East West Sunset - A Darry Curtis Fanfiction

Chapter Thirty-Five

I was in complete and utter shock as I was pulled from the stoop by one of the officers. They dragged me down the stairs, across the haggard lawn, to the curb, where the police cruiser was parked like a sleek killer whale. Dimly, the shocked sounds I hacked out in an attempt to defend myself reached my ears, but I hardly knew what to think. Behind me, I heard the screen door swing open and two pairs of feet rush out.

"Hey! What are you doing?" My twin brother's panicked tone scraped against my eardrums like a rough-edged saw. "Where are you taking her?"

I couldn't speak; I tried to wrench myself around to get a glimpse of him before I was shoved into the car. The officers tightened their grips on my arms and pushed me into the cruiser before I had the chance.

"Diana! What's going on?" Ponyboy yelled in confusion. He started to run down the front stoop towards us, Soda right behind him. One of the officers held up his hand to halt them.

 "She's under arrest. If you try to resist or demonstrate any form of violent protest, you will be liable to a year in jail for obstruction of an arrest. Stay back," the officer warned briskly, one hand on the pistol hanging from his belt. 

"Soda-" I began to say, but the officer slammed the car door shut in my face before I could say any more. I could barely hear any of the words being spoken outside of the car, and the windows were so streaked with dirt and grime that I couldn't really see anything, either. I could make out Soda's desperate yelling, though. My heart stilled, my veins aching. I hated that I had failed them. I hated I couldn't help them anymore.

"Why?!"

My entire being throbbed with the intensity of Soda's scream. My own throat burned as if the word had sliced through it. Despair flooded my lungs again like I was drowning in a cold river. "Don't remember me like this," I whispered to myself. "I don't want to be your brother's murderer. Even if it's all my fault, I don't want you to see me like that." 

I searched for Soda's torn brown eyes through the dirty window, but before I could find him, my twin brother, now the soul closest to me on this earth, the cruiser pulled away from the curb, and we were gone.

~~~~~*****~~~~~

The police station contained a group of holding cells where I would be placed until I appeared before a judge for my preliminary hearing. After the hearing, if there was enough evidence to possibly convict me, the judge would decide on my bail, and I would be placed in a real jail to wait for my trial. It was going to be a lot of waiting; the process was going to be exhausting. By the time I was left alone in the tiny, concrete cell, though, I was too numb to think about it any more.

The cell itself took up a mere 35 or so square feet. The floor and walls were a dull, cold grey and sucked away any heat from my palms when I touched them. A rickety cot with a dingy, flat mattress stood in one corner. One wall was entirely consumed by a cracked old toilet and a crumbling ceramic sink, which both looked as if they had never been cleaned and were covered in suspicious brown and yellow stains. The bed wasn't any cleaner, so I stuck to sitting on the frigid floor in the middle of the room, trying to keep as little of my bare skin from coming into contact with any surface as possible. I was fine there for a while, until a huge cockroach scuttled across my hand. From then on I decided to simply stand in the middle of the room with no part of my body touching anything except for my shoes on the floor. My legs began to ache after barely a half hour.

Luckily, before too long a different police officer came to fetch me for my phone call. It was with some reluctance that I followed him to the front desk, where a (very fortunately) clean phone waited for me to use. I had already made up my mind who I was going to call, though I was dreading it-- my mother.