Todd Strasser - Kill You Last

“If he doesn’t drive all over town first, showing off to his friends,” Roman quipped in a snarky tone.

I sensed that she was about to launch into a recitation of all the things she disliked about him, so I quickly changed the subject. “What else is going on? What are they saying at school?”

On the screen, Roman looked down at her keyboard, so all I saw was the part in her hair. When she looked back up, her lips were a flat, straight line. I knew the news wasn’t going to be good.

“It’s all they’re talking about. I was chatting with Sabrina and some girls from the Bugle, and they were comparing notes. Like things your father had said to them, or the way they sometimes caught him looking at them. The general feeling is that he’s probably responsible for whatever happened to those girls.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I still felt like I’d been stabbed in the gut. It was so unfair. Why didn’t Sabrina come to me in person? We’d been teammates on intramural volleyball for years.

“Mom says they probably ran away and will pop up in a day or two,” I said.

“Three girls from different states ran away together?” Roman repeated dubiously.

I winced at how dumb that must’ve sounded. On the screen, Roman’s eyebrows dipped with concern. “Should I not be saying this stuff?”

“No, it’s okay…I guess.”

“If you ask me, it’s just plain sucky,” Roman said. “I mean, I like your dad, and I think it’s a ridiculous leap from catching someone staring at your cleavage to assuming he’s going around hurting people, but-”

“Wait,” I said. “Nobody said anyone’s been hurt. Maybe they didn’t run away together, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t go somewhere. They could have all joined a cult.”

“The Kirby Sloan head shot cult?”

I sighed. “Let’s talk about something else.” I told her about my interview at Sarah Lawrence that morning, and Roman told me that she’d decided to apply early decision to Skidmore, where she wanted to pursue art and dance. When we finished, I closed my laptop and sat on my bed, feeling really, really down about the rumors concerning Dad. Was it partly my fault for never saying anything to him about the way he sometimes acted around my friends? I guess there are parts of our lives that we’re aware of, but we try to make them go away by not thinking about them. I realized I was guilty of the same thing Mom was-we believe that if we don’t think about certain problems, they won’t be true. There’d been so many embarrassing things Dad had said over the years…Like once he’d asked me what Courtney’s bra size was. And then there was the time he wanted to know what my friends and I talked about when we took showers after gym, and other times when he made sexist jokes that I found seriously distasteful. And then there was the Ferrari, and how before I was old enough to drive, he used to love to pick me up at school in it. Nothing seemed to make him happier than when one of my friends asked if he would take her for a ride around the block before we went home. And since it was a two-seater, that always meant going off with her alone.

If only I’d said something, told him that some of the things he did and said were borderline creepy…Maybe it would have made a difference. Maybe he would have been more careful about the way he acted and we wouldn’t be in this situation now, where everyone assumed he was guilty of having something to do with those missing girls.

But like everything, there was another side to the story. Most of the fun times I’d had with my family had come because Dad had gotten us to go out and do something. And when I was upset, he’d always been the one I’d gone to, the one I could depend on to help me feel better. Mom never seemed to understand me the way he did, and for that reason I needed him and was a little afraid of doing anything that might make him angry. So as those moments came when maybe I should have said something about his behavior, I’d just tried to laugh it all off, saying things like “Oh, it’s just Dad being Dad” and “He’s harmless.” Because, I realized now, that’s what I wanted to believe.

My BlackBerry buzzed. I picked it up and felt my jaw tighten. It was another e-mail from vengeance13773288@gmail. com: Wre I 2 die today, my dying wish would B 2 C Ur dad get what he deserves.

I sat up on the side of my bed, thinking I should show it to Mom, but then caught myself. She was already upset about what was happening with Dad and with imagining a life without me at home. Showing her another e-mail like this wouldn’t help. The best thing I could do about this latest e-mail, I decided, was to keep it to myself.

And there was something else: like the last one, this message had come as an e-mail, but was written like a text. What did that say about the person who’d sent it?

I’d given up on my homework and was skipping around the Internet, looking for news updates, when Dad knocked on my door and came in. The lines in his face looked deeper than usual, and his eyes were ringed.

“How’s it going?” he asked, trying to sound jocular.

“Not very good, but probably better than it’s going for you.”

He plopped down wearily on the edge of my bed. “I’m sorry about all this, sweetheart. Really can’t make heads nor tails of it. But it’s good that the police are involved. Sooner or later they’ll figure out what’s going on with those girls. And then we’ll be able to get back to normal.”

It was a relief to hear him say that. Surely someone guilty of wrongdoing wouldn’t be so welcoming of police involvement.

“I ask a favor?” he said. “We pulled off our little masquerade, and Gabe’s bringing the Ferrari over. Someone has to drive him back home.”

I felt my heart leap unexpectedly. “Oh, uh, sure, Dad, I can do that,” I said, as if it was the right thing for a daughter to do. But the truth was, despite everything that was going on, I couldn’t help but feel excited by the thought of being alone in a car with Gabriel.

“Thanks, sweetheart.” Dad managed a weak smile. “And don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

As soon as he left my room, I started to look through my closet for something to wear. I did feel a little guilty about trying to look nice during a family crisis, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to look my best for Gabriel. I was in the bathroom doing my makeup when I heard the high-pitched whine of the Ferrari’s engine outside.

Dad called up the stairs. “Shels? Time to go.”

Downstairs, Gabriel was in the hall with Dad. I know it was only my imagination, but I wanted to believe that they were both captivated as I came down the steps like a movie star descending a curved marble staircase. My fantasy was brief. Thinking more about the car than about me, Gabriel turned to Dad and said, “Can’t I drive it back to my place and then Shelby can drive it home?”

“You’ve had enough fun for one day,” Dad replied.

Gabriel tossed him the key fob with the famous prancing black horse. A few minutes later we drove out of the driveway in my Jeep. The few journalists still hanging around outside looked up as we passed, but no one showed much interest. Meanwhile, I nervously racked my brain for something clever to say. Luckily, Gabriel had a question.

“Does he ever let you drive it?”

“The Ferrari? Just once.”

“Why? Something happen?”

“I backed it out of the driveway, and he said I didn’t come to a complete stop before I shifted into first.”

“So you know how to drive a stick?” Gabriel sounded impressed.

“Before the Ferrari, we had a Porsche. That’s what I learned on. Dad taught me to drive in a parking lot when I was fourteen. He thinks it’s sexy when a woman can drive a stick.” But now I wondered, had it been appropriate for Dad to say to me, his daughter, that driving a stick was sexy?