Spilled Milk: Based on a true story

by Randis, K. L

  I found out that Jason’s parents had divorced and the day that I met him at the gas station he was sleeping at his buddy’s house. His mom lost their house and they were living out of a motel outside the school district’s boundaries. He slept at a friend’s house to avoid the fourty five minute commute and to try to pretend that his life was somewhat normal by being around friends. I respected and understood that.

  Right around the time his mom found a small house in a beat up part of town is when Jason realized I was living out of my car. Two days later, and after meeting his mom only once, I was moved into one of the two bedrooms in the house.

  His brother took the only other bedroom and his mom slept on the futon in the living room. I felt like I was putting her out and was uncomfortable with it, but she insisted that the futon was sturdier for her back. And besides, she had said, there was no way was she was going to let me live in my car.

  Going to court became difficult when I had to explain to Jason where I was going. Paul’s reaction when he found out scared me into thinking that I should hold off on telling Jason what was going on.

  I was Jason’s first real girlfriend, and I knew what kind of spell your first can have. I didn’t want to lose him too. I wanted to tread lightly, because I did love Jason, even though I wasn’t ready to admit that to myself yet because of Paul.

  Earl was officially arrested, even though he made bail the next day. Eight months had passed since the time I filed the report with the police and they conducted their investigation. The judge ordered $40,000 bail but you only have to come up with 10%, or $4,000 in his case, so he was free to go until the preliminary hearing.

  Heather called and explained about the preliminary hearing. “Now the purpose of this hearing is just to establish if a crime was committed, based on the facts, and if it was the defendant that probably committed the crime. A preliminary hearing doesn’t mean he’s guilty or not guilty, it’s just there to establish if we can move on to the next step. Understand?”

  I nodded into the phone as I juggled my anatomy textbook in my lap on Jason’s bed. “Do I have to do anything?” I asked.

  “We have the burden of proving a crime was committed. That means you’ll have to testify in front of a judge again and explain what happened. It won’t be at the courthouse though. Preliminary hearings happen at the magisterial district court, it’s a smaller court closer to where you live. We’ll also introduce the things we found in the home as evidence.”

  “What did they find?” Mom didn’t tell me anything about evidence.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Yea. Please.”

  “They found a Barbie in one of his toolboxes. One of your old Barbie dolls. It had a hair tie in its hair that belonged to you. The Barbie was naked.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “They also found a lot of pornographic material. Magazines, videos, that kind of thing.” Heather paused one second too long.

  “What was wrong with having the porn?”

  Heather sighed. “There was a picture of you between the pages. An older one. You were maybe eight or nine. It was taped to one of the faces of the women.”

  Heather told me Earl would be there, but it would be unlikely that he wouldn’t take the stand since the burden of proving anything was on my lawyer. Bail could be modified if the judge thought he might become a flight risk. I hung up the phone and tried to concentrate on the anatomy terms in front of me. It was going to be a long week.

  Since the preliminary hearing is held in the magisterial district court, Mom and I crammed into the eight by eight space waiting room. There was a tiny window on the front door and a dim overhead light. Heather hurried inside and pointed towards another door on the other end. “In there, quickly. David is here. We’ll wait in the courtroom.”

  Heather ushered us into a cramped space and I started to look around. We were surrounded by boxes of files, mops and cleaning supplies. “Heather are we in a closet?”

  “Might as well be.” She rolled her eyes. “These magisterial courts jump from place to place depending on the rent. This is definitely one of the smaller ones. We’ll wait in here until your lawyer gets here, and the judge. This way you don’t have to see him.”

  It made me feel better that she tried to not use his name around me. She never would call him Dad. Adam and Thomas still did though, whenever they would ask for an update on what was going on. I heard Thomas in the kitchen the other day when I was over visiting. “Mom, is Dad ever coming back?”

  “Let’s go.” Heather whisked us into the musty courtroom and I saw Earl watch me come out of the room in my peripheral vision. We stood only eight feet from the judge and less than five feet from Earl and his lawyer. I silently begged that I would not have to go up next to the judge to tell him what happened. I would be so close, too close, to Earl. I hated that him and his lawyer stood next to the only exit in the room. I was trapped.

  “All rise for the honorable Judge Constance.”

  It was harder to concentrate with a guy judge sitting in front of me. I felt like every time my lawyer made a remark about rape or abuse the judge glanced my way. Once again I had to tell the judge in my own words what happened.

  My hands clasped together, I sped over the information at lightning speed to prevent my face from getting too enflamed. The judge was satisfied with my overall general description and didn’t ask me to give further details on any of the rapes or abuse. Heather had said to keep my explanations simple, again, since this was not the place where it was determined if he was guilty or not guilty.

  Earl was lead from the courtroom after both sides provided their evidence. Even though I had to go before a judge to get the protection from abuse order, it was no easier to stand in front of these people now to say it again. By the time I arrived back home to Jason’s exhaustion had kicked in and I didn’t care that I had an exam the next day.

