BooksBarbecue
Back Never Look Back Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Acknowledgments
  47. P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
  48. About the Author
  49. About the Book
  50. Also by Alison Gaylin
  51. About the Publisher

I’d never known cops could be so loud, so terrifying. Before now, the only ones I’d seen up close had been the ones who came to school every year for the first assembly. When we were little, they told us to look both ways before crossing the street and not to talk to strangers, and once we got into junior high they added “don’t do drugs” to the mix. There were different cops every year—usually a young one who tried to act “cool” and an older one who was a little more serious. But no matter what kind of thing they were telling us to do, those cops’ voices had always been calm and kind. This one, Officer Nelligan, was as loud and mean and scary as the siren that blared from his black-and-white car. It was dark out. The sun had just set. His face was hidden by the brim of his hat. Maybe it’s just the way I remember it, but I swear to you that when he was talking to us, all I could see were his eyes, glowing like a rat’s eyes in the dark.

He had a flashlight in his hand. He aimed it through Gabriel’s opened window. He pushed the beam of it around the inside of our stolen car, over our bodies, into my dyed orange hair so that I could feel its burn. He aimed the beam into my eyes until the pupils squished up. Held it there good and long, so that when he finally moved it away, my eyes didn’t work for at least a minute, and all I could see was this hovering cloud of white.

Gabriel apologized to Officer Nelligan. He said he hadn’t realized he’d been speeding, and that he was a new driver. “Please forgive me, sir.” He said it so calmly, I was proud of him. I thought to myself, Everything is going to be all right. We will escape with a warning and we will drive far away and he’ll never even know who we are.

But then the cop asked Gabriel for license and registration. I knew we’d never escape this. Remember, Aurora Grace, we are wanted. Fugitives. And as soon as he got one look at Gabriel’s driver’s license and called in the name or whatever it is that cops do when they take people’s licenses to their cars, Officer Nelligan would know that about us. We were doomed.