by Elle Casey
“Don’t you people have any respect for anyone?”
“Who is she, Bradley? Family member?”
Chick-eh, chick-eh, chick-eh… More pictures. Those people were vultures.
He shook his head in disgust and looked back at me. “Are you sure you want to go this way?”
I nodded. “Just point me in the right direction and I’ll start running.” I looked down at my feet. “Got my speed-racers on.”
He glanced down and then back up again, looking like he was going to say something about my shoes, but instead he grabbed me into a big bear hug. His words came right into my ear as he leaned down and squeezed. “Thank you so much, Katy. You’re an angel.”
He let me go and then shoved a couple people out of the way to clear a path for me.
I took off running for my house and didn’t stop until I was inside with the door locked behind me. My breath was coming in gasps, and I knew my face was white from fear and exhaustion. That was the most exercise I’d gotten in years. Cottage cheese be gone!
My father heard the door slam and turned around. As soon as he took in my appearance, his expression went from mildly curious to concerned.
He jumped up from the couch and came to me, yelling, “Marjorie!”
The doorbell rang.
My dad put his hand on my arm and leaned over towards the front door handle.
“Don’t answer it!” I yelled, right in his face.
He froze in place, blinking rapidly as he slowly stood up straight.
I tried to calm my tone down so he wouldn’t go ballistic on me. “Just … leave it.” I put my hand on the door to keep him from opening it. “It’s some reporters.”
He let his hand fall away from the handle and pulled his shoulders back. “Are you telling me that some reporter did this to you?” He pointed at my lip.
My mother came around from behind him and stared at me. “You’re bleeding.” She looked from me to my father, a questioning expression frozen on her face.
I held up my hands like two stop signs, trying to stave off the inevitable … the massive ass-chewing that was about to turn my butt-cheeks into two bloody stumps.
Okay, bad visual, but you get what I’m saying.
“I can explain everything. Let’s just go sit down and talk about it.”
The doorbell rang again. And again and again.
I was trying to get my parents to calm down and be reasonable, but every time that damn doorbell rang, it intensified their suspicion and worry. It filled me with a rage that I cannot explain. Even after all these months of looking back on it, I don’t understand why I didn’t just let that bell ring.
I swung around and grabbed the door, hauling it open.
The lights and the microphones were there, along with all the obnoxious questions. I picked out the one that I heard most clearly, the one that bothered me more than the others.
“Are you Jason’s girlfriend?”
It bothered me because I wasn’t his girlfriend, and I didn’t want people thinking that was why I was going over there visiting him. Not because I was embarrassed, though. The truth was, I still considered Jason as being out of my league, even though he was a criminal now. I hated to think about what that said about my confidence level or self-respect or whatever; it was what it was and no amount of common sense was going to change things for me. At least not then.
“No!” I yelled out at the sea of reporters, my voice causing everyone to go instantly quiet. All I could hear now were the sounds of camera shutters going off.
Chick-eh, chick-eh, chick-eh…Chick-eh, chick-eh, chick-eh…
The flashes made it impossible to see who was invading my privacy. “I’m Jason’s friend! He used to have a lot of them, but they’ve all disappeared. Funny, isn’t it, how when times get tough, you find out who your real friends are?” I realized I was getting all preachy and that was just lame. I’d probably already said too much. “Now you have your answer, so you can leave me and my family alone!” I slammed the door in their faces. Or at least, I tried to slam the door in their faces, but there was a foot in the way.
I banged the door several times, but this stupid reporter’s shoe was stopping me.
My father shoved me to the side and pulled the door open again.
There was a guy standing there, the same cheesedick who’d been slow to leave Mr. Baumgarten’s backyard. He held his camera up and took a picture of my father’s enraged face.
Chick-eh.
My mom and I watched in shock as my father cocked his right arm back and punched the guy right in the gut.
My dad. The resource specialist at the local community college. That’s a librarian in case you didn’t know. He totally kicked that guy’s ass with one punch.
When the cheesedick leaned over gasping for air, his camera went down and out, extending into our foyer.
I snatched it out of his hands and yelled, “Shut the door!” at my dad.
He did exactly as I ordered, and that is how we ended up locked inside our house with a paparazzi’s camera, and me standing there with a whole lot of explaining to do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THAT WHOLE VISION I HAD of my parents and me sitting down and discussing the situation like rational adults? Yeah. That was some kind of weird-ass fantasy.
The yelling started before I even passed the threshold into the living room.
“What the hell is going on?!” my father screamed, following behind me.
“Not so loud, honey, there’s still reporters out there.” My mom rushed over to make sure the blinds were tightly closed. She removed the tie-backs for the drapes and closed them too, something that made both my father and me stop freaking out for a second.
My mom never did that. Curtains were for show, she said, not to actually be used. Those tiebacks had probably only ever been touched twice in all the years they’d been there, once when they were put up and today.
