Page 6 of Valley Girls
“Oh, are you?” Ranger Miller asked dryly.
“She’s been through enough. She wasn’t driving or making a scene—”
“You need to talk to the judge first,” he interrupted.
Rilla froze, feeling Thea’s eyes on her.
“What?” Thea retorted. “She looks sober. She’s sitting there completely calm and alert.”
“Well, sheisdrunk.” Ranger Miller’s facial expression didn’t change throughout the entire conversation. Did it ever change? He had the face of a hot guy who wasn’t actually that hot and didn’t look like anything but a not-that-hot dick. Rilla narrowed her eyes:Dick Face.Ranger Dick Face.
“She blew a .07.” He began clicking his pen, studying Thea.
“She’s terrified and exhausted and achild,” Thea said sharply. “These kids are all way older than her. Right now, she just needs a safe place. I’m taking her home. If the judge has anything to say about it, you tell him to come talk to me.”
“Go ahead,” Ranger Dick Face said, waving his pen. “It’ll just make the decision this fall that much easier for everyone.”
“You’ll be as liable as me, Miller,” Thea said over her shoulder. She held her hand out for Rilla to take.
Rilla stared at Thea’s open hand and didn’t move. Never had she felt this shitty. Not even when she sat in a Rainelle jail with her bloody nose and swollen eye.
“Oh, trust me. I’ll make sure everyone knows what happened,” Ranger Dick Face said.
“That you were harassing vulnerable children?” Thea asked.
“That you were insubordinate,” he barked.
Rilla burst up. “Stopbeing an asshole to my sister. She didn’t do anything.”
“Rilla.” Thea pulled on her arm. “No. It’s fine ...”
Rilla shook her off and took a step toward Ranger Dick Face. “I was just an easy target.”
He frowned and looked straight past her to Thea. “Maybe work on getting her to take responsibility for her actions.”
“Rilla,” Thea snapped. “Let’s go.”
“Thea didn’t ask for this,” Rilla said as Thea tugged her out of the room. “Leave her alone.”
“Come on,” Thea said softly, squeezing Rilla’s hand.
Rilla’s skin crawled with the horror of her sister being so kind. It made her hate herself and everyone around her.
“Go to hell, Martinez,” Ranger Dick Face said as they went out the door.
“Meet you there,” Thea said before letting the door slam shut behind them.
Thea kept a firm grip on Rilla’s hand until they were outside, in the glimmering blue-gray of coming sunrise. The moon hung low, nearly resting on the top of cliffs that walled in the narrow valley, and winking as if it hadn’t lost sight of her since the bus stop in Merced by the Japanese maples.
“How dare you?” Thea finally asked. “I had you one day. I got home and you were gone. I was worried you went back to West Virginia, or had fallen off a cliff somewhere and would die before I found you. Why the hell did you do that?”
“It was an accident. I just got ...” Rilla ducked her chin. “Lost,” she said in a near whisper.
“Didn’t you stop and think that after everything that had happened I might be worried when you fuckingdisappear? You didn’t answer your phone or text me back. What if that guy—what was his name, Curtis?—had followed you out here?”
“Oh my god!” Rilla snapped. “Stop. That’s ridiculous and not how it was at all.” She cringed just to think about how Thea had probably talked about her. “Anyway, my phone is dead and I’m out of minutes.”
“Mom didn’t ... ?” Thea stopped. Frustration clamped her features into lines, and her words were clipped and tight. “Ugh, of course she didn’t send you out here with anything but a burner. Forget the phone. You didn’t think, even once, that maybe you should come home? You were gone all night!”
