Page 18 of Reclaiming Adelaide

“You have to start a new ride.”

“Fuck.” Next time I’m using a taxi service. I dug into my pocket with shaking hands and peeked back out the window.

A man holding my laptop bag in one hand and my gear bag in another turned his massive shoulders as he exited my room.

The Iron Giant.

I started a new ride, putting in the last address I remembered.

“Thanks.” He put the car in drive and drove away as I sat back up, the man speaking to another equally large man with two black bands tattooed on his arm.

Son of a bitch.

Crysis… Franklin told me the truth.

“Fuck.” I kicked the passenger chair in front of me.

“Hey. Don’t do that shit.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m just…”In a boatload of trouble.

“Don’t do that again.”

“I won’t.”

I won’t.

Tears pooled in my eyes, and my heart thundered in my chest. This was it. Everything I’d ever known was over–gone. Forever and never to be seen again. I’d never see my parents, Jake, or Monica.

I scrolled through my pictures on my phone, pausing at the image Jake yelled at me for. I recognized the man now and often stared at it these last two days. But it was an innocent picture taken at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“We’re here.”

“Thanks.” I tucked my phone away, exited the vehicle toward the sidewalk, and walked inside the building. The door made an obnoxious ding, the one where if I had to hear it all day, it’d drive me insane.

“Hi, do you have an appointment?” the receptionist, with tattoos and a septum piercing, asked.

“Um.. No. It’s kind of a last-minute thing. Can I talk to Janelle?”

“Sure, she’s not with anyone right now.”

I walked around the booth and found her staring over her tablet with a stencil in one hand, tapping against her lip, and her other holding her head as her elbow rested on the desk. “Janelle?”

She looked up at me with surprise. “Adelaide? What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to apologize.”

She smiled. “You came all this way to apologize in person?” She put her stencil down. “For what, exactly?”

“For acting like a teenager.” I winced.

Since Iwasa teenager, it was hardly an apology, but I needed to say it. To clear my mind, especially since Jake set things straight.

Janelle laughed and nodded. “I get it. I tried to make you jealous, but it backfired.”

“Why would you do that?”

She twisted in her barstool chair and turned off her tablet. “Do you know why Jake got his tattoo?”

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