We run to Buzzi, and I jump in the driver’s side. Bea climbs into the passenger side. Keys, keys … I see them dangling from the ignition.
“How did Annabelle do this?” I ask. “Did you watch her?”
“Um, she put her foot on that pedal to the left and then moved the stick?” Bea says. “I think?”
“Moved the stick how?”
Bea shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I turn the ignition, but the car jerks and stalls. “I can’t even turn this thing on!”
“Maybe you push on that pedal first?” Bea points to the floor. “Hang on. I’m asking Google.” Bea taps in How to drive a manual car. “Okay, I’m going to read this out to you, you ready? That pedal on the end is called the clutch.”
“The clutch. Got it.”
“You step on that when you shift. Push it all the way to the floor, and at the same time, hit the accelerator. You listen to the engine. When you hear it revving, shift into a higher gear.”
I start the car. But I can’t get the hang of using the clutch and the accelerator at the same time. I stall the car three times in a row.
“Shit, shit! I can’t do this.” I bang the steering wheel with my palms.
“Hey! If you can stand on a stage in front of a ton of people, you can drive a stick! People do this all the time.”
My shoulders relax a little. “You’re right.”
“Listen to me and do exactly what I tell you.” Bea turns around and scans the road. “The road is clear. Let’s try merging on. When you let the clutch out, hit the accelerator, pick up speed on the side of the road, and then merge on. I’ll tell you when to shift, okay?”
I step on the clutch, put the car into first, let the clutch out, and stamp on the accelerator. The car bucks forward and I’m moving.
“Shift!” Bea yells. “Clutch in and hit second!”
I do it, the car jolts forward, and the engine revs. I shift into third and then fourth.
I head out onto the highway, engine whining.
“Fifth!”
I fiddle with the stick. “Where is fifth?”
“Move your hand.” She looks at the stick shift. “Um. Up and over to the right.”
I shove the stick to the right and the engine calms down.
“Woo!” Bea says. “You’re doing it!”
I grin, but I don’t respond because I’m terrified. Bea and I both sit perched forward. I’m clutching the steering wheel so hard, my hands ache. I stare out at the road through the bug-splattered windshield.
Bea guides me to Louiston Police Department. There are three stoplights before the station. I stall the car at two of the stoplights. The driver of a red jacked-up truck leans on the horn in one long honk until I get the car going again. He passes me and mouths asshole and glares. If my hands hadn’t been occupied by trying to shift and steer at the same time, I might have flipped him off, two handed, Beatrice Delgado style.
I find the police department and park in front.
“Wait,” I say. I rummage around inside Annabelle’s pack, find her Wendy shirt, and pull it on over my tank top. We need a little of Wendy Davis’s courage right now.
A cluster of people sit in chairs in the middle of the room, but Annabelle isn’t among them. There isn’t a big desk with a policeman sitting behind it, like you see in the movies. I don’t know where to go, so I ask a man staring at his phone if he knows who I can ask. Without taking his eyes off his phone, he points to the back of the room. Bea and I go over and step up to a glass window. A bored-looking police officer sits behind it. I give him Annabelle’s name. The police officer taps it into his computer.
“Annabelle Ponsonby?” His voice is made tinny by the microphone.
“That’s her,” Bea says. “She didn’t do anything—”
He gets up, his gun belt creaking, and leaves his desk without saying anything. We stand at the window waiting and waiting. I’m about to tell Bea let’s go sit in the chairs when he comes back.
“None of the judges are in today since it’s a holiday, but the jail is overcrowded with early Fourth of July drunks, so we got a judge to hold a video court.” He looks at the clock. “In about three hours.”
“Three hours?”
“That’s what I said.” He points to the chairs. “You can wait over there or come back. Up to you.” He turns back to his computer.
“Can I talk to her?”
“Only if she calls you.”
“What if the judge says she’s guilty?”
The police officer sighs. “Texas law, less than a fifty-dollar theft is a class C misdemeanor, three-hunerd-dollar fine. Up to four hunerd and ninety-nine dollars is a class B misdemeanor. That comes with a side of four months in jail and a two-thousand-dollar fine.”