  “So how’d your court thing go?” He pulled a blanket around us and stroked my hair as my cheeks molded onto his bare chest.

  “Okay I guess. Just have to wait now.”

  Jason nodded. “You seem tired.”

  “Exhausted.”

  He yawned in response. “Me too. I think we’re the only seventeen year olds that work as much as we do.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised.”

  The bed shifted as Jason leaned to his left and grabbed something off the dresser. He moved his hand under the blanket and placed a cell phone sized box in my hand. I scrunched my face and looked up at him. His pearly teeth greeted me. When I sat up and opened the Littman Jewelers box, a diamond encrusted pendant necklace reflected off the light in my eyes.

  “I mean, if I didn’t work so much I couldn’t afford to get my baby a six month anniversary gift. So I’m okay with it.” His grin was so wide I could see his gum line and he brushed the hair away from my neck to clasp the back.

  “There’s three diamonds. One for the past.”

  His lips moved over my neck.

  “One for the present.”

  Warm, shallow breathing caressed my ear.

  “And one for the future.”

  His lips were pressed firmly against mine as we lay back on the bed. My cheeks in his hands he pulled away long enough to say I love you and resumed attaching himself to my face.

  I pulled at the pendant and looked it over in my hand. “This is so beautiful. Thank you. That was so sweet.”

  Secretly I was impressed he made such a big deal out of our six month anniversary. Earlier that week when I was with Midge I gave her an attitude. I still missed Paul so much and I felt guilty being in a relationship when I was still thinking about someone else.

  “I haven’t even told Jason I love him back yet because I don’t think you can love two people at once. But I do love him. But I miss Paul.”

  “Why do you miss him?” asked Midge.

  I sneered. “What do you mean why?” The answer seemed obvious to me. He was my first boyfriend, and I loved him
.

  “Tell me the things Paul did that make you miss him.”

  I considered what she was asking me. Every time I opened my mouth no words came out. Any excuse I could come up with was irrelevant compared to the closeness I felt to him and his family when I shared my day with them. The idea of how we kissed and laughed was surely missed too, but it wasn’t the reason my heart was hurting. Paul filled a void where I was allowed to talk safely about anything I wanted. I missed that.

  Silent tears slid down my face and by the time Jason realized I was crying he was leaning over me, rubbing them away with his finger. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

  “I need to tell you something. But I don’t know how to tell you.”

  He brought his face closer to mine, a whispered voice soothed me. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Just try.”

  “Doesn’t it seem weird that I’m the only one who has to go to court all the time? Adam, Thomas and Kat don’t.”

  “I’ve thought about that.” His arms encased my body. “I thought it was because of your parents’ divorce.”

  “I miss so much school. Isn’t it weird that I have to miss that much school for court? For a divorce?”

  He was silent for a minute. “Brooke, I know you want to tell me something. It’s okay. I’m here to listen. You don’t have to cry.”

  “My dad, David.” I realized that Jason probably didn’t even know that my dad’s name was David since we’ve never talked about it. I shifted and leaned against him, face to face. I had to see his reaction when I told him. I needed to know what he felt the second I said it.

  “He raped me. I have to go to court because of the things he did to me.”

  Jason’s expression was agonizing. His grip tightened on my sides as he blinked. “I’m sorry, Brooke. Baby I’m so sorry.” He picked up my face. “Why are you crying? Did you think that anything you just said would change anything?”

  “It’s not up to me if things change.” I remembered Paul’s face in the hallway. The hurtful comments he said before turning his back on me, again. “It’s up to you if you want things to change.”

  I held my breath as Jason thought for a minute. He always needed a minute to gather his thoughts, almost as if he considered every viable consequence before he would speak.

  “That isn’t going to change anything at all.” His gaze shifted from somewhere off in the distance to my face. “It wasn’t your fault. What kind of person would I be to leave you for something so…so…” He lifted a hand to exemplify his loss of words. “Stupid. Something like that would never change how I feel about you, because that’s something that happened to you, it’s not who you are. I love you, Brooke. I’ll always love you.”

  “Are you sure?” Jason’s reaction was so completely opposite of Paul’s I thought for a second he was being sarcastic. His eyes told me differently. They were hurt for me, trying to figure out who in this world would make me feel like something like that would be held against me.

  “I’m gonna marry you one day, Brooke. I’m sure of that. And I’m sure that there is nothing about your past that would make me love you less.”

  Exhausted from crying and the emotional rollercoaster of the preliminary hearing I settled into Jason’s arms. Relief rushed from my veins and drowsiness crept in.

  “I have to tell you one more thing,” I whispered.

  “Anything.”

  “I love you, Jason.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Brooke Nolan, can you please stand up?”

  Hearing my name evaporated the daydream I was in as I looked around Mr. Heinz’s history class. There were two weeks left until graduation and after the parade of court hearings I’d been through the last few weeks I had a hard time making it to class, never mind actually paying attention to what was going on.

