"Is there gonna be a big confrontation?" said Val.
"Probably," said Zoe.
"Then I absolutely want to come," said Val.
They didn't talk in the car. They just took turns fiddling with the radio. Zoe was deep in a country music phase, and Val liked a station that played the same four pop hits over and over and over, like a psychology experiment. The landscape that had seemed so bright and hopeful on the drive home from school now drifted by the windows looking hopeless and dead.
Zoe parked outside the police station, and took one of those "deep, cleansing breaths" her mother was always talking about.
"What do you want me to do in there?" said Val. "Can I play a character? Can I improv?"
"Just be my friend-and don't let me get arrested," said Zoe.
Val made a pouty face.
"What if I want to get arrested?" she said.
"We'll come back another time for that," said Zoe. "With costumes and stuff. Cool?"
"Very."
She and Val high-fived. They pretended to do it ironically, but the truth was that they just liked high-fiving. The only time they had ever tried fist-bumping neither of them wanted to make the stupid explosion sound.
The station was bustling, but the one cop Zoe liked, Brian Vilkomerson, stood up behind his desk when he saw the girls enter. He must have seen the tension pouring off them, like a vapor trail.
"Is this about Stan Manggold?" he said, before Zoe and Val even reached his desk. "Because-"
Stan Manggold! Zoe hadn't thought about that psycho in days, and hearing his name threw her off balance.
"No," said Zoe. "Stan's been taken care of."
Fortunately, Brian didn't ask what she meant. What could she have said? You guys had your chance. Now my boyfriend's taking him to hell.
"This is more important," Zoe said quickly. "This is about my father."
She told Brian she didn't want to talk to Chief Baldino. She referred to him as "the mean one-the one who looks pregnant."
Brian pursed his lips to kill a smile.
"Why don't you and your friend sit with me for a minute?" he said.
He gestured to two green chairs by his desk. Zoe could hear Baldino back in his office, noisily unwrapping a sandwich and laughing on the phone about something that probably had nothing to do with police work.
Brian reached out to shake Val's hand. Not everybody was that respectful to teenagers. Also, Brian didn't do the patronizing triple take that virtually all adults did when they met Val. First, they'd see the half-shaved hair with orange streaks, and grimace as if they were passing a wreck on the highway. Next they'd notice how hot Val was. Finally, their brow would furrow, and they'd wonder why on earth a girl that pretty would blah yadda blah. It never bothered Val. She had the same opinion of people that Zoe had of trophies: that they were both ridiculous and awesome and all you could do was collect the coolest ones.
Zoe was grateful that Brian just stuck out his hand and said hello and didn't treat her friend as if she were some Object of Interest. There was already a star next to his name in her head, so she added a second one, along with an exclamation point.
"Hey, there, I'm Sergeant Vilkomerson," he said.
"And I'm Val," she said. "I'm Zoe's attorney."
Brian tilted his head at this, but let it go.
Now that Zoe was sitting there, with a sympathetic audience leaning forward, she found she no longer wanted to scream or make threats. She just wanted to be heard and to be taken seriously. She tried not to be too rattled by the noisy everyday life of the station-the radio squawking, the baby crying, the officers jabbing at their keyboards. The hardest thing to block out was the sound of Baldino on the phone, doing impressions he thought were funny. The sound of his voice repulsed her.
"It's been months since my dad died," she said.
She stopped for a second, surprised by how much emotion that one sentence kicked up in her.
Val put an arm around her shoulder, which made her even sadder somehow. She shrugged it off.
She told Brian that the thought of her dad's body lying in a cave was eating away at her family. She told him about Jonah locking himself in the house, about the notes he'd passed under the door. Brian looked pained. Zoe could tell he was trying not to look at the pictures of his daughter that stood like monuments all over his desk.
"Look," he said. "This is so, so complicated-and not just because that particular cave is so dangerous."
Zoe waited to hear why it was so, so complicated, but as Brian was searching for words, Chief Baldino ambled heavily out of his office, like a bear. Zoe's stomach did its tightening thing. She prayed that he wouldn't notice her. If he said one rude thing to her, she'd lose it.
