What If (If Only.... #2)(16)

Her voice teases, but I hear the plea she’s trying to hide.

“Tell me what it means?” I ask. “What can I write that will fit?”

She wraps her arms around her torso in a lonely embrace, her eyes focusing on her shoe as it toes the pavement in front of her.

“Anything,” she says, facing me again. “As long as it helps me remember tonight.”

“Okay.” I shake the can again, approach the wall, and write.

Souvenir.

Memoria.

Cuimhne.

My penmanship is no match for her art, but my words scattered around hers don’t look half bad. Somehow they fit.

I set the can down on the ground and attempt to brush the already dried flecks of paint from my jeans. Maggie moves to my side, but her eyes stay trained on the wall.

“I know the French one, souvenir, because we use that one, too. It means memory, right?”

I nod. “The second is Spanish. And Italian. I kind of cheated there. And the third is Gaelic.”

She pivots to face me now, her eyes widening as she interprets the meaning.

“I wanted your words to have some memories.” I nudge her shoulder with mine. “So they won’t be all alone for eternity.” I skim my fingers along her hairline. “I want you to remember tonight.”

She bites her lip as tears well, and I don’t know if I’ve said the right thing—or the wrong. She opens her mouth to say something, and that’s when we see the approaching headlights.

Fuck.

“Fuck!” Maggie yells. I reach for her bag, not forgetting to throw the paint back in it. And then I reach for her hand already extended and waiting for mine.

And then…we run.

“This alley dead-ends at another one, but I think it leads away from the car!”

I trust her knowledge of the block’s layout and pull her away from the oncoming car, which I see, as I look over my shoulder, is of course a cop car.

When we hit the end of our alley, we head left down the intersecting one, and I assume we’re being taken to another that will lead us back to the main road and to my truck if we don’t end up in cuffs first. I can’t help but laugh at the thought of my father having to bail me out. Even for me, that would be a first.

But when we get to the alley I predicted would be there, any semblance of laughter stops when we face the one thing standing between us and, hopefully, freedom—an eight-foot-high, chain-link fence.

Fuck.

“Fuck.” Again. “We don’t even know if the cop saw us,” Maggie says, radiating an unusual calm.

“Yeah, but if he or she or whoever did, we’re caught unless we climb.”

Maggie looks down at her long skirt and then up at me.

“You got this, Pippi. I’m right behind you.” I throw her bag over my shoulder and across my body, nodding for her to climb. And she does.

I’m behind her and then next to her when we reach the top, my fingers numb against the cold metal, Maggie’s maybe surviving better in her cut-off gloves.

“What if my skirt…” She trails off, but I know what she’s thinking.

“I’m not gonna let you get stuck, Maggie. Okay? Do you trust me?”

She nods, hoisting a leg over the pointed top of the fence while trying to maintain her modesty. And if I didn’t glance back and see the beam of a flashlight approaching the end of graffiti alley, I might have thoughts of sneaking a peek. Now all I want is to keep her calm, keep myself calm, and, for reasons far different than the ones I felt nearly an hour ago, get the f*ck out of here.

When Maggie makes it over the top without incident, I’m more than confident I’ll do the same, which is why when the front of my hoodie catches on the intertwined spindles of metal, lifting it and my shirt up to my chest, I panic. Haste clouds any rational thought as I slide my torso up the fence, flush against the metal, freeing my clothing but leaving a tiny bit of me as a souvenir.

Fucking hell. I make my way down the rest of the way, wincing at the sting where the topmost point of the fence grazed my skin as it gave me back my clothes. That’s gonna leave a mark.

When my feet hit the ground, Maggie says nothing but holds out her hand, and we run once again toward the street, only to look in the direction of my truck and see, far beyond where we parked, the cop car fading in the distance. When I turn again toward the fence, I find the flashlight’s owner—a woman walking her small dog, and bark out a laugh.

“What?” Maggie asks as we slow to a walk, both of us breathing hard.

“Nothing,” I say, stopping to catch my breath and shaking my head as I laugh even harder. I take her bag off my shoulder and hand it to her.

She laughs, too, a sound full of relief, as she backhands my stomach.

I wince.

“Hold it there, Fancy Pants,” she says, grabbing the hem of my hoodie and lifting it slowly to reveal what looks like an attempt to slice me open with a serrated knife.

“It’s a scratch,” I say, because it isn’t much more, aside from the few locations where the metal took a bit more skin. The blood is already drying, but yeah, it stings. And I’ll be lucky if I don’t wake up with tetanus spasms.

“I’m sorry,” she says, my skin still exposed to the chilly air. “This is my fault. If I hadn’t brought you here, this never would have…”