Bad Girl Reputation by Elle Kennedy

As long as I live, I’ll remember his sadistic smile as he slams the door shut. And if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll get to wipe it off his smug face.

At the sheriff’s office, I sit in a plastic chair against a wall down a narrow hallway with the drunk and disorderlies, prostitutes, and other pissed off victims of tonight’s dragnet.

“Hey!” The frat boy with a bloody nose at the end of the row shouts at a passing deputy. “Hey! You get my dad on the phone. Hear me? My dad’s gonna kick your ass.”

“Man, shut up.” A few chairs down, the townie with a black eye stares up at the ceiling. “No one cares about your stupid daddy.”

“You’re so dead. Every one of you idiots are so dead.” The frat boy rattles around in his chair, and I realize they have him cuffed to it. “When my dad gets down here, you’ll all be sorry.”

“Dude,” the townie says. “I’m already sorry now. If I have to keep listening to this pussy whine, someone just hand me a gun. I’ll pistol-whip myself.”

I’m tired, hungry, and I’ve had to pee since the moment Randall tossed me in the cruiser. My foot bounces with the anxiety of waiting. My mind runs a mile a minute, picturing Trina walking inside to find me and her purse gone, and wondering if she’s figured out what’s happened. I ponder the chances she’ll have gotten in touch with my dad or one of my brothers, considering her phone is likely sitting in an evidence locker right now. Then I realize, if she has figured it out, she’s not coming back for me. She’s getting the hell out of the state before the cops pull her driver’s license out of that purse and go looking for her too.

“You’re doing fine.” The woman in a sequin tank top and miniskirt has an almost Zen-like quality about her as she sits beside me, utterly relaxed. “Don’t worry. It’s not as scary as it looks on TV.”

“When do we get to call someone? We get a phone call, right?” Ironically, as many times as I’ve gotten myself in and out of trouble, I’ve never sat in this police station before. Given my previous lifestyle, I probably should have made a greater effort to understand the finer details of the criminal justice system.

In response, the woman tilts her head back and closes her eyes. “Get comfortable, sweetie. This could take a while.”

“A while” is an understatement. It takes more than an hour just to get fingerprinted. Another hour for photographs. Another hour of waiting some more. It feels like every deputy in the station comes by to leer at me, each one with a look of amusement or smug satisfaction. I recognize some of them who’d wagged their fingers and sneered at me when I was in high school. They leave me with a visceral sense of the powerlessness of incarceration, and I’m only sitting in a well-lit hallway. Within these walls, they have all the power and we have none. We’re guilty degenerates because they say so. Unworthy of respect or basic human decency. It’s enough to radicalize even the softest suburbanite.

There’s another hour of paperwork and more sitting around before we’re finally placed in holding cells. Men and women separated. My wrists are sore and bruised when I take a seat on a bench beside a sleeping homeless woman. In the corner, a blonde tourist, probably about my age, cries silently into her hands, while her friend sits beside her looking bored. The metal toilet-sink combo on the far wall smells like every bar bathroom in the Bay flushes into it, curing me of any thoughts of having to go.

Sometime in the middle of the night, my name snaps me out of my meditation on the stains on the floor.

I glance toward the iron bars and almost burst into tears. It’s Harrison. In uniform.

Because this night hasn’t been mortifying enough.

Reluctantly, I go meet him at the front of the cell. “This is fitting, huh? Like a blind date game show reveal.”

“I heard you were here and came as soon as I could.” The poor guy appears genuine in his concern. “You alright? Anyone mistreating you?”

I don’t know if he’s asking about the people inside this cell or out. “I’m fine, given the circumstances.” I smile wryly. “Don’t suppose you want to accidentally drop a key and walk away.”

“Okay,” he says, his voice lowering to a stage whisper. “But you need to make it look convincing so I can tell them you overpowered me when I tried to stop you.”

“Seriously, though. How does this work? I have money. If you can post my bail or whatever, I’ll pay you back. They haven’t even let me call someone yet.”

He looks away with a sigh of frustration. “The sheriff’s out of town at some family thing, so no one’s in a big hurry to push papers.”

Meaning any hope I had that Sheriff Nixon might realize I’m in here, and at least let my dad know, is right out the window. It wasn’t a sure thing, but Hal Nixon and Dad play in a monthly poker game and have gotten chummy over the past couple years. I thought maybe, if I was extremely lucky, Nixon would let me plead my case that this whole thing is a misunderstanding blown sideways by a vindictive asshole.

“Can’t post bail until they file the arrest,” Harrison continues. “I don’t know what the holdup is on phone calls. I’ll see about that.”

“I didn’t do it.” I look him square in the eye. “This is Randall again. You saw him. He’s got a vendetta.”