Lettie
Do I find it strange to be in Jay Kumar’s Subaru, driving somewhere—don’t know where—on some half-baked revenge plot against my cousin’s girlfriend? Um, you betcha.
It’s a minor miracle that my father agreed to let me go in the first place. If he’d said no, I would have gone to my mom. If she said no, I was fully prepared to sneak out. As Jay said, revenge isn’t a play-it-safe kind of thing.
Speaking of safe, it’s a foggy, drizzly kind of evening. Jay is a good driver, though he consistently goes ten miles over the speed limit, even in the rain. That’s got to be intentional, like he knows just the right amount so that he never gets pulled over. He doesn’t curse under his breath at other drivers the way my father does. No, Jay is calm. He projects an air of total control.
A new-car smell wafts up from the polished black leather seats. The dashboard glows red and features all kinds of high-tech gizmos. Jay has cradled his phone in a holder that latches onto one of the air vents. He’s running a GPS app that seems to be leading us to the location of another vehicle, specifically Riley’s BMW.
Yeah, that’s right, Riley has a BMW, same as her dad. Whatever.
“Tell me again how you know where she is?” I ask as the rain comes down.
Electronic dance music blasts from Jay’s seat-shaking car stereo system. I’m glad he plays his music really loud so we don’t have to endure the awkwardness of small talk. We can just drive and follow the path to where Riley is parked. But again, I’m curious. How does he know her location?
“It’s called a GPS tracker,” Jay tells me. “I put a small device inside Riley’s car, and it broadcasts a signal back to me so I can know her whereabouts.”
I gulp as a knot of worry blossoms in my chest, but I let the feeling pass, because what am I going to do now? Beg Jay to let me out on the side of the road, in the rain no less, just because he’s breaking eight or nine different laws? Yeah, I probably should, but I don’t. I’m seventeen and technically my brain is still forming, so instead of doing the smart thing, I say, “You do know I can’t really write this into my paper on revenge. Pretty sure my teacher would call the cops on you if I did.”
Jay laughs it off. “I wouldn’t write anything incriminating about yourself. Besides, Riley’s not going to know it’s there,” he assures me. “And I’ll get it out of her car tonight after she goes to bed.”
Now it’s finally clicking for me. “Wait, did you break into Riley’s car?”
Jay shoots me an incredulous look. “How else was I going to put the tracker in there?”
He says it like I should have known, but I’m still putting the pieces together. Here’s what I conclude: Jay is a criminal. He’s a digital bad boy, which is probably the only kind of bad boy I can handle. I’m really not into the tatted-up in-your-face rough and tough types. Guess I like my outlaws to be quicker with the mouse than the draw.
I strongly suspect if my mother knew what Jay is all about—how he hacked into his parents’ computer, broke into a neighbor’s car, seldom left his basement hideout, got kicked out of college, vaped like Puff the Magic Dragon—she’d put a hard stop to our burgeoning friendship. If my dad found out, I suspect we’d be moving.
I glance at the tracker app on Jay’s phone, which directs us to Riley’s parked car some ten miles away in what is known as the Metro Region. Here the big houses and sprawling lawns give way to crowded streets lined with bars, restaurants, and a good deal of nightlife. What the heck is Riley doing out here? Meadowbrook kids never troll the Metro Region. This is the stomping ground for college frats and recent postgrad types, which may explain why Jay looks supremely confident navigating these streets. He drives, tokes on his vape, letting in a little rain as he blows smoke out the window, checks the GPS, and does it all with ease.
I’m a bit surprised and perhaps a tad unnerved that I find myself even more attracted to Jay. I’m worried it’s because he flaunts the rules in ways I never would.
Without warning, Jay swerves his car to the right, hard enough to make my stomach lurch as he changes lanes. A moment later, he’s expertly navigating his Subaru into a tight space using the kind of parallel parking skills I suspect I’ll never possess.
“Her car is parked up there,” Jay tells me. He points to the other side of the street, about five cars ahead of us.
There it is: the back end of a black car that could be Riley’s Beamer, but I can’t be certain in the rain and fog.
“I had no idea Riley hung out here,” I say.
“There’s a lot about Riley you don’t know. But that’s why we’re here, right? Find out her secrets … and exploit them.”
“Where do you think she is?” I ask, looking at the sea of neon surrounding us.
