Free Night Sky by Suzanne Brockmann

heart.
    We were okay. The biker was okay. No one was choking on their own blood, gasping as they struggled to breathe…
    And Calvin—who had only the vaguest idea why my mother had that stupid rule about my not being allowed to ride in a car with a driver who was less than thirty years old—had no clue that I was about to pass out from fear.
    â€œAll right. I think I’ve had enough almost-heart-attacks for one day,” Calvin quipped with a laugh.
    â€œDon’t joke,” I said sharply, unable to keep myself from glancing nervously at Calvin’s chest, because I knew he had the heart health of a seventy-year-old man. “That’s not funny.”
    He stopped laughing.
    â€œSky?” he finally said, watching the road as he drove—slowly and carefully this time. “Sometimes people suck. Things suck. A lot of it really sucks.” He glanced at me, his eyes so serious I had to look down. “And when that happens, after you’ve exhausted all your resources, the only thing you have left is laughter.” He pulled into the school and slugged his car into Park. “And in this life, I plan to laugh my damn ass off.”

Chapter Five
    And then it was Friday.
    It was a normal enough school day, followed by more fruitless searching for Sasha, made worse by the fact that Calvin now believed what the police believed—that the little girl was dead, murdered by her own father.
    I’d had a typically strained dinner with Mom, then escaped to Calvin’s to watch a movie—after which we’d set off in search of chocolate to make those stupid s’mores. And we’d ended up taking that ill-fated trip across the tracks to Harrisburg.
    To the Sav’A’Buck.
    Previously, in Skylar’s weirdly messed-up life, she and her bestie ventured into a grocery store in a super-low-rent part of town, where they were threatened at gunpoint by a large-bosomed female contortionist wearing designer shoes. Facing a hideous and somewhat embarrassing death-by-crazy-lady, they were rescued at the last second by a height-challenged super-girl with a blond pixie cut, a red leather motorcycle jacket, and an industrial-strength death glare.
    Yeah.
    And as if all that wasn’t freakishly weird enough, after disarming and karate-chopping the crazy killer-clown-lady into submissive unconsciousness, Motorcycle Girl somehow knew my name.
    â€œWay to protect Tiny Tim here, Sky,” she’d said.
    I looked at Calvin and he looked back at me, equally disturbed—so much so that the Tiny Tim insult didn’t penetrate. Or maybe he was still too stunned to speak. I’m pretty sure I was in shock too.
    â€œWhat were you waiting for?” the girl asked me, genuinely annoyed. “A sign from God? News flash! She’s a little too busy with the real important shit to put in an appearance in this craphole.”
    She marched over to a stack of red plastic shopping baskets and yanked one off the top so she could…?
    Grocery shop. Seriously.
    There were quite a few things I wanted to do after nearly getting shot to death in the Sav’A’Buck by a murderous trophy wife from hell. Using the nearest bathroom so as not to add the awfulness of pee-pee pants to my swamp butt was high on my list. But food shopping?
    Motorcycle Chick inspected a little box of tuna before throwing it into her basket. And then she stepped over the former Little Miss Sunshine before heading to aisle seven, her biker boots click-clacking on the industrial tile floor.
    The rest of the store had completely cleared out by then, the shoppers and the store clerks stampeding through the front doors in a flurried panic. I could see people’s headlights through the windows of the store as they peeled out of the parking lot in a hurry.
    I still couldn’t move. I had to be in shock.
    Cal placed a shaky hand on my arm. “Dude,” he said, staring down at the security guard and the