Radical

by E. M. Kokie

  I can’t. Just a little bit longer. Mom said Mark will be released soon. They wouldn’t be talking about that if they thought they could prove any of this. I just have to keep my mouth shut and wait it out. I can do that. I can handle this a little longer.

  “Bex,” Mom says, giving me a quick, shallow hug.

  She smells exactly the same. But her eyes are sunken and her hair is limp and there are tired lines all over her face that weren’t there before.

  Her eyes water. “You’re so thin.” Her hands move over me, and all at once it’s too much. I pull back, hands up to block any more touching.

  “Sorry, just . . .” I can’t explain. Explaining would be worse.

  “Come sit,” Mom says. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Really?” Her mouth sucks in. “I tried to call Ms. Bryant. She wouldn’t return my calls. She needs to talk to me about your case.”

  “She’s not supposed to.”

  “You are my child.”

  Her look hits me hard, fierce and protective and not at all embarrassed or ashamed of me. She hasn’t looked at me like that in forever. I swallow the lump in my throat. I can’t cry. I don’t cry anymore.

  “Lorraine said I should go to the court and demand that they order her to talk to me, as your mother, but . . . What am I going on for? That’s for the adults to discuss. How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, because there’s no point in saying anything else. “Segregation sucks.”

  “Segregation?” Mom asks.

  “Solitary. They call it seg here. And it sucks, but . . .” I shrug, trying not to let her see how much I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here. No, I can handle it. Not too much longer.

  “Well, at least you’re safe.”

  “Safe?” I stare at her. She’s acting like I’ve been tucked away, all cozy and comfy. “A girl killed herself last week. She couldn’t take seg anymore. She’d been there three weeks. I’ve been here for months.”

  Mom pales and swallows. Her hands shake in her lap, then her whole body trembles.

  I feel bad as soon as I see her gulp down the sob. She didn’t put me here. She didn’t keep me here. She couldn’t have done anything. She’s here, now, for me, and I need to make it okay.

  “Sorry. I’m sorry, Mom. How’s Dad?”

  “Okay,” she says, but it’s clear he’s not. “He’s had some . . . health issues, from the stress. But he’s doing okay. Wishes he could see you,” she says with a forced, watery smile.

  They won’t let Dad see me, not while we’re both still considered possible coconspirators.

  “And Mark?” I ask, needing to know what’s going on.

  “It’s not fair,” Mom says, the tears finally spilling over. “He’s in an awful place. The things that have happened to him . . .”

  “So . . . he’s still in custody?”

  “Yes,” Mom says.

  “I thought he was getting out. I thought . . .”

  “So did his lawyer. But then . . .” She rubs her forehead. “I can’t . . . I . . .”

  “Is he okay?”

  “No, Bex,” she says. “He’s not okay. His lawyer’s been trying to get him released, but . . .” She cries harder.

  Cries about Mark. Who’s the one who caused this, all of this.

  “What about me, Mom?”

  “What about you?” she asks, knife sharp and deep.

  “I’m here because of Mark! I didn’t do this! Mark did! He’s the one —”

  “You’re the one who dragged him into this,” she says. “Always pushing, always trying to show him up, getting him all riled up with your paranoid theories. He never would have been involved in any of this if you hadn’t been pushing, pushing, always . . . He never should have been there!” Mom wails. “If it wasn’t for you, and your father. Always making him feel like less . . .”

  Me, making Mark feel like less. Making him become . . . whatever he is now.

  “Mark knows I wasn’t involved.”

  She tries to shush me. “Don’t. We can’t —”

  “He knows I didn’t have anything to do with . . . any of it. And he’s letting me rot here.” My face feels stretched and contorted. “He could have had me out of here months ago. In five minutes. But he didn’t say a word. No one’s talking about releasing me. And you’re still worried about Mark.”

  “Maybe he was worried it would be worse for you if he said anything.”

  “How could it be worse for me? I didn’t do anything!”