“She could be anywhere,” Jay tells me. “We’ll just wait it out.”
A stab of panic hits me. No music. No driving. No distractions. We have to talk to each other. Jay leaves his car idling while we wait, and out of habit I lean over and push the button that kills the engine. It’s something I do with my mother whenever she does the same.
Jay shoots me a look, one tinged with grievance.
I’m utterly mortified. “Sorry,” I stammer. “I should have asked. I’m kind of conditioned to do that.” I want to make myself small enough to crawl into the glove compartment.
Jay takes a toke. “No worries,” he says, blowing vapor into the air that hangs cloudlike around his head. “I was being thoughtless.”
“It’s just that there’s more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now than at any time in human history,” I blurt out, unprompted. Some habits are hard to break.
“Is that so?” Jay’s smile implies he’s not afraid of the looming climate apocalypse.
“Preindustrial levels were 278 parts per million. Now it’s past 400 parts per million, which is most definitely human-caused. I’m sorry if you’re a natural cycle believer, but that’s just utter bullshit. We did it.”
“I’m not disagreeing,” he says.
“Last time there was this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, trees grew on the South Pole.”
“Are you always this cheery a conversationalist?” asks Jay.
I feel myself die inside.
Jay’s laugh pulls me from my mental abyss. “It’s fine,” he tells me. “I need to think about these things more than I do.”
“I guess when you’re trying to become the next tech billionaire, things like breathable air don’t really matter that much,” I say, wondering if I’ll ever learn to shut my mouth.
“What else inspires you, Lettie? Beside our warming planet?” Jay leans toward me.
I smell his cologne (did he put that on for me?) and can feel the body heat radiating off him as my own internal temperature ticks up a degree or two.
I want to give him a good answer, something that will make him think I’m worldly and all that, but I come up blank instead. What does inspire me?
“Why are we here?” Jay presses. “Why do you want this so bad?”
I’m thinking: Loony Lettie, security alarms, all that girlhood bullying, but I keep my response general. “She deserves it,” I say.
“Not really an inspired answer.”
I’m saved from explaining myself further by the sight of a young woman who comes stumbling out of a bar called McCormick’s. It takes me a moment to realize that the off-kilter patron who’s wearing no jacket, only a blue dress that appears to have been painted on, is actually the person we’d come here to find.
Riley grabs onto a nearby parking meter like it’s her dance partner. Her feet leave the curb as she swings out into the street before returning to the sidewalk after completing one full revolution. She might be upright, but that doesn’t make her steady. She sways back and forth, oblivious to the rain dampening her clothes and hair. One moment I think she’ll topple left, and the next I think she’ll go right.
Before she can fall, a tall guy in a sports coat and jeans bursts out of McCormick’s. He hunches forward to shield himself from the rain as he runs to catch up with Riley, who’s begun walking away from her car.
Jay hits the wipers, but I can’t get a good look at Riley’s companion. The rain is making him blurry, and to make matters worse, he opens an umbrella that he uses to keep them both dry.
How chivalrous of him.
Riley shows her appreciation of Umbrella Man by wrapping her arms around him.
The umbrella comes down like a shield, blocking my view of what’s happening on the other side, but I can see the guy’s hand is low enough to be cupping a part of Riley’s rear anatomy where Dylan would not think it belonged. The umbrella comes down even more so I can watch a drunken kiss. Honestly, I’ve seen mating rituals in wildlife documentaries that were classier.
Jay has his phone out. It takes me a moment to realize he’s recording the whole encounter. I’m not sure how much he can capture on video given that all I can make out is the back of Riley’s head.
After the pawing, Umbrella Guy escorts Riley to the passenger side of her car. I’m thinking it’s a good thing she’s not driving; I feel safer with this guy behind the wheel. At least he can walk a straight line. One second, they’re parked, and the next they’re driving out of sight. It happened that fast.
Jay pulls out and we’re back to following them, but there’s no need for the GPS if we can keep them in sight.
I feel a little less guilty about tailing Riley covertly because now we’ll know that she gets home safely. I check the time on the dash. The movie I’m not at just got out. We follow the Beamer for a few minutes.
“They’re not heading back to Meadowbrook,” Jay tells me.
“We have to keep following her and make sure she’s okay,” I answer. “That guy she’s with is definitely not in high school.”
