Juvie Read Online Free Page A

hook up with this ho?”
    I clenched my teeth and sped toward the 7-Eleven. Carla hummed to herself, a song that sounded familiar but that I couldn’t quite make out, which pretty much summed up Carla these days: somebody who seemed familiar but who I couldn’t say I really knew.
    There were empty spaces in front of the store, but Dreadlocks told me to park in a dark corner of the lot, out of the light. “It’s closer to the bathrooms,” he said. I didn’t want to argue and figured it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if no one saw us driving around with these two losers — though it occurred to me that it was the sort of place somebody might park if they were planning on robbing a store.
    And besides that — I realized too late, as I watched them disappear into the 7-Eleven — Dreadlocks would have to return the key to the bathroom, and so it didn’t save him any time if I parked here.
    “Carla, I have a bad feeling about this,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on the guys inside the store, which was nearly impossible. Were they at the register? Were they asking for the bathroom key or for all the money in the register? “Carla?”
    But Carla didn’t seem to hear me, or to care about anything that might be going on. Her head was leaned back on the headrest, and her eyes were closed. She was still humming, only now I recognized the tune: an old Led Zeppelin song called “Going to California.” It made me think of Dad, who used to play Zeppelin all the time. And Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead and all those guys.
    I liked “Going to California” a lot — the acoustic guitar, the sweet lyrics about riding a white mare and trying to find a woman who’d never, ever been born, whatever that meant. Dad always played vinyl albums on an old record player when we were growing up. He said he never threw away a single album he ever owned, and I believed him. Once when I was little, I bought him a Led Zeppelin CD for Father’s Day, but he never listened to it. I hoped he still played his records now, alone in his wing of Granny’s old house, and I hoped they made him happy, at least a little.
    The back door of the car opened suddenly. A bearded guy in a knit cap and a heavy gray overcoat slid into the backseat. He smiled an oily smile.
    “What are you doing?” I demanded. Carla just looked back at the guy as if it was no big deal, happened all the time.
    “You got something for me, right?” he said. “I got the call to meet a girl here.” He nodded at something in the backseat. It was a backpack that I only dimly recalled Scuzzy carrying. “That it?”
    He handed me a thick envelope and I stupidly took it. It wasn’t until I held it up to the dim light from the store that I realized it was stuffed full of money.
    “What is this?” I asked the guy in the knit cap, looking around for Scuzzy and Dreadlocks, hoping they would reappear and clear this whole thing up. “Nobody called you. I don’t want this —” I tried to give him back the envelope, but he ignored me.
    He grabbed Scuzzy’s backpack off the floorboard and pulled out a freezer bag filled with pot. He sniffed it, tasted it for some reason, stuffed it back inside the pack, reached in his pockets, and pulled out a badge and a gun.
    “Nice doing business with you, ladies,” he said, again with that oily smile. Other men with beards and knit caps and badges and overcoats and guns materialized out of the darkness and surrounded the car, which was suddenly flooded with the light from a dozen flashlights.
    “And now you’re under arrest.”

The door to juvie closes with a solid thud, leaving behind the sound of those blue jays, leaving behind my motorcycle, leaving behind everything.
    Mrs. Simper takes my bag right away. “You’re not allowed to have this,” she says, lifting it with two fingers and handing it to a guard whose name tag says OFFICER WALLACE. He’s wearing a khaki-and-blue uniform and blue medical gloves.
    “You’re