Free Simmer Down by Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant

sand, so I hoped he’d been taking midnight strolls across his cage. I changed his water dish, scooped up something gross that must be crab poop, and sprayed the tank with a water bottle. Heather had told me that misting the hermit crabs was supposed to increase their activity level, but Ken seemed as outraged by humidity as I was and stayed hidden in his shell.
    Since I couldn’t pick Hannah up in the pigsty I called a car, I spent ten minutes tossing embarrassing CDs into the glove compartment—six volumes of Now That’s What I Call Music , two American Idol compilations, and a few other horrors—and throwing out Dunkin’ Donuts cups and half-eaten candy canes. I displayed Josh’s CDs on the passenger seat to give the impression that I frequently drove around listening to System of a Down, Mudvayne, Drowning Pool, and Papa Roach and was quite possibly the coolest girlfriend in the entire world .
    I found Hannah outside the police station and turned up “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor,” as though it were quite possibly my most favorite song ever. I pulled up in front of Josh’s ex and cooly waved to her. She must have been looking around for Josh’s bright yellow Xterra and took no notice of me. I kept waving, and Hannah kept ignoring me. I couldn’t have been more than ten feet from her, double-parked in front of a pissed-off driver in a monstrous Durango, but Hannah stood oblivious to my increasingly wild gestures. I rolled down the window.
    “Hannah!” I yelled above the music.
    Turkey Burger Girl finally walked to my car, bent down, and peered through the window as though I were some tourist asking for directions. “Oh. Chloe, it’s you. Is Josh coming?”
    Yeah, Josh was coming, and we’d taken separate cars to pick up this fool.
    “No, he’s at work. Do you want a ride or not?”
    Hannah looked around, as if to make sure nobody saw her getting into a car with me, and reluctantly opened the door. I slowly and dramatically gathered Josh’s CDs off the seat saying, “Here, let me get these out of your way.” She showed no sign of recognizing me as the coolest girlfriend in the entire world , sat down, and promptly turned off the music. “Do you have any coffee?” she demanded.
    “The coffee machine in the car is out of order today,” I said dryly.
    “Do you at least have a tissue?” Without waiting for a response, she opened the glove compartment and unleashed a flood of my hidden CDs. I hurriedly grabbed them off her lap and cast them into the backseat. Goddamn Heather and her stupid birthday gifts. Who wanted a remix of Jennifer Lopez’s greatest hits? The sound of that woman’s voice made my ears bleed, and now Hannah Banana thought I spent my time singing along to musical catastrophes.
    “No,” I said trying to control my blushing, “I don’t have any tissues.” Not that Hannah seemed to need one. She was pretty composed, especially by comparison with the way she’d sounded on the phone.
    “What took you so long? I need to go to the Whole Foods near my apartment, okay?”
    Clearly an order, not a question. She was testing my professionalism, I decided. I’d need to watch myself, especially if I wanted to hear the details of her night at the station. I was itching to learn what Detective Hurley knew about her that I didn’t.
    “Which store do you want to go to? I don’t know where your apartment is.” I was driving aimlessly around and now almost turned the wrong way onto a one-way street.
    “I go to the Whole Foods on Westland. Right by Symphony Hall. Turn here.” Hannah gestured left, visibly smug that she got to tell a Boston resident where to go. “Oliver and Barry put me up in a condo off Boylston Street.” More smugness oozed from her pores; condos around Boylston Street didn’t run cheap. Gone was the hysterical Hannah of the phone call, and back was the Hannah I’d met last night, bossy and superior.
    “So, what did the police ask you about?” I was hoping, of