Page 12 of Rebel Summer

Day 3

We sat at our table with a dead toad in front of us and the smell of formaldehyde punching at our noses. To the right was a scalpel. Dax sat with his eyes closed, drumming to a song while his fingers rapped against the desk.

“What do you want to do?” I asked, raising my voice so I didn’t sound timid. The last thing I wanted to do was sound weak. But my voice came out wobbly, and I immediately hated that it did.

“I don’t care.”

“Great,” I said cheerfully. “I’ll sit here and watch while you carve.” I inched the scalpel his way, really missing my old lab partner and her fascination with dissection.

A soft laugh came from his lips. “I doubt that.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s only one person at this table who cares about their grades.”

We sized each other up while I desperately tried not to show fear.

“Don’t you want to graduate?”

He shrugged. “Makes no difference to me.”

“Then why are you here?”

A tiny smirk crossed his face. “I’m bored.”

Thanks to Google and my fear-induced flying fingers from the hours between two and six am, I now knew that a DUI in Florida could technically be a felony or a misdemeanor. The severity of the sentence depended on past convictions, which, thankfully, I had none. It would most likely be reduced to a misdemeanor, and hopefully, the judge would go easy on me.

Hope filtered throughout my thoughts the rest of the night. Along with the words like: jail, convictions, fines, jail, felony, sentencing, jail, etc.

The cheerful yellow walls of my childhood bedroom mocked me as I woke up. In my teens, I had gone through a photography phase which resulted in frames hung all around the room. Pictures of me and Cat on the volleyball team. Making banners for a pep rally with my friend Jane. Dressed with friends for Powder Puff football my senior year. Smiles and laughter radiated from the pictures, evidence of happy times. Noticeably absent were pictures of my family. Without even realizing it, my room had become an oasis for me growing up.

Good vibes only.

All morning long, my brain scrambled to form a new plan. My exit strategy had been blown to bits, along with Dax’s windows.

Dax.

He had also filtered his way through my spiraling thoughts. It wasn’t only courtroom dramas and prison jumpsuits keeping me awake well into the morning, but faint flickers of his voice, the feeling of flying, and the press and cradle of his body holding mine. Some things were just vivid enough to be remembered through a hazy fog.

Which meant I now knew two things for certain.

I owed Dax Miller an apology. And I needed to get out of this house before my dad could corner me again.

As fun as it was to spend most of the previous night listening to him make phone calls and excuses to politicians and supporters about his daughter’s untimely accident, I wasn’t about to subject myself to his contemptuous comments today. I’d find things to do.

Even if that something was apologizing to Dax.

So, when I heard Angela and my dad heading out for their morning run on the beach, I flew to the shower. I washed in record time, coaxed a little gel and direction into my wild curls, and rummaged around for some old clothes in my closet. I slid on a pair of blue chino shorts and a flowy tank top, feeling a little more like myself. A small moment of order and normalcy in my otherwise alternate reality of existence.

The hallway leading down the stairs had been stripped of the family picture frames that used to line the walls. A pang of sadness bolted through me, but I pushed it aside and stepped into the spacious kitchen to find the flip-flops I’d kicked off after getting home from the clinic. My heart sank when the back door suddenly opened, and my dad and Angela stepped inside.

I hadn’t been fast enough.

The only thing that slightly gratified me was noting the sweat stains across the senator’s chest and armpits while Angela hardly looked winded.

“Hey. How are you feeling?” Angela asked, breezing past me, dotting her glistening neck with a tissue.

How am I feeling?

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