<blockquote>Dad bought my safekeeper from the school. The company had some kind of booth at Parent-Teacher Night. He gave me this box tied with a purple ribbon. I opened it and saw the black plastic handcuff, decorated with a row of number keys and a port on the side to charge it.
"Oh. I thought it was going to be one of those tennis bracelets," I said, trying not to freak. But by the time I got the words out my dad had my wrist wrapped in his big solid hand, and he snapped the safekeeper on and it was too late.
The safekeeper bit like a viper, the teeth on the skin side finding my vein and latching there. The seal was good enough that no blood ran out, but it hurt like a bitch.
"Now, Rebecca," Dad said. "I programmed it to call my car phone first, and then my office phone. If it doesn't get a response at either of those numbers, then it will call 9-1-1. So don't even think about crying wolf, young lady."
"What about Mom? Won't it call her?"
"I didn't give her the combination," Dad said. "You know how scatterbrained she is."
I poked my fingertip around the edge of the safekeeper: rounded matte plastic, light and flexible, but so tight I couldn't even get my nail under it.
"It has adapters for a regular outlet and the cigarette lighter in my car," Dad said. "You can charge it while I drive you to school."
"Since when do you drive me to school?"
"Since there's a killer on the loose," he said, with one of those looks he usually saved for when Mom had loaded the dishwasher wrong or something, so that was pretty much that, and I never did get a tennis bracelet.</blockquote>
