Five minutes later, Jack arrived to pick me up. He tried talking to me on the drive to Maria’s house but I was miles away.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Are you all right? You’re pretty quiet over there, Bec.”

“Please don’t call me Bec.” I hated when anyone called me Bec because that’s what my dad used to call me. And Kenji.

“Sorry, Re-bec-ca,” he said emphasizing my name.

“Well, don’t say it like that. Sounds like I’m in trouble.”

“How about I just say, ‘you there’?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“So, ‘you there’, what’s wrong? Why are you so quiet?”

I wasn’t sure what to tell him.

“I’m just tired,” I said instead of telling him the truth. “I’ve been up all night watching the latest ‘Oz Virus’ developments.”

“It’s all just a bunch of hype. It’ll blow over soon. This time next week we’ll all be back in school wishing we weren’t.”

When we got to the party it was already well under way. To my surprise there was a whole bunch of people that showed up. It felt like the entire school year was at this party. I guess their parents were sick of their kids being stuck in the house for the entire week. I can imagine what they said. “Go to the party. Have fun. Just be back by 10pm, OK?”

Maria had a few rules for the party. She said everyone had to remain inside and keep the music as low as possible. She didn’t want the neighbors complaining about the noise to the cops. If the cops showed up after 10pm everyone would be in serious trouble.

Nobody wanted that.

But by eight o’clock everyone sort of forgot the rules. Everyone was drunk or well on their way and so the music got louder. The house was full on every level. Everyone was cutting loose and hyper active. Like somehow everyone knew the world was about to end so they better make the most of their time.

My favorite part of that whole party was when a Nirvana song came on over the stereo. Someone turned the volume way up and Kurt Cobain was blaring over the speakers. “Come as you are, as you were, as a friend…” Everyone joined in and sang along. Unfortunately, this may have caused one of the neighbors to call the cops.

The house phone rang and Maria immediately knew something was wrong.

“Oh no,” she said with a look of horror on her face.

“What is it?” I asked.

“No one ever calls the house phone. Except for Mrs. Gordon next door. And she only ever calls when she’s upset about something.”

A second later, one of the girls in our year, Christine I think her name was, came running inside. “Someone called the cops!” she yelled.

Kids screamed.

“Oh crap. What time is it?” Maria asked.

Everyone freaked out and made a run for it. This left just Maria, Jack and me. Just the three of us. We could hear the sirens of the police cars not far off.

I don’t know what we were thinking. Maybe we weren’t thinking. But we decided to make a run for it. Our reasoning was that if we turned all the lights off and got the hell out of there it would look like no one was home. We could hide out at my house because my mother was at work and Mrs. Gordon would look like a crazy old woman who was hearing noises. It was the perfect plan.

The only problem was Jack’s car didn’t start.

He tried a couple of times, turning the key in the ignition, praying to god for the engine to start, but nothing happened. He hit the steering wheel and the dashboard, swearing and cursing, before Maria suggested we try her dad’s car.

“His new BMW?” Jack asked. “No freakin way! He’d kill me!”

“Just do it! He’ll never know.”

We ran back over to the garage. Maria had to punch in a code to open the roller door. Inside was a black shiny car. Definitely not the kind of car that a father would let his daughter’s boyfriend drive.

“Do you even have the key?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, it should be here somewhere,” Maria said as she moved over to the wall where a whole row of keys were hanging up.

I jumped in the back seat and buckled myself in. Jack slid into the driver’s seat and Maria was in the front passenger seat.

“Do you have it?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” she said as she held the key up. “It’s a keyless ignition. Just press the start button.”

Jack pressed the button and the car miraculously started. He turned the headlights on high beam and accelerated out of the garage and down the long driveway.

Just when it looked like we were going to make a clean getaway, someone leapt out of the bushes directly in front of the car, causing Jack to slam on the brakes. It was Kenji.

Maria screamed and Jack swore. I was completely mortified. I jumped out of the back seat and yelled at Kenji. “What are you doing here? Did you follow me? I told you I didn’t want anything to do with you!”

Kenji had his hands up, trying to shield his eyes from the headlights. “I’m sorry. I had to. You’re all in danger. If we leave now we can still make it.”

But there was no chance of us going anywhere. The police had arrived, blocking off the driveway. They played a message through a loudspeaker that said we had broken curfew and there was a zero-tolerance policy. The messaged told us to lie on the ground with our hands behind our back.