How Not to Spend Your Senior Year by Cameron Dokey Page A

know you’ll be all right no matter what,” Elaine said.
    â€œJo, come on!” I heard my father call out. “It’s getting late. We’ve got to go.”
    â€œI have to hang up. My dad’s calling,” I said into the phone.
    â€œJo.”
    â€œIt’s all right,” I said. “It’s going to be all right. I know you know this because you just said so. Don’t try to call back. It won’t do any good. I’ll be in touch.”
    I disconnected, turned the ringer off, and put the cell phone back in my bag, all completely on autopilot. Then I just stood for a moment in my bedroom, taking several deep breaths, willing the tears not to fall. I’d never cried over leaving any place before. I didn’t intend to start now.
    â€œJo!” my father called.
    That’s when I did it. I marched over to my bed and ripped that pink chenille bedspread right off it, wrapping it around my shoulders as if it were the world’s most expensive fur stole. Then I left the room without a backward glance. My father was waiting nervously by the front door.
    â€œWhat on earth?” he exclaimed when he saw me.
    â€œDon’t even try to talk me out of this,” I almost sobbed. “I’ll leave Mom’s picture. I’ll leave my friends. But the bedspread is going along for the ride. This is nonnegotiable. Take it or leave it.”
    â€œOkay,” my father said. “Okay, Jo-Jo.”
    Without another word, he opened the front door. Then, with his arm around my shoulders, resting across that pink bedspread, we went out into the rainy Seattle night, side by side.

Nine
    â€œTreacherous Curve Claims Father and Daughter”
    That’s what the headline in the local section of the paper read the following morning. And yes, it is just a tad bizarre to read an article detailing your own personal demise. Particularly when you, yourself, are safe and sound and drinking a grande nonfat latte at the time.
    But you want to know the weirdest thing? The place Detective Mortensen had arranged for our “accident” to take place turned out to be right next to the restaurant where I’d told Elaine my dad and I were going. The intersection really isdangerous. Accidents happen there all the time, though generally not fatal ones. Without knowing it, I’d played right into our escape plans.
    The escape itself was actually cool and constitutes the techno part of my story.
    Before our supposedly fatal accident could take place, a switch had to be made. I mean, it was pretty obvious my dad and I couldn’t actually be in the car. But because there existed the possibility that we were being watched, Detective Mortensen had to arrange for the switch to occur in a way that couldn’t be observed. We couldn’t just drive to the nearest gas station and switch cars.
    So instead, we drove to the nearest car wash.
    There, following the detective’s instructions (relayed via my dad), I made a total fool of myself by throwing this very large and very childish fit about wanting to stay in the car as it went through the wash.
    Eventually, of course, my dad gave in and let his bratty daughter have her way, but only after it was safe to assume that anyone in the whole world who might bewatching had noticed us. We rode into the car wash, and two ace police drivers, selected for their resemblance to my father and me, drove back out.
    We, meanwhile, had been transferred to the vehicle which had immediately preceded us into the car wash: a crummy-looking panel van which turned out to be filled with high-tech surveillance equipment. This transported us to what Dad and the detective referred to as the safe house, but which actually turned out to be a safe apartment.
    Furnished, a thing I hardly need to tell you.
    Once there Detective Mortensen and my dad filled me in on the plan from here on out. For security reasons, my dad would be confined to the apartment.