Have Mercy (Have a Life #1) by Maddy Wells

Kirby had turned her bike around.  My hands were shaking as I reread the message.  “Do you feel sick?” she asked.  “Hey, you okay?”
                  Why did Tim think I should know?  Did he think it was Jane?   He didn’t say he thought it was Jane or that anyone had said it was Jane.  It couldn’t be Jane.  I mentally pictured the teachers who I knew were chaperones at the prom.  It had to be Jane. Who else?
                  “Actually,” I said, “I’m not okay.”

Chapter 13
     
                  I sat down on the curb and told Captain Kirby I didn’t feel like going home any more. 
    She sat down next to me and coaxed Tim’s message out of me.
                  “Sonofabitch!  I knew that Rob was a phony!”
                  “You don’t know it was Rob!  And you don’t know it was Jane.”
                  “Of course it was Rob and your ma.  They were all over each other.”
                  “He told us he graduated two years ago.  So it can’t be him.  And Jane would never do something like that.”  Something so creepy and weird.  I heard actual alarm bells going off in my head, and I put my hands over my ears.  
                  “He’s a liar!   I told you,” she said. “Only a professional liar would say two years ago, not last year or this year.”
                  We pedaled to the twenty-four hour Dunkin Donuts and Captain Kirby ordered a box of Munchkins and two Coffee Coolatas. 
                  “Do you have a couple of bucks?” she asked me, fishing around her giant pants and coming up empty.  “I’m out of quarters.”  
                  “Let’s eat them in the parking lot,” I said. 
                  I couldn’t look at nice Mr. Rajeet who owned the Dunkin Donuts.   After he saw me carrying my guitar once, he always told me “I can see you are going to be a famous musician,” and I would correct him by saying “not a musician, a famous rock and roll star,” and he would say, “Okay, then, a famous rock and roll star!  Even better.  Don’t forget to practice today.”  He was always telling anyone who would listen about his two sons in college and how he was working so hard so they wouldn’t have to operate a doughnut shop, so they could operate on brains or something instead and have a sparkly and clean and pure future loaded with nice people doing the right thing just like Mr. Rajeet.  If Jane had done this, how could I ever talk to Mr. Rajeet again?
                                “You ought to have a couple of these,” Captain Kirby said, pushing the box of Munchkins at me. 
    “You haven’t eaten all day.”
                  “Yes, I have.”
                  “No, you haven’t.”
                  “I’m not hungry.”
                  It was five thirty and delivery trucks were on the road and a couple of cars were lined up at the take-out window just like everything was normal.  The Coffee Coolata was sickeningly sweet and I felt like barfing.
                  “Well, what are you going to do?” Captain Kirby asked.
                  A tractor trailer pulled to the side of the road in front of us and sat there with its motor idling.  The driver probably was going to sleep in the cab.  Maybe when he woke up I would ask him to take me with him to Arkansas, which was where his license plate said he was from.  Weren’t the Smokey Mountains there?  They sounded dark and hidden and I wanted to hide in them with all the other runaway losers and axe murderers.
                  “I don’t know.”  The more I thought about Jane sleeping with a high school student the angrier I got.  What kind of a mother does that ?  What kind of a teacher does that?  Why couldn’t Jane ever do what she