  She looks at me without any of the weepiness or cajoling. “Maybe he thought the best thing he could do for you, to help you, would be to say nothing to the people who were trying to hurt you.”

  I start to get up and she grabs my arm.

  “He can’t help you. Prison, Bex,” she whispers, like whispering means it can’t be used against us. “If he is convicted, he goes to prison. Not juvenile detention. Prison.”

  Her grip tightens.

  “We cannot allow them to send Mark to prison.” No tears. Hard. Determined. This is why she’s here. “He won’t survive prison, Bex. He’ll die.”

  “Why did you even come here?” I ask.

  “How can you ask me that?” But she knows I’m not buying this worried act. She isn’t worried about me. None of this is about me. She realizes she’s still digging her fingers into my arm and lets go, goes back to petting my hand. “I needed to see you, to make sure you were okay.” She tries to smile and continues to pet my hand. “And to make sure you know we will do everything we can to help you, to get you out of here, as fast as we can.”

  Will do. Not are doing. They will. After. After I don’t talk and they convict me.

  “You need to sit tight, for now. Be brave.” She smiles again. “Mark hasn’t told them anything about you,” she says. “He could have told them about things, illegal things. He could have thought, maybe, that you were up to something, all the sneaking around . . . and the gun he removed from your room,” she whispers, “to protect you.”

  She can’t really believe . . . “Is that what he said?” My brain feels like it’s going to explode.

  “Maybe he was just trying to protect you,” she says. “That’s what family does. They protect each other.”

  I pull my hand back. This isn’t about Mom wanting to see me for me. This is about making sure I don’t talk. And letting me know what Mark might say if I do.

  “We’re family, Bex. Families stick together.”

  Funny. No one’s stuck by me. Except Joan.

  “And when this is all over, we will deal with the rest of it,” she says with a wave of her hand. Like my being locked up for months because of him is like he broke my toy or hurt my feelings. “The important thing is to get you both home in one piece. Then we can move on. Together. As a family.” She must see the look in my eyes, how I will never share a roof with him again. “Or,” she says, “maybe just you and I will go to Arizona for a while until things cool down. Wouldn’t that be good? Some sun? And peace and quiet? And enough time for people to forget. You’ll be older. You can change your hair. Maybe you can go by Rebecca. You can blend in there. Go back to school. Maybe community college, since you’ll be older . . .” She flashes a too-big smile to try to sell it. “A fresh start. For all of us.”

  Yeah, I can see it perfectly. Mom’s plan to just move, together, and then pretend like nothing’s happened.

  She doesn’t care about me, not compared to Mark. She doesn’t even want to know the real me. She’s still pretending.

  Joan doesn’t stand when I come into the room. No friendly talk or concerned once-over. I’ve never seen her look really angry before.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Is it Dad? Mom said he’d been sick. Did . . .”

  “What’s wrong?” she repeats. “What’s wrong is that you’ve been locked up here for months, and you haven’t told me anything, and I have to find out from your cell-phone records that you have an alibi!”


  I blink. An alibi? Cell phone? Oh, God.

  “You should have told me about Lucy Saunders from the beginning. Immediately. As soon as we started going through the key meetings and events, meetings and events you couldn’t possibly have been at because you were with, or talking to, Lucy Saunders miles away.”

  “She isn’t important. She’s just a girl. . . .”

  “I’ve read the texts, Bex.” My face flares hot. “And the e-mails. So has the government.” Humiliation.

  “But I deleted them.”

  She smiles, starting to calm down. “They subpoenaed your cell-phone records. E-mails, texts, the works. And hers.”

  “They can get that stuff? Even if I delete it?”

  “In your case, yes,” Joan says. “I just got the records, but the U.S. Attorney has had them, and your phone, for months. A phone and records that show all kinds of information about your calls and texts and whereabouts. And her phone was backing up to the cloud — a gold mine of alibi evidence. Would have been helpful and saved us a lot of time if you had told me what your phone would show. If you had told me about Lucy.”

