I Said No

Chapter thirteen

Layla, one of her friends, Bay, Alicia and I are on our way to get fake ID's. Her friend knows a guy. He lives in Woodburn so we all drove the hour to get here together. He had us meet in a McDonald's parking lot. He's still not here even though we've been waiting for half an hour. Bay decides she's hungry so we all go inside. I don't really like McDonald's, so I skip the meal.

Before we arrived here we had to go and have our passport pictures done to bring this guy. We went to our local Walgreens, came up with extravagant stories of our travels to come, and had our basic profile photos done.

He's finally here. We give him each our pictures and the names and addresses we want and he leaves to go make them. Over an hour later and he's back with our ID's. Layla's friend takes a long hard look at them. She is not pleased with them, a frown growing deeper and deeper on her face.

"These are bullshit! They won't pass any of the tests. Look at how thick they are. And you spelled her name wrong." She yells at him while pointing at me. "Take them back and fix them, do better," she says while she throws the cards back at him, hitting him in his face.

"Follow me," he says, a slight annoyance in his voice. We follow him to a different location, this time an actual house. He's Mexican and looks like he's been on the wrong side of the line for too long. He is skinny, his face filled with acne scars.

"Stay in your car," he tells us as he walks into the house. Ten minutes later he comes back out, empty handed. "Follow me," he tells us again. This is starting to seem weird.

"Where are we going?" Layla's friend asks. She must be feeling uneasy like I am right now. He doesn't answer, just gets back into his car and we are off again. We are now at a different house. He doesn't come talk to us this time.

"Do you think we are going to be ok?" I ask shakily. I feel scared. It's dark out now and we have had no progress. I am getting a little paranoid that us five girls shouldn't be following this man we have never met before.

"I think so, it might just take some time to make it better," Layla says reassuringly to me.

"It all better be ok, we didn't each pay that much money for them to be shitty." She's right, $150 is a lot. Especially because there are four of us.

"We'll be ok, I've got us if anything goes wrong," Bay says while grabbing something from under her seat. It's a gun. My friend has a gun in her car. She pulls it up to her face and aims it out of her window and shoots. It's a
BB gun. Thank God. I was not prepared for some kind of shoot out. She laughs at all of our shocked faces. "Just in case," she claims.

"Let me take your picture," I say as I pull out my phone to capture the moment. She poses with a sweet coy face and the BB gun resting on her cheek.

He comes back out of the house and now has us follow him to a different parking lot. Bay is driving. I'm glad to have her. She always make me feel safe.

We sit in this parking lot alone with him in his car for what feels like forever. We are all silent, waiting in anticipation for what is to come. What is happening? Why is this taking so long? He finally comes out of his car, five hours after our original appointment.

"They're all done," he says as he hands our ID's back to Layla's friend. She looks at them very closely. She looks serious, like she is a jeweler looking at a diamond to see if it is real or not. She moved them further and closer to her face, she bends them, she feels their surfaces, then she hands them to each of us.