Alexa forgot to be scared for a little while, she was so busy complimenting Sherri on her dress and her shoes and even her earrings and her hair. Her hair was blond! Like the Sherri from the newspaper photograph. But done in a really tasteful way. Shanti, Alexa could tell.
After Sherri left for the party, Katie and Morgan headed right for the TV and started watching Pitch Perfect 3. Alexa wondered if she should encourage them to choose a more age-appropriate movie, maybe Paddington, but she was still feeling jittery and she didn’t have the energy for a battle. She paced back and forth in the tiny kitchen and kept checking her phone—for what? she wondered. Because the bad man was going to text or send a Snap before he came over?
“You girls want to go somewhere?” she said, when she could stand the feeling of being trapped not a second longer.
“Ice cream!” Katie and Morgan said together, and Alexa said, “Sure, why not? Why don’t we go to Haley’s?” Haley’s wasn’t in the center of town so she felt a little safer with that choice.
They all left the house and piled into the Jeep and then Alexa thought, The Jeep! She couldn’t drive the Jeep around town while the bad men chased her down. “We just need to make a quick stop,” she told the girls. She swung down Olive Street and turned left on Merrimac, not too far from Brooke’s house. She parked the Jeep.
“Change in plans,” she announced. “Everybody out. We’re switching cars with my mom.”
“What’s wrong with this car?” asked Morgan.
“It’s running funny,” said Alexa. “I don’t want to take any chances with you two.”
She didn’t have keys to her mom’s Acura on her key ring, but she banked on the possibility that whatever horrendous Marshalls outfit her mom bought wouldn’t have big pockets (please, she prayed to the gods of fashion, don’t let her be wearing something with big pockets) and that she would have left the keys in the center console, the way she sometimes did. Alexa would take the car, then she’d text her mom later and have her get a ride home with one of her friends. In the morning, if Alexa was still alive, she’d walk down here and pick up the Jeep. It would be a longish walk, but she’d try to appreciate the beauty of not being murdered.
Bingo! The keys were in the center console. It took some wrangling to get the Acura out of the driveway—this party was hopping, and there were cars parked every which way!—but Alexa had always been good at three-point turns. Peter, who could three-point turn out of a mason jar, had taught her well.