“Hold the little fucker there,” Cassie yelled, and, “Let ‘em get away and I’ll rip your fuckin’ balls off.” Then she yanked the dog’s chain to reel it in, cursing at it, calling it a fucking useless dog, as she stomped away.
Stephi’s eyes filled with tears, her voice a whisper. “This never happened before,” she said.
I wanted to touch her lips again, kiss her to reassure her, hold her and make this all go away. “We’re going to finish,” I told her.
“But—Jojo…“
If one of us gets caught no turning back to help them…no matter how much they scream.
“We need to get help” I said.
Stephi looked towards the house. “We don’t have time. Jojo needs help right now.”
She was right, but there were too many of them. We couldn’t help. “If we try to help him, we’ll be the ones needing help.”
She sighed. “Jesus. And I left my mobile at home because I didn’t want to lose it.”
Cassie was gone, the dog’s ruff was getting further away and the other voices seem to have joined it. Whoever lived in the house, they were all out relishing in Jojo’s demise. “Maybe there’s a phone in the house,” I said.
Stephi just looked at me. “Do you want to go in and find out?”
Like, hell I did. I couldn’t have been thinking straight, not thinking clearly and objectively, when I’d thought it. Neither of us were thinking straight.
My dad always told me you have to step back and take a wider look at a problem before making a decision. “We’re missing something,” I said.
Stephi’s eyes opened wide. “What? There’s a big dog with big teeth, and a family of crazies who’ve got a hold of Jojo—and you think we’re missing something?.”
“We’re not seeing the bigger picture,” I told her. “We’re cramming in too much information and not understanding it.”
She sighed, and said, “That’s scary, Brad—you sound like your mum.”
“Let’s look at it realistically,” I said. “We’re trespassing, that’s all. How many people caught trespassing are cut up or eaten or tied up and tortured?”
Stephi had a comeback: “That depends if they’re caught by Cassie.”
“Chances are they’ve got Jojo, and they’ve already phoned the cops. He’s in more danger from what his parents are going to do, than from Cassie and her mob.”
Stephi slipped a chuckle through her lips. “His mum makes him sit on the stairs, you know?”
“Jeez,” I said. “That’s cruel. Brutal.”
The sarcasm made her chuckle more, but it was a sad, scared chuckle.
“We’ll check he’s okay,” I said, “and then we’ll finish the run. We’ve come this far . . . there’s no turning back.”
Stephi leaned towards me, and kissed my lips. “You do know you’re crazy, don’t you?” she said.
Yeah, crazy was the word. I just hoped to God I was right about Jojo, and Cassie wasn’t crazier than me. If I was wrong, we were all up Shit Creek.
2 Feb 2008
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