“It didn’t cost much,” I say. “Probably only ten dollars.”
“Doesn’t matter what it is,” he says slowly and loudly, as though I were a little kid without the ability to comprehend simple sentences. “It can be two cents, for all the law cares. Shoplifting is shoplifting. Got it?”
“What if she can’t pay the fine?” Bea puts in.
“Then she sits in jail until she can.”
“But that’s not right—”
The police officer scowls. “Look, ladies. Do I look like a politician? They make the laws. Not me. Take it up with your congressmen. Your friend broke the law, and she has to pay the consequences. Now take a seat or leave.”
We return to the chairs and sit in the two remaining empty seats. Mine is broken, and it wobbles when I sit down. A woman sitting next to me is crying, mouth open and tears streaming down her cheeks. She’s not even trying to hide it.
A woman wearing ripped-up jeans and dollar store flip-flops sits across from me, her arms folded. Her T-shirt says COME CLASSY, LEAVE TRASHY. She leans forward and stares at me. “Got any money?” she asks. “I wanna Coke.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t,” I say.
Bea clutches her purse to her chest.
“You look like you got at least a dollar.” Her eyes narrow. “You lyin’.”
If a dollar is all it takes to get her to leave me alone, I’ll give it to her. I grab my purse and take out a dollar. She snatches it out of my hand and heads over to the soda machine.
“She wants a Coke, all right,” a man in a red baseball cap says, looking up from his magazine. “Cocaine. Or maybe crack. You shouldn’t’ve given her money. Now she’ll pester the life out of you for more. Whenever people ask me for money, I tell them go work at McDonald’s. As long as they can say ‘you want fries with that?’ they can work, same as I do. I work hard for my money—”
I glance at Bea. We stand up and leave the station and go sit in Buzzi.
A few minutes later my phone rings.
“This is a call from an inmate at Louiston Detention Center,” an automated voice says when I answer the call. “Press one to accept the charges. This call will be recorded.”
I press one and put the phone on speaker.
“Camille?” It’s Annabelle. She sounds panicked, her voice high and thin.
“Annabelle?”
“That asshole pharmacist put a warrant out for my arrest. I have to see a judge! Where are you? Are you still by the side of the road?”
“We’re here. I talked to the police officer and he said the least it will be is three hundred dollars.”
Annabelle is silent for a moment. “I don’t have three hundred dollars. I have maybe fifty on me and not much in my bank account.”
“I have money,” I say.
“No way! You need that, Camille. If you figured out how to drive my car, go to New Mexico without me. I’ll figure something else out.” Her voice catches.
“I’m not leaving you here,” I say.
The automatic voice cuts in. “One minute remaining.”
“Shit,” Annabelle says.
“Are you all right in there?”
“Yeah. There’s a bunch of us. We’re all sitting on a bench in a room that’s hot, and there aren’t any windows. God, Camille, what if they put me in jail?”
“They won’t—”
The automated voice comes in and the phone cuts out.
I can’t go. I can’t leave her in jail like that.
“I don’t know what to do,” I tell Bea. “We can’t leave Annabelle to rot in jail with no way to get out. She doesn’t have anyone else to help her. What kind of person abandons her friend?”
Bea’s face flushes.
“Oh … no, no, no. Bea, I didn’t mean you.”
“I know you didn’t.” Bea fiddles with the strap on her purse. “I’m sorry I said that, Camille,” Bea says. “About killing a baby. I shouldn’t have. I truly didn’t come on this trip to stop you. It was as if everything that my parents and church friends have been saying for years came flying out of my mouth and I couldn’t stop it. I saw the look in your eyes and wanted to just shut up, but I couldn’t.”
“I know this must be hard for you, Bea, but you have to accept that it’s my decision and one that I have to make about my own body.”
“I know. You’re right. You’re my best friend, and more than that, what kind of person would I be if I turned my back on someone who needed help? Even if the help is more about support than guidance?”
“Hate the sin, love the sinner?”
“I fucking hate that saying,” Bea says.
