Page 39 of Turn

“I didn’t have the cash to call another ride because I blew all my money settling the drink tab,” he explained.

“Wait a minute.” Cami held up a hand. “What kind of place were you in that resulted in a drink tab?”

I stopped at a red light and heard Kellan mumble something.

“What?” I prodded.

“I was at a bar,” he said. “Okay? Happy? Now you know everything.”

“Not quite,” said Cami. “How did you get into the bar?”

“Through the door, Camille.”

“I’m kind of feeling like having a nice chat with our aunt and uncle tonight,” I said. “What do you think Cami?”

“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing.”

“Okay, okay.” Kellan heaved an angst-filled teenage sigh and crossed his arms. “So I have a fake ID. So what?”

“A fake ID?” Cami said.

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you get it from?”

“I ordered it online from Wyoming.”

“Hurray for modern technology. And where is it now?”

“My pocket.”

Cami extended her hand to the backseat. “Give it to me.”

“No! It cost four hundred bucks. I used all my birthday money plus the money I had saved from last Christmas.”

“Like I care.”

“Aw, come on, Cami.”

“Hand it over, Kel, or else it’s going to be quite the late night for you explaining to your loving parents why you were catfishing some unsuspecting college girl while drinking in a bar with your fake Wyoming ID.”

He was silent. The tension of his inner struggle was palpable. He didn’t want to turn over his magic ticket to the adult world. But we had him over a barrel.

“If you hand over the ID,” I told him, “we won’t say anything. At least not this time.”

“You won’t?”

“I promise.”

Kellan sighed, reached into his pocket and gave the fake identification to Cami. She turned on the overhead light and squinted at it.

“My god, I can’t believe they let you in with this,” she exclaimed. “This guy doesn’t look anything like you and he’s thirty two.”

“I don’t think the dude working the door looked at it too carefully. He seemed kind of stoned.

“That explains it.”

When we pulled onto Kellan’s street I stopped the car three houses down and cut the engine.

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