“No,” I said. “I’m not fine. I’m scared.”
“Okay,” Caleb said. “Me too.” He unbuckled his seatbelt. “Let’s go anyway.”
So we did.
Officer Reyes found me within five minutes and handed me a lemonade and introduced me to her wife. Sergeant Pruitt told me a story about David getting a raccoon stuck in his patrol car that I’d never heard, and I laughed so hard I snorted lemonade. At the end of the night, when the sun was going down, somebody brought out a guitar.
Everybody turned to look at Caleb.
He shook his head. “No. No way.”
“Come on, kid,” Ray called. “You owe us. We sang backup.”
Caleb looked at me. I didn’t say anything. I just nodded.
He took the guitar.
The officers sat in a loose circle on the grass and on picnic tables and folding chairs, and Caleb sat in the middle on an overturned cooler, and he played the Saturday song.