“You said fuck. Again!” I say, laughing.
“I think I love that word,” she says. “It’s so … perfect.”
“It kind of is,” I say.
“Look, I don’t have another hundred-dollars-behind-Jesus. But…” Bea takes out her wallet and counts her money. “I have seventy-six dollars.” She dumps her wallet on her lap and sorts through movie ticket stubs, a single gold earring, a hair band, and a pile of change. “Looks like eighty-five cents.”
“I have seven hundred and change.”
“Gosh, that’s a lot of money.”
“It’s the money I saved for Willow and what’s left of my latest Iggy’s paycheck.”
“I’m sorry, Camille. This whole thing stinks. You don’t deserve any of this.”
“Yeah, well, at least I have it. So we have a little under eight hundred bucks. And I need six for the procedure, which means we don’t have enough to bail out Annabelle.” My shoulders slump.
“We need money to get to New Mexico and back home, too,” Bea says. “And we need a hotel for at least one night. You won’t want to go home straight after the…” She swallows.
“You’re right.” I sit back in my seat. “Okay, think, Bea.”
“I could ask Mateo for the money, but I doubt he has that much.”
I shake my head. “Remember, the fewer people we drag into this, the better. Besides, he’s saving up for a car.”
She sighs. “And my parents are out for sure.”
“How can we get some money quick?” I ask. “Think.”
“Too bad we can’t have a bake sale. Our church gets tons of money whenever we have those.”
I give her a look. “People would love that. Money for a poor pregnant girl and a jailbird.” I think for a second. “Actually, your bake sale idea isn’t all that kooky.”
“Where will we bake things, though?”
“I don’t mean baking. We could do a flash play, like how we do for the Globe.” Every year at the county fair, Mr. Knight takes a bunch of us, and we act out a scene from a play we’re doing. People look forward to seeing those every year.
“We could do that!” Bea bounces in her seat. “We could do that easy!”
“We’re four hours from Albuquerque, and it’s bound to be busy on the Fourth of July. If we put out a bucket or something, people will give money, I’m sure they will.”
“How will it work, though? Mr. Knight had a big group, and people liked the surprise of seeing who was going to turn into a character. We have to get their attention somehow.”
“That’s true. What if we start out having an argument, like the modern version of the scene, and then switch into Shakespeare?”
“There’s a ton of fights in Shakespeare we could do,” Bea says. “But I think we should do a comedy. How about The Taming of the Shrew? The one with Katherine, Bianca, and Baptista. That one’s really funny, and we’ve done the scene together.”
“It’s too short, though.”
We throw out a few more ideas—As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, The Merry Wives of Windsor. It feels good to talk about acting instead of the abortion. And the more we talk, the more we get into the idea.
“We did Midsummer a couple of years ago,” I say. “There’s that scene between Helena and Hermia. It’s really funny. People loved it.”
“We had small parts, though. I was Cobweb and you were Mustardseed. Annabelle was Hermia.”
“I was swing, though, for Helena, remember?”
“Oh!” Bea says. “That’s right.”
“There’s a small line from Lysander. You could do that.”
“Get ye gone, dwarf!” she says. “That one?”
“So it’s a plan, then?”
“It’s a plan.”
The judge fines Annabelle three hundred dollars for the misdemeanor plus twenty-five for the pregnancy test. I pay the fine, but the prison is so crowded, it takes another hour for them to process her paperwork. Finally, people start trickling out of the jail. The man with the magazine is paired with his son, who is about twenty. The man hits him over the head with a rolled-up magazine and swears at him. The crying woman has a husband who doesn’t look at her. He storms out of the station while she follows behind, staring at the floor. No one comes out for the woman who begged me for a dollar. She swears, gets up, and leaves. Finally, Annabelle comes out holding a plastic bag that says PRISONER’S BELONGINGS. I can see her purse and phone inside it.
“Oh my god, Annabelle.” I rush forward and hug her. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” Annabelle says. She notices my shirt then. “You brought Wendy with you.” She smiles.
