Leslie's Journal

by Allan Stratton

  “Your journal?”

  Suddenly the world goes red alert.

  Thirty-Eight

  “Your journal will be evidence—key evidence—if Jason goes to trial,” Sylvia says.

  But the cops won’t lay charges unless I cooperate. Court will be tough. Jason’s lawyer will try to make me look like a liar. Even if Jason’s found guilty, he won’t get much time. He’s barely eighteen, comes from a “good family” and hasn’t been in trouble before. So for me to get dragged through crap seems pointless, especially when it could all be for nothing.

  Sylvia and I talk about the other girls I saw on the porn files. She shows me photos of missing kids, but I don’t recognize them. If only I hadn’t destroyed the memory card!

  “It wouldn’t have changed much,” Sylvia comforts. “The card isn’t proof he took the shots. His lawyer could say he downloaded them when he was underage. What we need are the girls themselves. And the card wouldn’t tell us who they are or how to find them.”

  Sylvia says I can wait to decide what to do. In the meantime, she hooks Mom and me up with Victim Services. We get deadbolts for our apartment, call display for the phone, plus I’m given a free cell to use if I’m alone and in trouble.

  I also get to “see someone” who specializes in abuse. Her name is Dr. Seymour. She’s written a book, which makes me think she must be smarter than the goof I went to for family counseling.

  On the school front, Beachball is unsinkable. The cops ask her what she knew and when she knew it. Guess what? According to her, she had no idea there was a problem. Yes, she’d read my journal, and spoken to me immediately, but I told her it was make-believe. Cover your ass, Ms. Barker, it’s big enough.

  Beachball says that my missed exams won’t count against me. My term work’s good enough that I’ll either scrape through or get failures bumped to a fifty. That hardly makes up for the fact that Jason gets to stay at the school; without charges there’s no reason to expel him. Beachball says if I’d feel more comfortable somewhere else, she’ll be happy to arrange a transfer. Nice. He tries to kill me, and I’m the one she wants to move.

  Thirty-Nine

  This morning Mom let me sleep in. Since I’m not back at school yet, I guess she figured there’s no point torturing me. As usual, I stayed inside, deadbolt secured. I’m still too nervous to go out unless I’m with somebody. “Jason won’t come after you while the heat’s on,” Katie says. Probably not, but crazier things have happened.

  Anyway, I’m in front of the TV having breakfast—a Coke and a slice of leftover pizza—when the phone rings.

  It’s Sylvia. “I’ve got something for you to look at. Do you have some free time?”

  “Let me check my date book,” I joke. Sylvia doesn’t laugh. Twenty minutes later, she’s at my kitchen table, pulling a surprise out of her briefcase.

  At first I don’t get it. Then it clicks. Sylvia may not have a sense of humor, but she sure is smart. I’m staring at a copy of last year’s yearbook from Port Burdock Central High. Port Burdock—Jason’s old stomping grounds. Jason was at the boys’ academy, but there were girls at the town’s public school.

  I flip through the yearbook. Freeze. The girls’ faces are magnets. Amber Bentham, 9C. Melanie Brady, 10B. They smile out at me from their class pictures, but their eyes have secrets. Strange. I thought I was done with crying.

  I’m hyper all day till Katie runs over after class. We sit in the bathroom giving each other facials. Katie thought this’d be good for calming me down, seeing as it’s a big sin to move your lips while the mask is drying.

  I don’t care. I talk like a bad ventriloquist. “I caaan’t jussst sssit heeere waiiiting. I’vvve gooot tooo caaall theeem.”

  Katie shakes her head and writes on a piece of paper: “Let the police do it.”

  “Nooo waaay. I caaan’t.”

  Katie writes: “Look in the mirror.”

  I do and burst out laughing. These aren’t normal facials. They’re Fun Facials, sleepover specials courtesy of Katie’s mom. My face is this bright fluorescent orange; Katie looks like a cherry lollipop with hair.

  “Yooour mooom isss meeentaaal!”

  Katie giggles. Then she holds up her hand and shushes me while she stares at her watch for three minutes. Every time I go to say something, she kicks me.

