Beyond This Moment

19 Day Eight- 10:24 A.M.

As the metal cage door slams shut, my heart stops beating.

"You'll get your phone call in one hour," The policeman is saying on the other side of the closed cell door and then he walks away, his heavy footsteps stomping away down the hall.

Looking away from the metal bars that are keeping us locked in this holding cell, I turn to look at Gabe for answers. "What are we going to do?" I ask him as he's sitting on the metal bench in the corner of the room, leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at the ground.

"I don't know, Peyton," Gabe mumbles and he looks absolutely defeated by the situation. If I wasn't feeling so panicked about just being arrested, I would feel bad about how bad he feels right now. Instead, I just feel like I'm going to throw up.

"How is your eye feeling?" I ask him, noticing how it's already starting to swell and bruise so he's definitely going to have a black eye.

"It feels like shit."

"Okay, well," I begin to try and think this over. "We haven't been charged with anything so they're only holding us until they decide what to do with us, basically. We're going to be fine, we'll be out of here in no time."

"There's no way that we'll make it to the dinner tonight," He says with a shake of his head.

"No, we won't," I agree with him even though I know that it isn't what he wants to hear right now but it's the truth. Time was tight even before we got arrested, there's no way that we can make it on time now. I don't know what to say to comfort him right now. I don't know what to say to comfort myself either. "But we don't have to tell Dad. We can just say that we hit some terrible traffic."

"Wouldn't you want him to know?" He raises his head to look at me and it might just be my nerves but it looks like he's glaring at me.

"I mean, yeah, I think that it'd be pretty funny but I know that you don't want him to know so I'm just saying that he doesn't have to find out," I tell him with a small shrug. "And I'm sure that Cassie and Elias are on it to figure out how to get us out of here."

"I'm afraid that you're not going anywhere anytime soon," There's suddenly an officer standing on the other side of the metal gate. "The DA is busy today so she's decided not to charge you but we're going to keep you for the day, just to make sure that you won't get into any more trouble."

"The guy hit my brother first," I defend. "And I was just defending my brother. Just tell the other guy that if he doesn't press charges, we won't either so that we can get out of here."

"The other man in the altercation is a fireman," The policeman tells us.

"He was drunk," I add incredulously.

This man obviously can't do anything about the situation because he looks kind of sympathetic for us so it's useless to keep trying to talk him into letting us go.

"Can we at least get some ice please?" I ask him, trying to be polite without taking out any of my frustration on this man who is helpless. "His eye looks like it's getting full of puss and it's really gross."

"Sure," The policeman nods. "I'll get some ice for you."

"Thank you," I sigh, walking back to sit with Gabe on the very uncomfortable bench.

"We're fucked," Gabe announces.

"No we're not," I try to keep him optimistic but it's hard. We're sitting in a holding cell because I punched a drunk fireman and although the situation is ridiculous, it is serious. I don't know how we're going to get out of this but I have to be the optimistic one here no matter what.