Chapter 11: Brake Line

"Hey!"

The guy in the hoodie was already over the fence at the back of the lot.

I heard his shoes slap down the alley, then a car door, then nothing.

I stood there holding two turkey sandwiches and shaking.

[Host,] said the System. [What was that?]

"I don't know."

I crouched by the bike where he'd been.

I didn't know anything about motorcycles.

I knew the wheel and the seat and the shiny part.

Everything looked fine.

Everything looked exactly like a motorcycle.

[Maybe he was just looking,] the System said.

"At midnight. Behind a fence."

[Fair.]

The old me knew exactly what to do.

The old me would have handled it alone.

I'd have called the police, called the dean, called Dane's mother, and told Jesse afterward like he was the last person who needed to know.

I took my phone out.

I filmed the bike, the fence, the gravel where the guy had knelt.

Then I knocked on the garage's back door.

Jesse opened it with a rag in his hand and white hair sticking up.

He smiled when he saw the sandwiches.

Then he saw my face.

"What happened?"

I told him.

All of it, standing in the doorway.

I didn't decide anything first.

I just told him.

His face went very flat.

He went straight to the bike and got down on his back on the gravel.

He slid under the front end with a flashlight in his teeth.

He was quiet for a long minute.

Then he said, "Come here."

I lay down on the gravel next to him.

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