever she was really feeling on the inside. Jenna always believed in manners first.
“Um. Jenna. Look. I gotta take Josephine home.”
So far I wasn’t lying. I knew Josephine had her own car, but I didn’t think now was a very good time for her to be driving.
“Are you all right, Jo?” Jenna asked. I wondered when and how Jenna had earned the privilege of calling her Jo. I never saw the two even talk to each other. Maybe it was something left over from their childhood.
“Thanks for letting me use your sweatshirt,” Josephine replied. How she knew it was Jenna’s I had no idea.
Jenna nodded. “No problem.”
Jenna looked around her and crossed her arms. If there was one thing Jenna avoided it was being part of the rumor mill. She didn’t spread rumors, nor was she really ever the center of one. That certainly wasn’t the case anymore.
“Call me later, Logan? I mean as soon as you can,” she said, looking up at me and letting me know sooner would be much better than later.
I nodded. Jenna walked away from me without another word.
“Where do you live?” I asked Josephine as we pulled out of the parking lot.
“I can’t go home like this,” she quietly replied. “Just drop me off at a Walmart or something so I can get cleaned up.”
“Nonsense. Just tell me where you live.”
“I can’t go home!” Josephine was rocking back and forth in her seat and her fists were pressed against her eyes. She went from zero emotions to crazy faster than I could turn on my turn signal.
“Fine.”
I figured since it would be a few hours before my uncle got home for work, I could take Josephine to my house. He was never home before eight. He always walked in with some story about a client needing him or a call that took too long. It used to really bother me when I was little, but I learned to stop asking for excuses a long time ago. He always came home with takeout and didn’t expect me to do chores. I was pretty lucky. I guess.
Josephine and I didn’t talk anymore during the short drive to my house. Which was a good thing and a bad thing. Good because I wasn’t quite sure how to talk about the whole her taking a human life thing, and bad because it left me time to think about the hell that would await me at school in the morning.
Josephine silently followed me into my house. She was back to being emo girl. I could only imagine what she was thinking as she saw the inside of my house. She had a tendency to mock everything, and I knew my house was mock-worthy. It was much too big for only two people. Leather couches. Large screen television on the wall surrounded by a Bose sound system. A hideously large fish tank embedded in the wall. Then there was all the religious stuff. Old bibles. Painting after painting of fallen angels and the death of Christ. Large wooden crosses. Whenever anyone asked my uncle about the décor he told them it was meant to be ironic.