“Can we just sit down and discuss this rationally?” I asked, trying to sound super mature. I put the camera down on the small table near the entrance to the family room.
“How about you just start explaining yourself. Did I hear that reporter ask you what you were doing at Jason’s house?” My father’s face was beet red.
“I thought you were out running,” my mom said, sounding kind of lost.
My father snorted. “Yeah, right. Because she’s a runner.”
“Hey!” my mother and I yelled at the same time.
My father shook his head and then mussed up his hair. “Sorry. Sorry, that was uncalled for …” He turned around and around, like he was trying to get his bearings.
“I think we all should sit down,” said my mother the peacemaker. “Let’s discuss this and figure out what we’re going to do with all these wolves at the door.”
I walked around the couch and took the armchair facing the coffee table, to the left of the sofa. My parents came over and sat side by side, both of them staring at me.
“So …,” I started, wondering how much I should say and how much I could get away with withholding. I decided not much, when the look on my father’s face told me I’d better not mess around.
“I … uh … was over at Jason’s house, and when I tried to leave, I kind of got surrounded by those press guys and someone bumped me on the mouth with a microphone. No bigiddy.”
“No bigiddy? No bigiddy?” My father’s volume increased with every word. “That’s called battery, Katy, and it’s not even my biggest concern if you can believe that!”
“Easy, Mike,” my mom said, placing a hand on his arm, “easy.” She looked up at me, speaking in a carefully-measured tone. “I think what your father is trying to say is that we don’t understand why you’re over at Jason’s house in the first place.”
My father glared at my mom. “I wasn’t having trouble saying it, I just didn’t get the chance yet.”
My mom glared back at him, all her easy-going mom-ness suddenly absent. “Do you want to take
this upstairs?”
That’s code in my parents’ world for fight-club. Their bedroom is where all the work of raising a family happened, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ll let you decide which part of their fight and make-up process is which.
My father sighed heavily and turned to me. “Start talking, missy.”
I was doomed. When my name got changed to Missy, all bets were off. Both of my parents were staring at me with serious expressions and they were holding hands. No one in the history of the world has ever gotten past that wall of oneness before and no one ever would, so I didn’t even bother to bullshit them.
“Jason is my friend. He’s been accused of a terrible crime, and he needs support. That’s why I was there. It’s also why I visited him in jail.”
My mom’s jaw dropped open, but no words came out.
“If I’ve read the articles correctly, he wasn’t just accused … he admitted to killing his coach.” My father was challenging me, waiting to see if I’d fall into the lie-trap. No way was I even going to try.
“Yes. He’s admitted it publicly and to me.”
Both my parents opened their mouths to jump all over me, but I held my hand up and kept talking to cut them off.
“But! He’s entered a plea of not-guilty, which means innocent until proven guilty, and I think there’s something else going on there. I don’t trust his confession.” There. I’d said it. I’d given a voice to the unrest in my heart. It was both thrilling and scary-as-snakes at the same time.
My mom glanced at my dad, whose face looked like a lobster, and then turned to me. “Something else?” she asked. “What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter what she means,” my father burst out, “because she’s not going to spend time hanging around with a murderer! And that’s final!” He stood up and stormed out of the room, pausing only when he was at the doorway. His finger came up and jabbed the air in my general direction. “You are forbidden from visiting that boy ever, do you understand?”
I stood up, full of righteous indignation. “No, I do not understand!” I seriously wanted to punch something right then. Maybe my father. It struck me then how passions can overtake someone’s good sense and make them want to do something they’d never dream of doing on a normal day.
My mom jumped to her feet and held her arms out wide at her sides, one hand in my face, and one pointed towards my dad’s. “That’s enough! There will no more shouting at one another in this house!”
We were at an impasse. All of us were pissed, all of our faces on fire, and I’m sure all of us feeling completely justified in our positions.
“Now! Get your buns back here and sit down … both of you. Or I’m on strike and you’ll be doing your own cooking and laundry for the foreseeable future while I take a cruise to Alaska.”
My dad and I exchanged a look.
“You hate snow,” I said.
“Alaska?” My father walked slowly into the room. “I tried to get you to take an Alaskan cruise with me five years ago and you said you had no interest in icebergs and salmon fishing.”
“That’s not the point!” my mother yelled, apparently giving herself a pass from the no-shouting rule she’d just implemented. “Sit down!”
Dad and I rushed to do what we were told. My mother didn’t lose her shit very often, but when she did and threats about no more dinner started flying around, we listened. My dad and I once went through a two-week punishment together, and for the first three days it was fine; but after that we both realized that Mom is the glue that holds everything together and neither of us was willing to live falling apart like that again.
My mom lowered herself primly to the couch. “Now, we are going to talk about this in calm voices and without grand statements of what will or won’t be happening in the future, and we will not go to sleep until it’s resolved.”
“Alaskan cruise,” my dad mumbled, shaking his head.
My mom looked at me. “Katy … tell us about Jason. Is he okay?”
