10
Prom Night
Marc
She was never goingto believe me. I sat on the metal bench staring at the bars in front of me, and all I could think of was what she’d texted me when I agreed to this.
Marc, no screwing this up. This is important to me.
This was pretty much the definition of screwing it up.
“Campbell,” the officer called out, as he entered the area that contained the holding cell where I’d spent the night.
I stood and walked to the front of the cell, careful to keep my hands behind my back because the urge to choke this motherfucker was real.
“We got confirmation you borrowed the car from a friend, so the charges of car theft will be dropped. But you’re still going to have to report to court for resisting arrest.”
“I didn’t…” I stopped myself immediately as soon as the guy snapped his head up from where he’d been opening the door. “I’m sorry. Of course, I will appear in court to address the matter.”
I needed to shut my mouth, call George to come get me, then find a way to explain this to Ash.
Did she go to the prom? Maybe find someone there who she could hang out and dance with? See, this was the problem, this was why I never should have said yes in the first place. I wasn’t supposed to drop everything and coming running for a stupid high school dance. She was supposed to find someone in her class who would take her and do it up right.
Flowers, a corsage, pictures. All that bullshit.
Instead, she wanted me. Irascible, moody me. Who she probably thought stood her up on purpose just to be that asshole guy who would use yet another tool to hurt her.
The dickhead officer, who I thought had been unnecessarily rough, which prompted me to throw him off as he tried to handcuff me, which resulted in my resisting-arrest charge, opened the cell door and let me out.
I kept my head down, said nothing, and collected my phone which had died on me, much like the car had. Of course. So I hadn’t even been able to let Ash know what was happening. I asked the woman handling the front desk if she had an extra charger. She took pity on me, plugged my phone in with her charger, and twenty minutes later I had enough juice to call George.
I saw the text indicator, the missed call indicator, but I didn’t have time to deal with that now.
George picked up on the first ring and I had to get through theyou sonofabitch, do you know how fucking disappointed I am in you right now? How could you do something like that, to her of all people?before cutting him off with the news I was in jail.
At least that stopped the diatribe.
“Just come get me,” I said, weary now from a night of not sleeping. “I’m at the Harborview Police Station. I’ll explain everything when you get here. My phone’s about to die again so there’s no point in trying to talk to Ash now. I’ll talk to her as soon as I get there, and apologize.”
“I’ll be there. But this sucks, Marc.”
George hung up and I nodded in total agreement. This did suck.
Twenty minutes later, George pulled up in front of the police station where I’d been waiting outside, despite it being a relatively hot and muggy day in June. I didn’t want to look at the cops, talk to the cops. Hell, I didn’t even want to smell the cops.
It was cops who had come to pull me out of my mom’s apartment. Cops who had arrested her and sent me to CPS. Cops who all thought they’d been doing the right thing by me when I’d been sure, if I had some more time, I could have convinced my mom to get clean.
I pushed them out of my head, as well as the fact I had to go to court to address the resisting arrest charge, which would most likely result in a pretty hefty fine along with community service.
“What happened?” George asked wearily.
I glanced at him and saw he looked as tired as I felt. I’d joked about his birthday with Ash, but the truth was, he was still doing a lot of manual labor for a man his age. My window to graduate from Princeton, get a job at a bank or brokerage firm, start making serious money so I could take care of him, was tight. I would do it, though. Nothing was going to stop that future.
“I decided to not trust the trains and borrow a friend’s car instead. You know how the trains can run unpredictably. Mistake number one. No, check that. Mistake number one was agreeing to do this in the first place.”
“Marc, I love you like a son, but sometimes you can be a real asshole when it comes to Ashleigh. Just finish the story.”
It wasn’t lost on me it was a common theme in my life. Most people didn’t call me an asshole, most people only called me an asshole when it came to Ashleigh.
