Nicole and I ran across the lawn and to the opened gate. We meet Ashley at the front gate in her car and I jump into the backseat with Nicole. Ashley speeds away, toward Nicole's church.
"Explain to me why we're going to your dad's church?"
"Why not? It's the safest place to go, to talk, and to stay away from the police." Ashley looks at us in her rear view mirror. Nicole tells her to step on it because we only have a few hours until 5 am rounds. Apparently she only has this plan until the shift change.
After a five mile car ride, we finally arrive at the church. I haven't been here in over two years. It seems like a distant memory. The place I got saved, baptized, fell in love with a choir boy, and had my first kiss in the playground in the third grade. I walk up the stone steps through the side door that goes into her dad's office. We all walk in and Nicole turns on her dad's desk lamp.
"We shouldn't make too much light or someone will think there's intruders and call either the police or my dad. And trust me when I say you'd rather the police come instead of my father. I'm almost 20 years old and the man still treats me like a child sometimes. Especially after this past weekend. They keep hounding me with questions about the detective and Lucy and what we had to do with all of this. Ugh! I can't believe this is happening!" Nicole plops down in her dad's leather office chair behind the desk. Ashley and I sit in the guest chairs before her like we're in an important meeting. "But listen, we have to talk about all of this and get our stories straight before everything becomes unraveled."
"Unraveled? Stories? Nicole, this isn't some soap opera. This is our lives you're talking about. You don't get to just sit there and pretend that your in charge of us now. You're not Lucy." I say that last part under my breath. Ashley and Nicole could still hear it. "Ashley come on. You know I'm right. This is ridiculous!" She still doesn't say anything. Typical. She never said or did anything when Lucy was still alive either. "You guys kidnapped me out of a mental institution! Get it through your heads! You were worried about it looking like we were conspiring, well congratulations! If we get caught, then it won't just look bad, it is bad! Do not drag me down with you!" At this point, Ashley finally chimes in.
"We didn't really kidnap you. But I get your point. We just needed a safe place to talk. This is the closest and safest place to do that." Ashley looks at me then at Nicole. Nicole seems to be enjoying this. Like she is in charge of us. Too much power in the hands of a scared girl is what got us into this mess in the first place. Lucy let her popularity fill her head and she thought she was untouchable. But it is still nice to be in the presence of my two best friends.
"Okay. Fine." I throw my hands up in surrender. "What do you want me to do?"
"Do? Oh, no no no. It's more of what I don't want you to do." I look at her like she has two heads sticking out of her. Ashley looks like she's confused herself. "I told Cole a lot of stuff. I felt like the time was right to come clean about a lot. I even told him about Cassie." Ashley and I look at each other and then her in shock and disbelief. "Don't look at me like that, okay? I just told him enough to help him understand what kind of person Lucy was. I needed him to get that it was her fault that she ended up the way she did."
"Whoa. Nikki, that's not right. It wasn't completely her fault." Ashley cuts of Nicole. Of course. Ashley was always the one sticking up for Lucy. In life and now in death. "I mean, it wasn't JUST her fault. We kind of had a little hand in that too."
"No. We didn't." I state curtly. "Ashley, I know you loved her. I know she was the closest thing you had to a sister, but I mean... she was kind of awful. She did and said awful things. Not to speak ill of the dead. But don't forget that we loved her too."
"Yeah. But that's-"
"Stop. Okay?" Nicole shuts us both down. "I didn't invite you both here so we can rehash the past. I just want to make sure that you don't tell the friendly detective too much okay?" She looks at me like I just ran over her pet. "That's all I need from you, and you too Ash."
"What exactly is too much? Because in my book, telling him anything is too much. I look back at who I was when I was around Lucy, and I hate myself. I let her manipulate me into doing things that I knew was wrong. I let her put me down, call me names, and convince me to do the same to other people. So, when you look at it like that, no matter what we tell detective Cole, it will still make US look bad."
"Wait. What stuff are you guys talking about?" Ashley looks genuinely confused. How could she not know what Nikki and I are talking about? "Lucy never did anything like that to me."
"Are you serious right now?" Nicole looks like she's about to blow up. "She blackmailed me into doing all sorts of crap for her! She held over Christy the majority of our high school years. She talked me into helping her blackmail two of our teachers. She made me an accomplice to stealing at the mall. Do you seriously not know what I'm talking about?" Nicole has raised her voice two octaves higher than normal.
"Yeah. And she talked me into skinny dipping with Alan Crenshaw in the ninth grade. Then, she stole our clothes and made us run through the gym to get back to the locker rooms naked. THERE WAS A BASKETBALL GAME GOING ON! And she had pictures of us in the pool making out. She could have gotten us suspended!"
Ashley just sits there, looking at the ground. I can't believe this is all news to her. "I'm sorry. I didn't know." She sounded like a scared little kid. "I can't believe that she would do something like that to you guys. To her friends." She pauses for a moment, "Some friend." She scoffs.
"She didn't pull anything like that on you?" Nicole asks. She shakes her head. "Wow." Nicole just starts laughing. "Of course she didn't! You were the golden girl. Her number two. I'm actually shocked that she didn't." I asked her what she meant by that. It seemed weird to me too, but I wasn't sure where she was going with this. "Ashley could have easily had any guy she wanted. You are prettier than she was. You're definitely nicer than she was. I'm just surprised that she didn't do anything or say anything that would get you kicked out of the group for those very reasons."
"Maybe because you never opposed her." I said with a realization. "I mean, think about it Nik. You and I questioned her, opposed her, and challenged her. What did Ashley do? She idolized her, worshiped her, and went along with everything she did." Ashley tried to deny that, but it was no use. We all know that it was the truth.
We decided to just drop the current conversation. I said that dredging all this up isn't of use to the situation we were in now. With this new evidence that's come into play, we needed to figure out what went wrong with the plan. We were never able to figure it out then, but maybe now that we had time to think about it, we could figure it out now.