She watched Baldino out of the corner of her eye. He crumpled up his lunch bag, compacting it into a tight ball as if it were a feat of strength. Then-though Zoe could count at least four garbage cans in plain sight-he handed it to Officer Maerz and said, "Throw that away for me, would you, Stuart? Can of Coke Zero on my desk, too."
The chief yawned, stretched, and surveyed his kingdom.
He noticed Zoe.
He grimaced and moved toward her. It was clear he hadn't forgotten that nasty night at the house. It was clear that he loathed her as much as she loathed him. She just prayed he wouldn't say anything to set her off.
Baldino came so close that all she could see was his gut. Crumbs from his shirt fell onto her lap.
"I thought I smelled teenager," he said.
Zoe sprang out of her chair. She began talking too loud, her hands shaking all the while, as if they wanted to disconnect from her body. The whole station got quiet. Everyone stared.
Just as Zoe finished shouting-and just before Baldino, whose face had swelled with anger like a balloon filling with water, began yelling, "You're a disrespectful brat, and your old man can stay in that hole for all I care"-she heard a microwave ding preposterously in the silence. Somebody's burrito was ready.
Val and Brian were standing now, too. When had they stood up? Everything was blurring. They each had a hand on one of Zoe's arms, and they were steering her toward the door. She didn't want to cooperate. She stiffened her body, like Jonah when he refused to get dressed. Finally, Val whispered, "I love you, but stop it or you really are gonna get arrested. I'm saying this as your lawyer."
Baldino seemed to notice Val for the first time now. He did the least subtle triple take Zoe had ever seen.
Val gave him a wide smile-god, she loved Val, she was a born blurter, too-and said, "I could show you how to get this look, if you want."
Baldino snorted.
"Get your little friend out of here," he told her.
Zoe let her body go slack.
There were tourists at the door, openly gawking at her. Brian cut a path through them.
"It's all good," he told Zoe gently.
The door swung open. She felt cold air on her face. She heard car tires hissing on the wet street. Already, she'd forgotten everything she had said to Chief Baldino. She knew she'd been loud, but had she been clear? Had she been heard? Had she told him what she'd promised Jonah?
She turned back to the chief. Brian's head sagged. He just wanted this to be over. And it was. Almost.
"If you guys don't go get my dad, I'm gonna go get him myself," she told Baldino. "And then you may have two bodies to fish out of that cave, not just one."
Val took Zoe's car keys and escorted her to the passenger side. Zoe was still in such a cloud that Val had to help her with her seat belt.
Brian leaned in through the window.
"Let's all just breathe for a second," he said.
He rested against the Struggle Buggy, hands stuffed in his pockets, head tilted up at the sky.
Zoe waited for the tension of the last ten minutes to dissipate, for the wind to sweep in and break it up and turn it into rain, or something. She regained her equilibrium slowly. Everything started to come back into focus.
Brian patted the roof of the car twice in an okay-let's-do-this sort of way. He crouched down beside Zoe's window again.
"First, the good news," he said.
He waved a small bag of candy-sour gummy worms, it looked like-and offered it to the girls.
"I confiscated these from my daughter this morning," he said. When they smiled, he added, "It was a routine stop-and-frisk."
Zoe and Val each took a handful of worms-Brian winced when he saw how many they were about to ingest-and dropped them one after the other into their mouths. The girls squirmed as the bitterness corroded their tongues.
"Thith ith horrible," said Val.
"Weally horrible," said Zoe.
When they'd calmed down, Brian did another one-two pat on the roof of the car.
"Can we talk for a second?" he said.
"Yeth," said Zoe.
"Abtholutely," said Val.
Brian cast his eyes back at the station to make sure no one on the force was milling around.
"I know the chief doesn't seem like the world's awesomest guy," he said. "And I'm not going lie to you, Zoe-he is not the world's awesomest guy. Between us, his wife is leaving him and he's pretty torn up about it. Anyway, the point is … "