Chapter 17

Kiana spent several hours driving around Snohomish County, really just enjoying her new car (the stereo was awesome, and much to her delight there was a subwoofer in the trunk so it had mega bass), and she didn’t return home until she had pretty much run out of gas. She thought about stopping to fill the tank up but remembered she had no money (which was too often the case), so she decided she would just wait and bum some off of Michael once he got home. After all, that’s what dads were for, right?

She spent several hours that afternoon getting familiar with the various items Walters had given her. They were all cool (the lip balm was strawberry, her favorite), but the best item by far was the iPhone. Like Walters had said, it looked and felt exactly like a normal iPhone. With the added gadgets inside, she had expected it to be heavier, but it wasn’t, at least as far as she could tell. She pushed the noose icon, and, as Walters had explained, a small cord emerged from the phone’s headphone jack. Kiana wasn’t sure what the cord was made of but it was semi-transparent, as thin as fishing line (maybe thinner), and amazingly strong. She couldn’t break it no matter how hard she tried.

This could come in handy, she thought. If a boy ever gets out of line with me, I’ll tie him up.

But then an even better idea came to mind. She wanted to know if it would support her weight so she tied it to her chair in her bedroom, wedged the chair in place under her desk where it couldn’t move, removed the screen from her window, and carefully lowered herself down the side of the house. The cord was a little tough to hold onto, since it was thin and slick, and it dug into the skin on her palms a little as she slid down it, but other than that it worked perfectly and it had absolutely no problem supporting her weight.

She got a bit of a laugh, however, when she was half way down. She looked into her neighbor’s back yard and her neighbor, who was an elderly woman named Bea Ogglesby, was standing there, looking up at her with a puzzled look on her face. Apparently, she had never seen a teenage girl rappelling down the side of a house before.

After that, Kiana returned to her bedroom and tried the sunglasses Walters had given her. They were awesome. She closed her drapes, turned off the bedroom’s light, and activated the sunglasses’s nightvision. With the blinds closed and the light off the room was pitch black, but even so she could see perfectly fine. Everything had a strange, green tint to it, but other than that it was perfectly clear.

This could come in really handy, she thought. Especially if I ever want to sneak out of the house late at night to hang out with my friends without my dad knowing.

She then decided to play with the phone’s stun gun feature. She was curious to see how powerful it was and was tempted to use it on herself to find out. At one point, she even had it pressed against her arm, but she just couldn’t bring herself to push the icon that activated it (the one that was shaped like a lightning bolt). Once, as a young girl, she had touched an electric fence and it had shocked her so badly it had made her pee her pants. She didn’t want a replay of that unfortunate (and unforgettable) experience.

But then she heard a distant bark and a much better idea came to mind. In their back yard was Mrs. Ogglesby’s dog, Rascal. He was a bright, red Pomeranian, about two feet tall, with big, puffy fur. He wasn’t supposed to be in their yard but he had dug a hole under the fence and had squeezed his way underneath.

Kiana ran from her room and headed out to the back yard as fast as she could.

“Come here, Rascal. I have a surprise for you.”

Like many small dogs, he was high strung and not very friendly, and it took several minutes of coaxing, but she was finally able to get him to come over to her. Once he got within reach, she touched him with the side of the phone and pushed the icon that was shaped like a lightning bolt.

She regretted it the minute she did it. He let out a loud, painful yelp, then fell over onto his back, with all four legs sticking straight up in the air above him. It looked so ridiculous Kiana couldn’t help but laugh, but her laughter was short-lived when she realized he wasn’t moving at all. He wasn’t even breathing. For a few brief, terrifying seconds she thought she had killed him. But as soon as she put a hand on him, to see if he was indeed dead, he sprang back to life, jumped to his feet, and raced away from her as fast as he could.

That was the last time he ever came into her yard and from that point forward, the mere sight of her sent him scampering for cover.

Michael got home a while later so she bummed some money off of him for gas and then they took her car and got some dinner. He wanted to see how it handled and was immediately impressed. They had dinner at a restaurant in the Mill Creek Town Center, then cruised around some more, and it actually turned out to be a good learning experience for them both since they were still learning their way around their new environment. Snohomish County was largely rural, especially in the northern and eastern regions, and it had a lot of small to mid-sized towns interspersed throughout. They went to several, including Monroe, Lake Stevens, Marysville, and Arlington. Monroe was pretty interesting since it had fairgrounds and a state penitentiary (for some strange, demented, inexplicable reason Kiana had always wanted to tour a prison), and Lake Stevens was nice since it was near a small, pretty lake (thus the name), but she wasn’t too impressed with Marysville or Arlington. Marysville’s downtown area was rundown and dirty, and Arlington was filled with hillbillies. At one point, they had to wait for ten minutes as a farmer tried to get his cows out of the road, and at another point they got behind a tractor that was driving ten miles per hour.

“I didn’t think tractors were allowed on the road,” Kiana said.

“Apparently in Arlington they are,” Michael said.

At that point, it was getting pretty late so they headed for home. Kiana pulled the car into the garage, went upstairs and took a shower, slipped on a nightgown, then headed back downstairs with a pillow and blanket in hand.

Michael stopped her briefly in the hallway. He had a strange look on his face. “What are you doing?”

“I’m sleeping in my car tonight.”

He laughed. He couldn’t really believe what he had heard but he didn’t have any reason to object so he didn’t. “Make certain the garage door is locked.”

“I will.”

She spent the entire night in her car in the garage. It really wasn’t that comfortable and she didn’t sleep well at all, and at one point Michael snuck out and took photos of her so he could tease her about it and post the photos on Facebook, but she didn’t care, not in the least. To her, all that mattered was she had a car.