“Let’s get out of here before someone calls the cops,” I said.
“What for?”
“Well, we just rammed into a snowbank and then spun out on ice for, like, five minutes. Someone might call that in.” Adam breathed heavily. “I don’t need to have any more interaction with the police tonight, all right? Get out and push. Come on.” I shoved him. I’m not sure if, at first, I shoved him because I was angry or simply to get him to snap out of it.
Later I would know exactly why.
“Screw off,” Adam said.
“Get out and push,” I said again, hitting him.
He turned toward me. Something rose from deep inside me. I punched him in the face.
“What the hell!” he yelled. He undid his seatbelt and came across the seat at me. He managed to get me pinned with one hand and started hammering on me with the other. I covered my head and face with my hands and arms and bent over. “Why’d you hit me?”
“Because you didn’t do anything,” I shouted.
“I did,” he said, still punching me. “I killed her.”
I suddenly shot my left arm out. Caught him under the chin. As he fell back. I undid my seatbelt and rolled out of the car. I crab-walked away from the open door. Adam got out and, holding on to the hood, maneuvered himself around the front of the car. He let go for a second and slipped on the ice, hitting the ground with a sharp, fast exhalation of air.
“You didn’t kill her,” I yelled. “I don’t know what happened, but you didn’t shoot her or stab her or strangle her. You didn’t kill her.” Adam pulled himself up and leaned against the hood of his car.
“I gave her the pill,” he said.
“What are you?” I said. “A drug dealer? Is that what you do at the club?”
“No. Not really.”
“What then?” I said.
“I just give them to people.”
“So you’re like, what, an illegal-substance Santa Claus? I don’t get it.” Every time one of us spoke, the air filled with the warm white clouds of our breath. Whenever we stopped talking, the world seemed entirely silent.
“No. It wasn’t like that. It was…” The door of the house we were standing in front of opened. A guy came out in a worn-out bathrobe.
“What’s going on out here?” he yelled.
“We hit some ice,” I said.
“Okay, so what’s all the yelling about?”
“We’re on our way,” I said. I looked at Adam. “Right?”
“Just trying to get the car out of this snowbank!” Adam called. He turned himself so that his hands were on the hood, with one leg stretched out behind him. “Get in and back it out.”
I got into the car and turned the ignition. I put it in reverse and gave it some gas. With Adam pushing, the car popped off the icy patch and out of the snowbank back onto dry pavement. I put the car in Park and slid across to the passenger seat. Adam got in and slammed the door closed.
“Why were you handing drugs out?” I asked.
“It was just something I did, man. It was nothing. I mean, everyone there is on E or something. It’s no big deal.”
Well, I thought, someone died because of it. So maybe it is a big deal.
“Where were you getting the drugs from?”
“Sly,” he said. “And it was just E. Nothing else.”
“Was he paying you for doing this?”
“Not really. Not officially or anything.”
“How did people pay for the drugs?”
“They gave me the money. But I never kept any of it. I put it in this box.” It was beginning to sound ridiculous.
“Man,” I said. We were at a T intersection at the end of the suburban area. If we went right, we’d head toward the downtown core. To the left was the highway. “So what are we going to do?”
Adam rested his head on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. There’s going to be an investigation. As soon as the police start asking who people were getting drugs from, my name is going to come up. I guess that’s why Sly had it set up this way. He never talked to anyone about drugs. He never handed anything out or was seen with the money.”
I looked out the window. Adam had been used. He knew it and I knew it, but neither of us were going to say it. Adam was the front. The one everyone knew.
The one who had sold Mary Jane the drugs that killed her.
“So what are we supposed to do?”
“We can just leave,” Adam said. He looked to the left. It was almost six in the morning. My stomach felt filled with acid. Absolutely nothing was making sense.
“Leave? And go where?”
“I don’t know. We can figure something out.”
“Just leave Mom? Leave town? Leave everything? No way.”
“What other options do we have?” Adam asked.
“What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” I said. “I never had anything to do with it.” I regretted saying that the second it escaped my mouth. Adam’s face dropped. He had never looked so alone.
“Then hop out, man. Just go.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. I wondered how much time we had before Adam’s name started popping up all over the place. The investigation would be in full swing come morning.
“Man, I’m an idiot,” Adam said.
“The police will be looking for the dealer and the supplier,” I said. “You’re the small fry in all of this.”
“I’m the front, Rob. That’s what you’re not getting here. I’m the guy people know. And…” He stopped. “And everyone knows I’m full of shit a lot of the time. If the police question me and I tell them the truth, they’ll have, like, fifty people who’ll say I’m a big talker. That I lie all the time. And Sly will be the first one to point the cops my way. He’s totally clean in all of this.”
“Sly never once gave anyone anything?” I asked. Adam shook his head.
“No, man, it was all me. He never even talked about drugs. What am I supposed to do?” I looked at the road that led to the highway. I could hop out, and Adam could drive away. He could be hundreds of miles from Resurrection Falls by the time the police came knocking at our door.
He could just leave.
Looking back at it now, I wonder what would have happened had I let him go. Not that it was up to me, really. But he was looking for a way out at that moment. He was looking for permission.
And I made him stay.