  “Oookaaay,” she says at last. We wash our faces off, hers in the sink, mine in the bathtub. After we’re done, we go back into the living room and I start up again.

  “Leslie, get real,” Katie says. “Calling those girls is the stupidest idea you’ve had in ages.”

  “Why? Don’t you think they’d like to know they’re not alone? I bet they don’t even know about each other—and they’re in the same school!”

  “Leave it alone.”

  “And it’ll all go away?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Katie, please. I’ll only do it if you say it’s okay. Puh-leeaasse? For meeeee?? Puh-llleeeeeaaaaassssse???”

  Her eyes bug. “How does your mom put up with you?”

  I grab her hand and yank her to the computer in the living room. We go online to the directory, my heart doing loop-de-loops. Luckily Port Burdock’s not too big. There’s just five Bradys and two Benthams.

  I call the first Bentham and put on the speaker phone so Katie won’t bug me about what’s going on. A boy answers. There’s the sound of a TV in the background. “Yeah?”

  He sounds little, but just in case, I put on my polite voice. “Hello, this is Leslie Phillips. Could I please speak to Amber?”

  The boy yells, “It’s for you,” and I hear this voice yell back, “I’ll take it in my room.” I’ve hit the jackpot, first try. The boy doesn’t say anything else, but I can still hear the TV. Finally the other voice comes on the line.

  “Hello?”

  So this is Amber Bentham, the girl in 9C. She must be in grade ten now. My grade. To think I know her phone number, where she lives, goes to school—what she looks like naked—and she doesn’t even know I exist.

  “Hello,” I reply. It’s all I get out.

  “You can hang up,” Amber says into the phone to her brother. Pause. I can still hear the TV. “I said, you can hang up now, Jeffrey!” Click. “So, hi. Who is it?”

  “Leslie Phillips. You don’t know me, but I know you, sort of. At least, I know Jason McCready.”

  Her voice gets small. “Who did you say you were?”

  “Leslie Phillips. I’m nobody. Just this girl. I went out with him.”

  I thought being humble, a kindred spirit or something, would make her friendly. Instead, she acts like me on a bad day. “Well, maybe you went out with him, but I didn’t, and if you’re the one who ratted my name to the cops, I don’t know how you know who I am, but they were just here, and you got me in trouble with my parents, so thank you very much, and don’t ever call me again.” She hangs up.

  “Katie,” I say, “is it a sin to do something bad for a good cause?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then say a prayer for me.” I phone back. Amber answers. Before she can hang up again, I say, “Amber, I have the sex pix. If you don’t talk to me I’m going to e-mail them to your dad and the town newspaper.”

  “Oh god.”

  She’s so scared, I’m ashamed of myself. “What happened to you also happened to me,” I say. “I want to charge him, but officially he’s a first-time offender. If you charge him too, maybe we can put him away longer.”

  There’s a pause. “Has anyone else seen the pictures?”

  “No. They’re on a memory card. Nowhere else.”

  “Thank you. Thank you.” She’s practically kissing my feet over the phone line. “Promise me you’ll destroy the card.”

  “Not till you agree to help me.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can,” I say firmly.

  “It’s different for you.” Her voice cracks. “He doesn’t live here anymore. I’m finally getting some sl
eep.”

  “No, you’re not. He’s in your head. He keeps waking you up.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.” I hear her sob. I wish I could hug her.

  “When that detective showed up at the door, I didn’t know what it was all about.” She blows her nose. “She got me alone in the living room and asked me all these questions: if I knew Jason, if he’d hurt me, if he’d raped me. I felt like a criminal. She said if I ever remembered anything to give her a call. After, she told my folks I hadn’t done anything wrong, but they acted like they didn’t believe her. Mom kept saying, ‘We’ve never had trouble with the police.’” Amber whispers: “Look, it was the end of last year. I remember him taking the photos, but not much else. I’d never had more than a glass of wine at Christmas dinner before that. I thought I was going to bleed to death. I tried to break up with him, but he wouldn’t go away. Finally he went on a date with Jenny Maraida to make me jealous.”

  I get chills. “Who’s Jenny Maraida?”