“It’s okay, we got enough,” Jay says.
“Enough for what?” I ask, not liking the nervous edge in my voice.
“Revenge,” he says. “We put the video and pictures online, tag Riley, and that should turn her life upside down.”
I gulp, thinking that’ll turn Dylan’s life upside down as well. “You can’t do that,” I snap. “Dylan will be crushed.”
Jay bangs a U-turn at the light and starts driving away from Riley.
“Where are you going?” I shout. “We’re headed the wrong way!”
Jay doesn’t change course. “I’m not wasting any more of my time on this, Lettie. We have a plan. Doesn’t seem like you can go through with it, though. No worries. I’m not going to force you.”
I feel all kinds of panicky. “I need you to turn this car around, Jay, right now.” My tone is older and bolder than I am.
“So you’re okay if I post the pictures?” Jay wants to know.
“No,” I say sharply. Then suddenly I get it. I know exactly what Jay is thinking. “If I tell you to post the pictures you’ll turn around?”
“That’s right,” Jay says.
“And if I say no posting, we drive home?”
“Right again,” says Jay. “This is how revenge works, Lettie. You have to make some difficult choices.”
I can’t let him post. “What if something happens to her?” I cry out. “Who’s that guy she’s with? She could be in trouble. We can’t just leave her.”
Jay shoots me a sideways glance. “Did she look in distress to you?”
He makes a good point.
“She’s fine, Lettie,” he says with utter confidence. “And I don’t think you’ve got this revenge thing figured out just yet. You’re supposed to want bad things to happen to your target.”
“But not rape!” I shout. “I don’t want her to get hurt. And I don’t want Dylan getting hurt, either.”
“Again, that’s just not how revenge works.”
“We’re going to have to come up with something else then,” I insist. My heart is beating so hard I worry it might burst.
“It’s fine,” Jay says. “Let’s forget all about it and just go home. She can handle herself, and clearly that wasn’t the first time she’s been with that guy.”
“We should still follow her,” I say.
“Why? To see what Motel 6 they’re crashing at? I’d rather save the gas.”
“How do you know where he’s taking her? What if he takes advantage of her?” I ask. “She’s clearly under the influence.”
“Okay, then give me the green light to post the pictures, and we’ll spend as long as you want following Riley around. Those are your two choices. So what do you want to do, Lettie?”
I want to punch Jay in the face, that’s what, but he’s driving. I dig my fingers into my legs instead. How did I let myself get into this mess? I asked for it, that’s how. I study my knuckles. What the hell should I do? Post the pictures and maybe save Riley, or don’t and spare Dylan.
So far, getting revenge really blows.
“Relax, Lettie. This isn’t Riley’s first night on the town. I can assure you.”
“You’ve followed her before?”
“Let’s just say I’ve done a little initial reconnaissance work. She’s fully aware of what she’s doing.”
I admit that puts me somewhat at ease. At least it’ll buy me time to decide what to do with the recording.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Jay says, “I’ll keep an eye on the GPS tracker. Make sure she gets home safely.”
What more could I do? I can’t control what happens on her date without crashing the party. I figure it’s out of my hands, and at least Jay will know her whereabouts so I can sleep tonight.
“Shoot me a text when she’s home, okay?”
“No problem,” Jays assures me. “But chances are she’s not coming back until morning. I’m sure her mom thinks she’s sleeping at a friend’s house—that’s what I would have told my parents back in the day.”
“Good point,” I say.
“And Lettie, you should know this isn’t the only secret Riley’s keeping.”
“What else?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”
He opens up the center console to his Subaru and takes out an amber-colored pill bottle. There’s no label, but Jay shakes it and the bottle rattles like a maraca. “I found this in Riley’s car,” he says. “Maybe I’ll put it back—or maybe I’ll make her think she lost it. These beauties are no joke.”
“What are they?”
“Quality opioids,” he says with delight. “Unless she’s recently had back surgery, it seems our little Riley isn’t just into booze and boys. She’s into the hard stuff as well.”
Jay presses down on the gas. His car zooms forward as my stomach flattens from the force of acceleration. I glance at the speedometer, watching the needle climb until it stops at about twenty miles an hour over the speed limit.
In the GPS tracker I can still see Riley’s car continuing in the opposite direction, headed to who knows where with some stranger.
The rain is coming down harder now.