Lost Along the Way(25)

“Watch it!” Meg yelled as she ducked. “You’re going to hit me by accident!”

“You think she’s better than me? You think you can cheat on me with some cheerleading slut?” Cara screamed, the tennis ball once again serving as a wonderful proxy for Mark’s head.

“I will kill you!” Cara screeched as she slammed a ball over the net.

“I will destroy you!” she cried, knocking the next ball so hard it became trapped between the links of the fence surrounding the court.

“I will make you wish you never met me!” Pop! She smashed another one, the sound of the racket on the ball reminiscent of a champagne cork being freed from its bottle.

“You stupid, arrogant, *!” she shouted as she nailed the ball with a powerful backhand that unfortunately went a bit wayward and hit the machine—which promptly stopped working. Man, Jane thought. No matter how many times she watched Cara in action, she’d never stop being impressed by her strength or agility.

“Uh-oh,” Jane said as she heard the machine sputter and the motor slowly wind down.

“What just happened?” Meg asked. She went over and began pushing buttons on the back of the machine. “Oh my God, she broke it! What are we going to do?”

“What’s going on?” Cara yelled from the other side of the net, flushed and out of breath but energized. “Come on, I’m just getting warmed up! Turn up the speed! Let them fly! I can do better than this!”

“It’s not broken—it’s just . . . not working at the moment,” Jane said, trying very hard not to panic.

“What if we broke it?” Meg whispered to Jane as they blindly banged on the machine, trying to bring it back to life. It was pointless. It had flatlined.

“Well, what do we care? Cara won’t be on the tennis team next year, and I’m pretty sure they’ll replace it by then.”

“But that means we damaged school property! We can get in a lot of trouble for this! What if someone saw us? What if they dust the tennis balls for prints and find out it was us? Can they keep us from graduating?”

“You really need to stop watching Court TV. No one is going to dust tennis balls for prints, you lunatic. You’re overreacting! Who’s going to find us anyway? There’s no one here!”

“Hey! Who’s over there?” a security guard called from the far perimeter of the court, waving a flashlight in their direction.

“Oh shit! Run!” Jane said, grabbing the duffel bag off the ground but leaving the bolt cutters and tennis balls behind.

“Oh my God!” Meg squealed for the millionth time as she took off for the gate, her strides somewhat inhibited by the skirt she was wearing. “I can’t go to jail! I want to go to Vanderbilt!”

“Shut up and run, Meg!” Cara yelled as she tore through the gate ahead of the others and made her way to the parking lot. Jane had insisted that Cara park her car a block away from school, which at the time had seemed totally unnecessary, but now made perfect sense. No middle-aged security guard was going to catch three teenage girls running at a full sprint, and by the time he got to the street they’d be long gone. Once again, Jane had thought it all out.

Jane heard Meg’s footsteps behind her, and off in the distance saw the dim glow of the guard’s flashlight as they ran from the courts. Then, a cry from Meg.

“Owwww!” she yelled. Cara turned to see what happened but never broke stride.

“Are you okay? Come on, Meg! Run! If we get caught they might not let us graduate tomorrow!” Jane said.

“You said I was overreacting to worry about that!”

“I lied!”

“I’m going to kill you, Jane! And I think I just ripped off part of my skirt!”

“What?” Jane asked as they continued to sprint toward the car.

“How the hell did you do that?” Cara called.

“It got stuck on a spike on the fence! I hurt my butt!”

Cara and Jane burst out laughing as they reached the car, both of them exhausted from running and the adrenaline of the last caper they’d ever pull together in high school. All three climbed into the car and they sped off, Cara driving with Jane beside her in the passenger seat and Meg nestled in the back, the same seats they’d always sat in since they’d learned how to drive. Jane had gotten her driver’s license first, but for some reason even though Cara had turned seventeen a few months after her, she still was the de facto chauffeur. No one asked where Cara was headed because they already knew. They’d made this drive down toward the beach multiple times a week, using the time in the car to talk about boys or school or anything else that they needed to discuss without worrying about their mothers overhearing the conversation. Jane exhaled loudly as she stared at the dirt that disappeared into underbrush and darkness just a few feet in front of her. Cara pulled her car over onto the shoulder of the road, put it in park, and turned off the headlights. Jane realized she’d be nervous sitting in the dark on these back roads if she hadn’t done it thousands of times before.

“Okay, let’s see it,” Jane said as she turned from the passenger seat to get a look at Meg’s injury.

Meg leaned to her left in the backseat to reveal a huge tear in the back of her skirt and a large red scratch on the bottom of her ass.

“Is it bad?” Meg asked.