I folded my hands in my lap, trying to look as adult as possible. “He’s not good. I mean, he’s healthy, but he’s … worried. I think.”
“I’ll bet he is,” my father said, snorting under his breath.
“Mike. I’m not kidding.”
My father wilted a little under my mom’s glare.
Anxiety welled up inside me, and I had this desperate thought that I had only one chance to convince them about something I didn’t even really understand myself. The words poured out of my mouth in a rush.
“When we were little, he was like … superman. He was cool. He never let anyone pick on Bobby or me. And then we got older, we weren’t really friends, but he was still nicer than everyone else, and he knows I garden a lot and him and his dad call me The Constant Gardner, and then something terrible happened and he made a big mistake. I don’t know what exactly happened, but I know it’s something. People don’t just kill people for no reason, right?” I looked back and forth from my dad to my mom. “Right?”
“The news is saying he killed the coach because he was going to bench him for the big game,” my father said.
“Do you honestly believe that?” I asked, disgusted both with the news vultures and my father for just unquestioningly believing that crap. I conveniently forgot the fact that I’d been thinking the very same thing a few days ago, a-hole that I was.
“I don’t know.” My father was offended at the insinuation that he’s an idiot coming loud and clear through my tone. “I don’t know this boy. And I don’t think you know him either.”
“You’ve never mentioned him,” my mom said, I think trying to be fair. “He wasn’t one of your friends before he was a murder suspect.”
I waved her off. “Listen, we live in different social stratospheres, okay? That’s normal. It’s totally normal.” I pounded my fist on my thigh. “It was the same for you when you were in school.” I switched to a pleading tone. “Mom, you said so yourself … when you went to your twenty-year class reunion, everyone was totally different. The real world showed you that popularity meant nothing.” I shifted my gaze to my dad. “Jason is living in that real world right now. I’m living in it. This thing that happened to the coach … it changes everything.” I realized as I said it that it was so true. Jason and I would never be the same after this, either individually or together.
“I don’t agree that it has to change your life,” my father said.
My chin went up automatically. “I’m sorry, but it’s not your decision what happens with my life.”
My mom’s eyeballs kind of popped out of her head a little, but my dad was the first one to respond.
“Excuse me?”
Ooops. Went a little too far there.
I struggled to fix what I had just messed up. “What I meant was that I am grown-up enough to make my own decisions about this kind of thing, and I’ve made my decision. I’m going to stand by Jason through thick and thin, and I don’t care what the news says or what the kids at school say. He needs a friend and I am that friend. It’s a done deal.” I was totally ready for a cape and some tights at that point.
“Need I remind you that you are only seventeen years old?”
I could see the anger simmering beneath my father’s calm exterior, but I didn’t let it sway me from my mission.
“I’ll be eighteen in six months, but it makes no difference. I have to do what I have to do, and I just hope you can support me in this. You’ve been telling me for years that I need to get out of the house and do something worthwhile, so now I’m doing it.”
“I didn’t mean hang out with murderers!” my father shouted, jumping to his feet again. “I meant like glee club or something!”
“Glee club? Are you serious?” I stood up too, ready to get the hell out of this ridiculous place. Glee Club. As if.
“All right, that’s enough!” my mom shouted, also standing. She gave my father the evil eye and then turned it on me. “No more arguing. No more threats. Here’s
what’s going to happen...”
My breath got stuck in my lungs and wouldn’t come out. I could hear a ringing in my ears as the pressure mounted. My father was breathing like a bull ready to plow us both over.
“Katy, you will be permitted to visit Jason, if, and I mean only if, you discuss each meeting with us first and gain our agreement.”
The breath left my lungs like air departing a soggy balloon. “Great. I guess I know what that means.” It meant tying sheets together and rappelling out of my window in the middle of the night.
“No, you don’t,” she said, wiping the smile off my dad’s face. “We agree to be fair, to listen to what you have to say, and to try and understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Because you are a mature almost-adult, as you’ve mentioned, and we recognize that you need practice having adult independence before the day you actually leave this shelter we’ve provided for you and strike out on your own.”
My father rolled his eyes.
My mom turned to face him, effectively blocking me out. I was an observer in a moment that would normally be left for their bedroom.
“God forbid if Katy were ever accused of a terrible crime, we would want her friends to support her. If they all disappeared and left her here with us, it would be as bad as prison. We have always believed in a person’s right to be proven guilty before being treated as a criminal, right?”
My father nodded, but he still had that stubborn look in his eye. “But he’s admitted he did it.”
“You can’t…!” I started, but my mom cut me off with a hand and a glare. She’s really good at that.
She went back to counseling my dad, this time with a sweeter tone. Her eyes went soft and she stepped in closer, taking him by the hands. “As you well know, people often give confessions and later recant them. Innocent people admit guilt all the time. We cannot just assume he’s guilty on that basis, especially considering he’s pled not guilty.”