What Happens to Goodbye(11)

When I turned back to Gulag guy and Trust Issues, I found them suddenly—and passionately—making out, his hands sliding under her jacket. I glanced at the girl at the fridge, still weeping, and decided to head outside for some air.
On the side porch, people were smoking and shifting around in an effort to stay warm. It was a cold, crisp night, the stars so bright they seemed close enough to touch. Without even thinking about it, I started looking. One, I thought as I found Cassiopeia. Two was Orion. Three, the Big Dipper. Some people step over cracks, knock on wood, or toss salt over their shoulders. I never let myself look up at the night sky without finding at least three constellations. It just made me feel safer, more centered. Like no matter where I was, I could find somthing I recognized.
It was my mom who had taught me about the stars. She’d been an astronomy minor in college—one of the many surprises about her, actually—and my dad had bought her a telescope for their five-year wedding anniversary. She kept it on the small deck outside their bedroom, and on clear nights we’d huddle around it together, her finding the constellations and then pointing them out to me. “One,” she’d say, and point to the Little Dipper. “Two,” I’d say, and find one of my own. Then we’d both look hard, hard as we could, for another. Whoever found and named it first was the winner. Because of this, whenever I saw the night sky, no matter where I was, I was reminded of my mom. I wondered sometimes if when she looked up, she thought of me, as well.
Whoa, I thought as I felt a lump rise in my throat. Where did that come from? I’d only had about four sips of beer, but clearly, that was enough to threaten entirely too much nostalgia. I was just setting my can down when I saw the blue lights.
“Cops!” a voice yelled from behind me, and suddenly, everyone under the age of twenty-one was in motion. People from inside came bursting out the door, while those on the deck jumped the rails or pounded down the steps, taking off across the lawn into the darkness. I saw a couple of people dart across my porch and around the other side to the driveway, while still others took off down the street, their purses and jackets flapping behind them. One skinny girl with braids, wearing earmuffs, was not so lucky, getting corralled by an officer who was coming up the walk. I watched as he led her by the arm to his car, depositing her in the backseat. There, she slumped against the opposite window, putting her head in her hands.
“You!” A bright light flashed across me, then slid back right into my eyes, making everything invisible beyond it. “Stay right there!”
My heart started pounding, my face suddenly flushed despite the cold. As the light grew brighter, closer, shaking slightly with every step the cop took toward me, I had to make a choice. Mclean, Eliza, Lizbet, and Beth all would have remained still, following orders. But not Liz Sweet. She bolted.

Without even thinking, I ran down the deck stairs, hit the grass, and started across the muddy, frozen backyard. The light and the cop followed me, catching an arm here, a foot there. When I reached the thick row of bushes that marked the beginning of my own yard, he yelled at me to freeze or else. Instead, I plunged through them headfirst, crashing out the other side.
I landed on the grass, then immediately sprang to my feet to keep running. “Hey!” the cop bellowed, as the bushes began to rustle, the flashlight dancing above them. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop right where you are. Now!”
I knew I should do just that: he was close behind me, and I’d never make it to my house before the light hit me again. But in my panic, I scrambled forward anyway, even as I heard him coming through. I took one running step, and another, then suddenly felt a hand close around my left arm and yank me sideways. Before I even knew what was happening, I’d tumbled over a low wall on my left and was falling again. This time, though, I landed not on something, but someone.
“Umph,” whoever it was said, as together, we toppled down what felt like a flight of stairs, although it was suddenly too dark to say for sure. A second later, I heard footsteps, scrambling, and then there were two bangs, like doors slming shut. Wherever I’d landed, the bottom was flat and everything smelled like dirt. Plus it was dark. Really dark.
“What the—” I said, but that was all I managed before I was shushed.
“One sec,” a voice said. “Just let him get by.”
A beat later, I heard it: a thump- thump-thump noise, slowly growing louder, from overhead. As it grew closer, a yellow light appeared. When I looked up, I could see it, spilling through the cracks between what was, in fact, two shut doors above us. “Damn it,” I heard someone say, over a few huffs and puffs. Suddenly, the doors rattled, rising up slowly, before being dropped back down with a thud. Then the light was retreating, back the way it came.
In the silence that followed, I just sat there, trying to catch up with everything that had just happened. Sleep, crashing flowerpot, beer sips, Gulag, blue lights, and now . . . what? It occurred to me I should probably be nervous, as I was not only underground, but also not alone. And yet, for some reason, there was an odd calmness around me, a sort of familiarity, even in the midst of all this strangeness. It was the weirdest feeling. I’d never experienced anything like it.
“I’m going to turn on a light,” the voice said. “Don’t freak.”
Of all the things to say to someone you’ve just pulled down into some dark place with you, this was probably the worst. And yet, a second later, when there was a soft click and a flashlight popped on, I was not at all surprised to see my neighbor, the porch crasher, sitting beside me in jeans and a thick plaid shirt, a knit cap pulled down tight over his long hair. We were at the bottom of a short flight of stairs that led up, up to a set of doors, latched with a hook-and-eye closure.