I checked my phone – still no news from Wheeze – and then rode home as fast as I
I checked my phone – still no news from Wheeze – and then rode home as fast as I could. Coming down from the top of the hill on Franklin gave me a great running start. I was flying when I approached the first traffic lights. There was no sign of cops around, so I sailed through the red lights and onto the bridge over the Mississippi, keeping it up all the way to our house.
But I realized Monica had beaten me home when I saw her old battered Prism parked on the curb. I slipped in the front door as quietly as I could to avoid riling up the other people living in the house, hoisted my bike onto my shoulder, and trudged up two flights of stairs, gearing up for a lecture. Luckily, even though Monica’s a college professor, she’s lousy at lectures.
She was waiting for me, arms crossed. “I was about to call the police.”
I hung my bike up on the rack by the door. “No you weren’t.”
“All right, I wasn’t. But I was wondering how I would live with myself when I finally did call them and they made me identify your body at the morgue and asked me why it took me so long to report you missing.”
“Yeah, right. You know what happens when you call in a missing teenager? Did you know that people used to hang telephones on their walls? Those big clunky landline phones with push buttons? Isn’t that crazy?”
“Seriously, Zenobia. I was worried.”
And angry enough to use my full name in all its dorkiness, just to rub it in. “I was talking to a lawyer. Wilson got arrested.”
“Again?”
“This time it’s serious. It was probably on the news. Is your computer on?” I pulled the keyboard over, checked to see that the VPN I’d installed was ready to route me through another country – Norway, this time. I went to MPR’s website and pulled up a news report: “Nine Arrested in South Minneapolis.”
“Oh my God, that’s Wilson,” Monica said in a squeaky voice, staring at the photo and flopping down in a chair as if she was about to faint. “What did he do?”
“Nothing.”
“Shhh, don’t shout,” she said automatically.
“See?” I said in a fierce whisper. “Everybody sees a picture like that? He’s guilty. Automatically.”
“I didn’t mean he’s actually guilty. Not Wilson. He would never hurt anybody. But look at all those police.”
“And federal agents.” I enlarged the image and pointed out the pony-tail woman with the hat.
Monica made another squeak. “Oh my God. FBI? What did he do?”
“Nothing!” I stomped away. Stomp stomp stomp. Then, right on schedule, thump thump thump. A broom handle being banged against the ceiling downstairs to tell us to keep it down. I figured I might have to do more stomping yet tonight, but it would be quieter in my socks. As much as I hated it when Monica reminded me to keep it down, we really couldn’t afford to piss off the downstairs neighbors. The apartment we were in, the attic floor of an old house, wasn’t actually a legal rental property, but it was the nicest place we’d lived in a long time, and the cheapest. We couldn’t afford to get thrown out.
She played the radio report o