  “Up, up. On your feet.” His white moustache bounced all over his lips as he used an index finger to visually make me rise from my seat.

  “Now that you’re standing, could you please inform the class, just what is so important that you consistently feel the need to skip my class?”

  Chuckles from the back of the room flooded my face with heat. “I don’t believe the answer is in your textbook, Miss Nolan, no need to look down. Look at me. That’s better. Now, if it’s not too much to ask, as soon as we get your response we can continue today’s lesson. Unless you planned on not being here for that either.”

  Judd gripped the sides of his desk and I knew it would be a matter of seconds before he erupted in Mr. Heinz’s face if I didn’t respond. “I’m sorry if asking a classmate for the notes I missed was disrupting your lesson. I’ll wait until after class next time.”

  “No no, don’t sit down. I appreciate the apology but you still haven’t told the class exactly what it is you’re skipping my class for.”

  “I have notes.”

  “You have notes? So now as long as you have a note from mommy or daddy it’s okay to skip school?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  Mumbled laughter and whooping noises rose from the crowd behind me. Exhaustion had a way of making me care less about what other people thought, and his persistence crawled under my skin in a way I normally wouldn’t have cared before.

  “Excuse me? This class is my business young lady, your grades are my business, so you can pick up your things and head to the principal’s office.” A finger jabbed in my face.

  My book bag was over my shoulder before he finished his sentence. Judd started packing up his things too, in an act of solidarity and support.

  “And you can add some more wax to that bald head of yours and go to hell, Mr. Heinz.”

  Judd raced down the hallway after me and as we turned the corner we could still hear the chaotic laughter echoing from the classroom. “That was amazing,” Judd said. “Did you see his face? You know you’re getting at least a week of in-school for that right? No one will be able to take that guy seriously for the rest of the year now. Ah man I wish I recorded that.”

  “I won’t get any in-school, I am going to the principal’s office.”

  After talking with the principal about what happened he had a sit down with Mr. Heinz. He apologized for outing me in class. “I uh, didn’t realize your situation. I’ll be a little more discreet next time.”

  Heather called as I was leaving school, and I fumbled to pick up when I heard her ringtone go off in my bag. She got right to the point. “Hey Brooke, got a minute?”

  “Yea, go ahead.”

  “You okay? You sound…”

  “Rough day at school. It’s okay.”

  “I bet. Hang in there. Anyway, you know the defense has asked for a continuance for a fourth time with the preliminary hearing. They’re really trying to drag it out since they probably don’t have much to go off of as far as any kind of defense is concerned.”

  “What do they keep continuing for? How long can they keep doing that?”

  “Who knows? They say they need time to gather more evidence for the defense. And it can go on as long as the judge allows it. But we had a hearing this morning, you know you didn’t have to be there, and the judge decided that they won’t move ahead until you undergo a psychiatric evaluation and a physical. The defense requested it.”

  “I’m the one that needs a psychiatric evaluation?”

  “I know. We have thirty days to complete it, so I have a few calls out. We’ll try and get this done as soon as possible okay?”

  “What’s the physical for?”

  “They want to check for STD’s.”

  “What? What for? Heather, did he have STD’s? Did he give me something?”

  “Calm down, sweetie. We don’t know. All we know is that they want to have you tested.”

  An uncomfortable silence traveled through the lines before anyone spoke.

  “Did you find out your ranking yet?” Heather changed the subject; she never liked to hang up until we talked about somet
hing other than the trial. I liked that she tried to distract me from the weight of our conversations.

  “Yea, I did actually. I’m thirty two out of four hundred fifteen. Nowhere close to valedictorian anyway.”

  “That’s great Brooke, Penn State would be crazy not to take you.” Her enthusiasm was genuine.

  “They did.”

  “They did? Oh honey congratulations. Did you tell your mom yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  I hung up with Heather realizing that I hadn’t told Jason I was accepted to Penn State either. College meant I would be leaving town, but he knew how much it meant to me. Now that I got my acceptance letter, it was something we would need to talk about.

  Jason threw his uniform on the floor and flopped onto the bed staring at the ceiling. “I can’t believe the people who own this house are making us move out. It’s not our fault Jersey schools suck and they wanna move their kids to P.A instead.”

  “How much time are they giving us?”

  “Barely thirty days, which I don’t think is legal. We’ll have time to graduate and go on vacation with my mom to Canada, but we’ll only have about a week after we get back to move.”

  “To where?”

  “I don’t know, Brooke.” He covered his face with his hand. “I can’t work more than I already do. My brother is moving in with his girlfriend and my mom has a friend she can stay with but she won’t go unless she knows I have a place to stay too.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you. Come here.”

  My head was on his chest and I could feel the frustration building up inside of him. It seemed like an ideal time to bring up my acceptance letter. I had an idea.

  “Well, maybe we can move. Together.”

  “Where?”

  “Two hours from here?”

  Jason let out a long breath before replying.“What are you not telling me?”