  Oh, God. “Can we just keep her out of this?”

  “No. She’s a witness. An important one, as it turns out. Which is why I needed to know about her earlier.” She watches me. “I knew your phone might hold valuable information. I didn’t know it holds piles and piles of alibi evidence.”

  A shiver races up my body.

  “Calls. Texts. Apps on your phone pinging cell towers. Times when you were with her, all cataloged from those same texts and calls and pings. Contemporaneous evidence that you were nowhere near some of the key meetings and events at the heart of the conspiracy. A tremendous lack of any texts or calls at all between you and your brother. None.”

  She smiles a real smile.

  “In the weeks leading up to the alleged preparation for this huge terrorist plot, you were either working at your uncle’s station, at the club with people not implicated in these events, or off talking with, texting, or actually in the presence of someone not at all a part of any of this. Someone horrified by it all. From the looks of it, you barely had time to eat, shower, and go to the bathroom, let alone be part of a massive criminal conspiracy.”

  I can’t feel my head. It’s like it’s floating to the ceiling.

  “She doesn’t want to be involved,” I say. “At all. Just leave her alone.”

  Joan waits, pen over her legal pad ready to write. She smiles again, this one patronizing, or like she thinks it’s cute. I can feel my face get hot. “They’ve already talked to her. My investigator has already talked to her.”

  “I didn’t say you could —”

  “You didn’t say anything.” She dares me to argue with her. “Bex, this is a good thing. A very good thing.”

  I could tell her no.

  “I don’t understand you.” Joan leans over the table. “I’m here telling you that you have an alibi, and you’re acting like this is bad news.”

  “I told her this wouldn’t affect her.” I told her I would protect her. “I promised her.”

  Joan stares at me. Then she blinks, leans back, her jaw moving like she’s trying to figure out what to say. “Bex, I’m not sure you are understanding the position you are in.” The way she says it already makes me feel stupid. “I keep trying to get through to you that unless you start helping yourself, you are going to prison. Prison,” she says for emphasis. “For years. And now I discover you have a very strong alibi, and you’re worried about . . . what? Hurting her feelings? Some . . . promise you made, before any of this happened? Where is your head? I’m trying to help you and you act like I’m the enemy. You lie to me.”

  “I haven’t lied.”

  “Not telling the truth is lying. If you want me to withdraw and ask the court to appoint another attorney for you, then fine. But any attorney is going to use this evidence. She is your alibi.”

  I can’t. I promised her. But they already have the texts and calls. They’ve already talked to her.

  “Now, we are going to go through these key dates and events, and you are going to tell me everything you can remember. No more stalling. No more bullshit. You will tell me everything you remember. Now.”

  I can’t protect Lucy. And she already knows that I lied to her when I said I could.

  “Bex,” Joan says. She taps the table and I look up. I can’t take how she thinks this is all so cute, that she’s won. “I won’t need details of anything intimate.” Oh, God. “Just times and places. This is important.”

  Mom’s voice screams in my head. Calling me a coward, telling me to be brave. I push on my ears to try to get her voice out of my head.

  “Bex?”

  Their plan is to let me get convicted. They’re not going to help me.

  “Bex.”

  I’m not a traitor. But I can do this. I can talk about Lucy and keep Mark out of it. I don’t have to talk about Mark to answer Joan’s questions about Lucy. Maybe if I have an alibi it will be enough. They’ll have to let me go and stop trying to make me talk about Mark.

  I nod.

  Joan makes me go through every day — by calls, texts, e-mails, and the absence of them. Where I was, for how long, and did anyone see Lucy and me. I have to talk about Lucy, so I do, but I don’t say anything she doesn’t already know about Mark.

  “Now,” Joan says, stretching. We’ve been at this forever. The closer we get to the end, the more my stomach twists and my head aches. And the more I need to stay focused. Nothing about Mark. “Friday, a week before the arrests, you texted with Lucy earlier in the day about picking you up that night. She sends you a text asking when you’ll be done, and then nothing until the next day.”