  “You don’t know? Her dad caught them drunk and naked in the family garage. He called the principal at the academy and Jason got booted out for what they called ‘drunkenness and other grave misdemeanors.’ If it was anybody but Dr. Maraida reporting him, nothing would have happened. I mean, the guys at the academy are rich kids in jackets and ties. They walk through town like they own the place.”

  “Back to Jason.”

  “No.” Amber stops me cold. “I haven’t seen him since. I never want to again. There must be somebody else who can help you.”

  “There is,” I sigh. “A girl from your school named Melanie Brady.”

  “Jason went out with Melanie?”

  “Once, anyway. I’ll try her instead.”

  A terrible pause. “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Melanie Brady is dead.”

  Forty

  Melanie Brady committed suicide. According to Amber, one morning before the bell, the halls at her school were alive with whispers. The kind that spread faster than flu. Apparently Melanie’d posted porn shots of herself on her Facebook page. She’d also Hotmailed the pix to her entire address book. Someone had taped up a printout in the guys’ washroom, and a couple of her so-called friends were flashing copies hidden in their binders.

  Melanie wasn’t at school to defend herself. Kids were saying she should hide her face forever, she’s such a slut. That talk stopped with the morning announcements. The principal said there’d been a tragedy: Melanie Brady was dead.

  All morning, guidance counselors dealt with weeping classmates who’d never had time for Melanie when she was alive. (As Amber tells me this, I have a flash of Ashley. If I died, she’d be first in line to get attention. No, I take it back. When a person’s dead, lots changes, and the rest doesn’t matter.)

  By lunch, the word was out that Melanie’d swallowed sleeping pills and slit her wrists in the bathtub. Amber says everyone had questions: Was Melanie a secret druggie? Had she posted when she was high, then killed herself when she realized what she’d done? Kids who knew her said she was weird and impulsive. But this went too far to make sense even to them.

  “Well, it makes sense to me,” I say. “You too, right? We know Jason. I’ll bet anything Melanie broke up with him. He had her password and went to an Internet café. He logged on to her Facebook page, wiped out her privacy settings and posted her file from his memory card. Then, in case the post got taken down, he sent the stuff through her e-mail account too. Sound about right?”

  “So? We can’t prove it.” Amber chokes up. “You know, he threatened to do the same to me when I left him. I changed my password, but twice a week he’d call or text: ‘Today’s the day.’ That’s all he’d say, but I knew what he meant. The messages stopped when he moved away. But I’m still afraid. Please, please destroy my photos!”

  I don’t have the heart to blackmail her anymore. “They’re history,” I say. “I burned the memory card ages ago.”

  There’s a shudder of relief. “Thank you.” A deep breath. “Look, about the trial. I wish I could help, but I can’t. My dad’s real conservative. Mom too. I’m supposed to be perfect. They’d die.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “Forgive me?”

  “I don’t know.” I hang up.

  Katie gives me a back rub. We stare out the window. After a while, she gets bored and starts to paint my toenails. I stop her before she puts smiley faces on the big toes with Liquid Paper. She sighs and gets out her sparkle dust instead, like she’s Tinkerbell on happy pills or something.

  “Not now!” I say, and yank my foot away. Katie thinks I’m mad. But I’m not. I’m just very, very determined. “Katie,” I say, “I’m having Jason charged.”

  “Are you serious? You’ll be all by yourself.”

  “I don’t care. I won’t live in fear like Amber. I won’t run away. Not ever again.” I hold her hand. “Without the other girls coming forward, Jason won’t get what he deserves. But, Katie, if I let him get away, the next time he does it, he’ll still be Mister Perfect. At least if I say what he did out loud in court his name will be on the record. There’ll be a trail. A history.”

  “What if he tries to get even?”

  “He can come after me no matter what I do. But each time he’s gotten away with things, he’s gotten worse. This is my only way to fight back.”

  “What if the judge doesn’t believe you?”

  “That’s the least of my worries.” I laugh at the truth of it.

  Katie gasps like I’ve lost my mind. “You’re either the bravest or the stupidest person I know, maybe both,” she says. “But I’m with you no matter what.”

