Chapter 5: Six O'Clock

"Don't go in there," I said.

Levi had already put one hand on the doorframe.

"She's eating my lasagna on your kitchen stool," he said. "I want to hear her say it."

"She'll say it tomorrow at six, in front of every person who watched Derek bet on me."

He looked at the lit hallway.

Derek laughed again, and a chair scraped.

"Tomorrow," Levi said. "Where?"

"Your driveway. They're meeting there to load the boards."

His jaw moved once, and then he stepped back off the porch.

"I'll be on the steps," he said.

He walked to a gray truck parked down the block and sat in it with the lights off until Taryn left with the foil pan at nine.

I know because I watched from the bedroom window.

I slept at my sister's apartment that night, with the petition in my bag and the silver suitcase on the floor beside the bed.

Carrie made me eat toast at five in the morning.

"You're pale," she said. "You're also going to throw up."

"I know. I did."

"I'm coming in with you."

"The lawyer said to bring a witness."

"I'm a witness," she said. "I'm an emergency room nurse. I've seen worse than a man with a surfboard."

At five to six, she parked at the curb of a narrow brick house six blocks from mine.

A gray truck sat in the driveway with its tailgate down.

Derek stood next to it with two surfboard bags leaning against his hip.

Taryn was beside him in a white tank top, rolling a duffel with a broken wheel.

The friend who surfed was unloading a board from a roof rack.

Mitch sat on the tailgate with a coffee, grinning at his phone.