Officer Hawkes had heard excuses like hers before, but to his surprise, when she presented him with her ID and he shone his flashlight across it, he could clearly see that the license was in fact an out-of-state license. Instead of arresting her and forcing her to call her parents, who obviously would not even be able to pick her up, he asked her for a number so he could call whoever she was staying with in Los Angeles. Aria pulled out the number that Omkar had written on the scrap of paper towel from her backpack.

While they were waiting the few minutes for Omkar to arrive, Officer Hawkes asked her trivial questions about things like where she went to school and what it was like where she came from and how she liked her time in Los Angeles so far. Aria hated it when police tried to act so friendly. It always seemed to be a contrived attempt to make themselves come across like good guys instead of bad guys. No cop had ever made her life better. Plus, she found it hard to accept a cop as a benevolent keeper of the peace with a Beretta and handcuffs visibly displayed on his belt. She wasn’t compliant or nice to him while they waited out of an actual liking for him. She was compliant and nice out of fear of what would happen if she wasn’t.

The feeling of sitting down in Omkar’s car and being enclosed inside it was ineffable. No longer having to keep it together in the face of a situation that could very probably have separated them, Aria started to cry. She could not believe any of what had happened or how close she had come to the very thing she had spent nearly a year trying to avoid.

Omkar pulled away from the curb and drove out of sight of the cop car before pulling back up and turning the engine off. Despite his multiple attempts to quiet her tears and find out what was happening, Aria kept weeping. Omkar noticed when he hugged her that her clothing smelled distinctly like smoke. He was forced to wait for her to offer an explanation. When she finally did, Omkar felt out of his depth. He knew he had lived a sheltered life and couldn’t understand the pressures she had been under. He tried to release her from the guilt of having called CPS.