Annabelle drags her fries through a puddle of ketchup. “A flash play?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Bea says. “We did the math, and we need some money to cover the, uh, you know—”
“Abortion,” Annabelle says.
“—that, plus some money to get home.”
“You already know the part,” I say. “You were the best Hermia.”
“I don’t think I can do it,” she says. “We have to figure something else out.”
Bea and I exchange glances. “We thought you’d love the idea,” Bea says.
Annabelle shakes her head. “No, I mean, I don’t think I can do it. Physically do it. In England, I sort of got in my head. It got so bad that whenever I put a foot onstage I’d freeze up. I literally couldn’t speak.”
“Maybe you could be Hermia, Bea,” I say.
“I don’t know. That’s a lot of lines to learn.”
I find the lines on my phone, and Bea and I lean over it. Annabelle eats her cheeseburger and doesn’t say anything.
Bea shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“Try it,” I say. “Hermia begins. You juggler!” I prompt.
“You canker-blossom!” Bea says, picking up the line. “You thief of love! What, have you … have you … uh…” She tries to find her spot on the phone.
“Come by night and stol’n my love’s heart from him?” Annabelle says.
“Have you no modesty, no maiden shame,” I continue with Helena’s part. “No touch of bashfulness? What, will you tear impatient answers from my gentle tongue? Fie, fie! You counterfeit, you puppet, you!”
“Puppet?” Bea says. “Why so?—Ay, that way goes the game. Now I perceive that she … that she…” Bea looks at Annabelle.
“… hath made compare between our statures!”
Annabelle continues with the monologue, all from memory, from a role she played years ago. She’s so good. Annabelle is so damn good! When she’s done with the monologue, she lets out a breath and sits back in the booth.
“Wow,” Bea says.
“I thought you said you froze up. That didn’t look like freezing to me,” I say.
“You should do it, Annabelle,” Bea says. “We’re not going to get any money at all if I do it.”
Annabelle sighs. “Okay. I’ll do it. Just this once.”
I’m hoping it won’t be just once. Annabelle is too good to give up on acting.
We watch from our booth as the sun starts to set. A minivan pulls up, and a bunch of kids pour out, chattering and laughing, the boys pushing one another. They come into the restaurant and the adults attempt to get them in line.
“They have no idea what’s ahead of them,” Annabelle says, nodding toward the kids. She sucks the last bit of Coke from her cup; her straw burbles and a little boy turns to look. He sticks his tongue out and does a goofy dance.
“Well, maybe that kid does,” I say, and Annabelle laughs.
We leave the restaurant, but we’re not ready to get back on the highway. We sit on Buzzi’s hood and lean against the windshield.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Bea asks.
“Mr. Rogers,” Annabelle says.
“Love him,” I say.
“Be serious,” Bea insists. “What do you want from your life? I feel like I change my mind all the time, and that can’t be good. I should have settled on something by now.”
“Same,” Annabelle says. “I was so sure I wanted to be an actor and there was nothing else, but that can’t be true. There has to be more to me, right?”
“I don’t know who I’ll be after all this,” I say. “How do you deal with awful things that happen? How do you forget them?”
I can feel Annabelle shrug. “I wish I knew. I’m not sure how I can deal with being dumped by RADA, or telling Mr. Knight and my parents.”
“My pastor says you can’t forget bad stuff, but you learn to carry it. I imagine it’s like a backpack; you stick all the junk in there and go on. Heavy things make you stronger.” She pauses. “That’s dumb, right?”
“I think it’s perfect,” Annabelle says.
“I read this quote from Virginia Woolf once, about how the future is dark and how she thinks that’s the best thing the future can be; that we can’t know how our actions can affect it, and how that’s good; otherwise we’d lose hope,” I say. “But I wish the future weren’t dark. I wish it were, like, full of light, so I could see what was ahead of me.”
“Me too,” Annabelle says.
“Me three,” Bea says.
We all hold hands. Stars now fill the sky. I’ve never seen so many stars in my life.
“The stars at night are big and bright,” Annabelle sings softly.
“Deep in the heart of Texas,” Bea and I sing.
“And that is why we aren’t musical theater actors,” I say.