  Cammie and Karen at the station, Lucy showing up, and dinner at Lucy’s grandparents’ house. Home.

  Joan makes more notes. Then she reads the list of texts and calls.

  “The texts and calls slow down after Friday.” She flips back and forth. “A lot. What happened Friday?”

  My face flames hottest yet.

  “Why did the texts and calls slow?” Joan asks, swallowing the smile.

  “Lucy started asking questions, about training. It didn’t go over well.”

  “Did you tell her about training? About Clearview or . . . ?”

  “I downplayed it,” I admit. “A lot.”

  Joan doesn’t judge me. Much. She writes some more notes.

  “Tell me about Tuesday. Four days before the arrests.”

  “We texted some.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. But what else?”

  I shrug. I try to keep my face blank. Mark, at the house. Those guys and the cooler.

  “Whatever you can remember.”

  I’m not a traitor. “I . . . went to work, probably. I think. I don’t remember.”

  “Think.”

  I pretend to try to remember. “I don’t remember. I mean, I know I went to work. I probably rode home from work with Uncle Skip, had some dinner . . . and . . . went to bed.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Um . . .” I pretend to think again. “Yeah, I think so.”

  She stares. I wait. Keep my face blank. Hold still. She makes a slash on the side of her legal pad, a violent, vicious slash.

  Shit. She knows something. But I can’t talk about Tuesday, about Mark and them at the house. Mark’s crazy eyes, jumping down from the porch. Mark in prison. Adult prison. I can’t.

  “What about Wednesday?” she asks, her voice tight.

  “I worked all day. Saw Lucy that night.” Stay calm. Be cool. “She picked me up. At the station.”

  “Anyone see her pick you up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long were you out with her? Where did you go?”

  “Not long. We had a fight,” I say, nodding at her look, “before we could go anywhere. She took me home.”

  “She dropped you off at the house? What time?” Joan’s voice sounds weird. I loo
k up at her; something prickles at my neck.

  I start to shrug and then feel it more. Fight. I have to fight, because there is no flight. This is important. But I need to be careful. Maybe I can say what I need to say without saying anything about Mark. I sit up, try to think. “I don’t know. Maybe seven? Seven thirty?”

  “Was anyone home? Anyone who can verify what time you got home? Did you go anywhere where people might have seen you? Bex,” Joan says, “I need you to focus here. Where exactly did you go? Would anyone have seen you between five thirty and when you got home?”

  Five thirty. Specific. Joan is staring through my skull. Ready to write. She’s trying to hide it, but she’s excited. This is more significant than the rest.

  And then clarity, something that has nothing to do with Mark.

  My mouth is dry. “A sheriff’s deputy.”

  She stops writing. Stops breathing. Neither of us moves.

  Alibi. I tell her everything I can remember about the deputy.

  “What time was this?”

  “No idea.”

  “Did you get his name or shield number or . . . ?”

  I shake my head.

  “Did he give her a ticket or . . . What happened?”

  I tell her about getting out of the car, about thinking we were in trouble and trying to decide what to do. And his radio going off and him leaving. I describe him as best I can remember. The mole on his cheek. His hair. His height. I don’t tell her I was planning to ambush him or run so he’d have to follow. I try not to sound crazy, or like a terrorist.

  “What happened after that?”

  “Lucy drove away.” I wrap my arms around myself to stop the shakes and tell her everything I can remember about the wheres and whens. I try not to hear Lucy’s words in my head. Or Mom’s. I can’t block out Mom’s. Adult prison. Careful.

  “Was anyone home to see when you got back?”

  “No,” I lie. If she knows about the deputy, she doesn’t need to know about Mark.

  She stares at me. She knows I’m lying. I can feel it. But I can’t tell her. Not that. Another slash.

  She puts her pen down slowly and leans back in her chair.

  I curl my toes in my floppy shoes to keep still.