Sometimes Tweak can be an unreasonable pain in the butt, Bug thought, as her friend huffed away and boarded the Max. Can’t keep this kind of secret locked up inside. Too much weight for just the two of us.
     “I don’t want this to be our fault, Marta,” Bug said as she grabbed Marta and started walking west along Morrison. “I’m going to feel so shitty if Colin goes to prison. It’s not fair.”
     “Life’s not fair, Bug, you know that. What are you talking about, not your fault?”
     “We were just trying to help her out.”
     “Who?”
     “The bippytwat we took to Oly.”
     “What are you talking about, Bug?”
     “You know. The Underground Railroad.” She’s going to make me give a blow-by-blow, Bug thought.
     “You mean…”
     “Yeah. We were taking some little rich bitch up to a safe house in Olympia.”
     Bug and Marta turned south up Tenth Avenue, where the foot traffic was lighter.
     “That’s taking a minor over state lines, Marta. Serious shit.”
     “You’re telling me,” said Marta. “So give me the story.”
     “She was one of those whiney spawns of Yuppie love. Real weekend warrior, you know the ones. They wear trendy street rags and spange for money to go to the punk shows. I kinda felt sorry for her. Her dad beat the shit out of her, tells her to get lost, then her mom calls the cops and turns her in for being a runaway. That’s a tough place to be when you’re fourteen, you know. If you get the nerves to turn the bastard in, maybe Mom calls you a lying bitch. Maybe you end up in a miserable foster home. Maybe you get fucked no matter what you do.”
     Allison Walkingstick, aka Bug, knew about tough places. Her mom was a heroin addict. When Mom was clean, she was almost a decent mother. But most of the time she was either high or going through withdrawal. Allison’s dad, who lived in Hulbert, Oklahoma, came out to visit every couple of years, stayed a few weeks, and then went back to Indian Country. When Allison was twelve, the old man offered to take her to live with him, but the idea of leaving the city for Hicksville was profoundly disturbing. Instead, she moved to the streets.
      “I was kinda pissed at Emmy at first,” Bug went on. “She was the one supposed to go. But something came up at the last minute. She didn’t say what. Anyway, little Miss Bippytwat was scared to go all by herself with Colin, so me and Tweak got recruited. Colin talked his peace-love hippie shit most of the way up there. Thank God the tape player was broke or we woulda been listening to Phish or something on the way, too”
     “Oh, come on, Bug,” said Marta, “give Colin some slack.”
     Bug paused. It hadn’t really been all that bad, but she didn’t trust all this retro love-generation garbage, and the apathetic roach-heads who fed off of it. Colin wasn’t really like that. He acted on his belief and that was something you could admire.
     “Yeah, okay,” she admitted. “Colin’s cool. But sometimes you gotta kick the shit outta somebody to get their attention.”
     “What if they’re bigger than you?”
     “Hell, everybody’s bigger’n me. Why do you think they call me Bug? Don’t mean I can’t bite.”
     Bug could see Marta was getting agitated.
     “I guess we’ve been through this conversation before,” said Marta. “So how long were you guys on the road?”
     “Let’s see. When we got to Olympia we found out they’d moved. The new place was up by Evergreen. I never seen the women before, but I only been up there a coupla times. The Wylde Womyn Collective, that’s what they called themselves. Spelled it with Ys. Anyway, we had to find the place, and then there was some time gabbing. We musta got back ’bout twelve-thirty.”
     “So, what happened when you got back?”
     Bug reached into her memory. She recalled climbing out of Colin’s car and walking to the gazebo. Seeing that strange glow around Bartlett House. Emmy’s bag leaning against the gazebo post. Then the house in flames.
     “Oh, God. Poor Emmy.” Bug felt the tears rolling down her face. “We ran. It was all we could think of. Get as far away as possible. We didn’t know Emmy was in there. We didn’t know.”
     “So you were there. Why did you go to the gazebo, instead of the house?”
     Bug dabbed at her eyes with her shirt sleeve. “It was warm that night and there was word out on the street that the cops might be coming ’round to the house.”
     Marta raised her eyebrows. “What? Who told you that?”
     “Emmy did, the day before. Didn’t say where she heard it. Just said we should stay away from Bartlett House for a few days.”
     “Curious,” said Marta.
     “Yeah. Especially knowin’ what happened.”
     “You didn’t see anyone else around the house?”
     “Just some asshole in a Suburban Assault Vehicle tried to run us off the road.”
     “An SUV? What kind was it? Do you remember?”
     “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout cars. It was dark-colored, but not black.”
     Marta fell into silence. Bug started fidgeting. Finally, she said, “Look, Marta, I don’t want Colin to go down for this.”
     “Yeah, me either.”
     “It’s just that…we can’t tell ‘em where he really was, right?”
     “Yeah, I know.”
     “And one other thing,” said Bug. “Sometimes Colin brought partners there. Guys too. He had his own little playroom set up. All the kids knew about it.”
     “Shit,” said Marta with a deepening frown. “That settles it. Colin is being framed.”
     “Yeah,” Bug looked at Marta with sudden comprehension. “I guess he is, isn’t he?”