  That night, Mom tells me the same thing, except she leaves out the “stupid” part.

  Me, I’d leave out the “brave” part, too. It’s like, after talking to Amber, I realize there’s no choice. Not for me. Not for what I want to be, or what I want to see when I look in the mirror.

  Forty-One

  When I say I’ll testify, the police lay charges against Jason for rape, stalking, creation of child porn, forcible confinement and uttering death threats. He gets bail, but there’s a bunch of catches. He can’t make contact or be anywhere near me. That means I don’t have to change schools, he does. And when he isn’t at school, he has to be at home. To make sure he obeys, his parents have to put up a huge security bond, and he has to wear an electronic ankle bracelet. Talk about the GPS chip being on the other foot, eh?

  With Jason out of the picture, I go back to school. Instead of running to the bathroom to cry all the time, I feel like I’m ten feet tall—I can take on the world. Who’d ever have guessed that going to school would make me feel so good?

  It’s especially fun watching Beachball suck up to me. Every time she sees me, she acts concerned and asks if there’s anything she can do to help. (Like, go flush herself down the toilet?) My teachers give me extra breaks too. Guidance has sent them a memo to take my “difficult situation” into consideration. Even Mr. Manley has laid off.

  Ms. James is ecstatic. The first time she saw me in the hall, she tried to give me a high five. Please. I backed off, but left her a note in her staff mailbox saying thanks. The students are something else again. You’d think I was a celebrity. Girls who used to ignore me come up to say I’m amazing and should get an award or something. Right. They’re basically looking for dirt. Meanwhile, guys make a point of steering clear, as if they think I’ll charge them with harassment if they peek at my boobs.

  Nicky Wicks was really funny. He came up all sweaty and smelly and said he was sorry he used to look up my skirt. “How interesting,” I said, trying not to laugh. You should have seen him shake.

  Forty-Two

  After a preliminary hearing, Jason goes to trial. The prosecutor, Mr. Pérez, has lined up the psychiatrist I’ve been seeing, Dr. Seymour; she’ll testify for us as an expert on child abuse. But Jason’s lawyer has a psychiatrist too, who’s apparently going to
say I’m a chronic liar. Katie wanted to testify about my bruises, the photos Jason took of us in the park and seeing me burn the memory card. Unfortunately, Mr. Pérez told us, none of that’s evidence, just hearsay: Katie didn’t see me get hurt, those photos are innocent and she never saw what was on the card.

  “The case is a toss-up,” Mr. Pérez warns me. “The verdict will all depend on who the court believes: you or Jason.”

  “So I’m on trial too.”

  “In a way,” he nods. “Good luck.”

  When the time comes, I take the stand and swear an oath to tell the truth. Mr. Pérez has me read aloud from my journal. It’s embarrassing, but the pages keep me focused, so I don’t have to look at Jason or his family.

  That changes when Jason’s lawyer, Mr. Addison, gets up to cross-examine me. Mr. Addison’s an old guy with a silver mustache. He acts all folksy, but the whole time he’s out to trip me up. I pretend he’s Vice-principal Manley. People are a lot less scary when you’re counting their nose hairs.

  All the same, his questions are hard: “Do you agree you have quite an imagination, Leslie?” “How did you feel when Jason left you for Ashley?” “According to your own journal, you have a history of lying. Why should we believe you now?” “Again, according to your journal, you smoked a lot of marijuana. Why should we trust your memory?”

  I try to concentrate, but I can’t. I glance over at Jason. He smirks. Behind him, his parents burn holes through me with their eyes, like I’m a psycho liar out to ruin their family.

  Against the McCreadys, I feel like trash. I’m about to lose control, then I look at my parents. Dad’s supporting me in the back row with Brenda. But Mom’s right at the front. She sits there, shoulders straight, chin up, so proud of me I can taste it. I won’t let her down. I won’t let myself down either.

  I think of the girls on Jason’s files—Melanie especially—and suddenly this power takes root inside me. It grows down to my toes and up to my brain, till every part of my body feels alive. I face Jason. I stare deep into his eyes. Now he looks away.