by Lara Zielin
I scoffed. “So what? Am I supposed to care what she thinks?”
Nat looked out the window, seeming to scan the parking lot. “Em, there’s more to this, but I can’t tell you what. So if you’re seriously leaving the camp in a few minutes, don’t come back. Okay?”
“What? Why?”
“I said I can’t tell you. So just take off and don’t come back.”
After all our recent fights, why was Nat suddenly trying to protect me? Something wasn’t right. “Why do you want me to go? So you and Molly can have the place to yourselves?”
“What? No.”
“Then what is going on?”
“What if I told you your family needed you?” asked Nat.
“What do you mean?”
“The board just voted that your mom shouldn’t preach,” she said.
I sat back in the deep bucket seat of the Honda and closed my eyes. So that was it. The board had voted to remove my mom.
I tried counting to ten so I wouldn’t lose it. Not in front of Nat. Plus I had to stay calm enough to call Jake and tell him he didn’t need to come pick me up.
“Are you okay?” asked Nat quietly.
“I’m fine,” I said, digging for my phone. “No thanks to you.”
“What does that mean?”
I was pulling things out of my bag, trying to locate my cell. I was getting more and more frantic. “Oh, just go back to your camp with your new best friend Molly, why don’t you. You keep looking around anyway. For her, right? Like you’re embarrassed to be seen with me.”
“No!”
“Oh, really?” By this time half my bag’s contents were on the floor of the car and there was no cell phone. I’d forgotten it in my tent. I scrambled to get everything back in the bag and not burst into tears. “Well, you could have fooled me.”
The tears started rolling down my face anyway, and I didn’t want Nat to see them. I pushed open the door of the Jane Fonda Honda, got out, then slammed it behind me.
“Em!” Natalie called after me, but I ignored her. I ran across the Loon Willow parking lot, back toward the camp. I had to get ahold of Jake—and fast.
As I trotted through the camp, trying not to sob too loudly, I got closer to my tent and slowed down. I saw lights flashing and heard voices and commotion.
I walked quickly toward the lights, wiping my nose and trying to get a grip on myself. Was Bear okay? Had something happened to one of the Angelfire Witnesses? I thought about Wichita going through the old lady ’s front porch and shuddered. Saved or not, the group might have some Death’s Screamers left in them after all.
I got closer and saw one of the rent-a-cops standing and talking to Bear. Then I saw a second rent-a-cop come out of my tent.
“Hey!” I cried, rushing forward. “What are you doing? You can’t go in there!”
“Excuse me,” said the rent-a-cop. He was skinny on both ends and round in the middle, like a glazed twist. “Are you Emma Goiner?”
“Yes, I’m Emma Goiner. What are you doing in my tent?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you a few questions,” said the rent-a-cop.
“Questions? About what?”
“About the ten thousand dollars we found in your tent,” he said, grabbing my arm and not letting go.
Chapter Seventeen
I’m sorry, but there’s been a mistake,” I said. “I don’t have ten thousand dollars. You couldn’t have found it in my tent.” I looked at the donut rent-a-cop’s name badge: Rusty. “You’ve made a mistake, Rusty,” I said.
Rusty puffed up his chest like he was insulted. “I got a witness here says different,” he proclaimed.
“What?”
“That’s her, Officer,” said Molly O’Connor, stepping forward and standing next to Rusty. Her blond extensions looked streaky in the flashing lights. “That’s the one I saw breaking into that woman’s motorcycle.”
I was glad I hadn’t eaten dinner or I would have thrown up right then.
Rusty glanced over at Molly, then back at me. “Emma Goiner, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to come down to the station to answer some questions,” he said again.
Does a donut cop have this kind of authority? I wondered. And then, beyond Rusty, I saw Anita standing next to Bear, both of them veiled by shadows only a few feet away.
“Anita! Bear! I didn’t do this!” I waved my right arm and called at them, but I wasn’t sure either of them heard or saw me.
“Bear!” I called, my voice getting higher and more panicked.
“Keep your voice down,” Rusty said sharply.
Molly smirked at me. I looked at her and suddenly understood how hatred welled up in a person enough to drive them crazy. I didn’t trust myself to move or speak because I felt like at any second I might lunge at her throat or gouge her eyeballs out with my bare hands.
“Time to go,” said Rusty, who still had ahold of my left arm. More roughly than necessary, he jerked me toward the waiting car. I was too scared to say anything about the way I was being handled in front of all the gathering people. Trying not to stumble or let my emotions show too much, I let Rusty lead me to the waiting vehicle. The assembled donut campers peered over each other and pushed to the front to get a look. At me. At the freak.
Now I wasn’t just a pariah at Living Word, I was one at the donut camp too. Not to mention I was a thief and a Judas.
Just before I bent my head to get into the car, I caught a glimpse of Natalie, who had run to the spot where Molly stood. Her warm, heavy breath made little tufts of white air in the cool night. My heart lurched when I saw Jake standing next to her. His mouth was open like he’d started to talk but his words had dried up, and he was holding Lizzie’s hand. When Lizzie caught sight of me, her eyes got big and surprised. Then she promptly burst into tears.
“Lizzie!” I cried, but Jake had already picked her up in his strong arms and was carrying her away from the scene.
“Emma—” Nat said, taking a step toward me, but Molly reached out and stopped her.
“In you go now,” said Rusty, who pushed me inside the car. The door slammed shut, and Rusty climbed in the front seat a moment later.
“Hope you got a lawyer, Miss Goiner,” he said as he threw the car into drive and flicked the sirens a couple times to clear the crowd. “Cuz you’re sure going to need one.”
They didn’t put me in a cell or anything. They put me in an interrogation room. There was one table in the whole room, rectangular, with three chairs around it: two on one side and one chair on the other. I sat on the side that had two chairs.
Everything in the interrogation room was chrome and metal and cold and uncomfortable, except the floor. That was worse. It was made of a dirty gray tile—probably white when it was new—that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years. I wondered how many criminals’ shoes had scuffed across it and left their mark.
On the far wall was a two-way mirror. I knew they could see me, but I couldn’t see them. If “they” were even watching. Who would “they ” be, anyhow? Rusty? Was he even a real cop? Was Bear here? Would he press charges against me?
I wished I had my cell so I could dial Jake’s number. Or call my parents. Just then, an officer—not Rusty—stepped into the room. He was carrying a clipboard and looked at the papers, then at me.
“Well, you’re in a pickle now, aren’t you?” he asked. I looked at the pimples on his chin, at his skinny forearms, and guessed he was all of five years older than me. But here he was, acting like he was in charge of the whole town.
“Officer Malcolm,” I said, looking at the name on the policeman’s badge, “can I call my parents?”
“No need to,” he said. “They just called us. Someone must have told them about your incident at the donut camp. I came in here to give you the happy news and let you know they ’re on their way now.”
My heart felt like it was pounding in my throat. “Okay,” I croaked, and Malcolm left the room. I put my head down
on the table and wished I could melt away into a puddle. A janitor could come wipe me up later, then wring me out of his mop. I’d get rinsed down the drain and never have to face my parents. At the police station. Where I was accused of stealing ten thousand dollars. I had been set up and could be going to jail. And my parents, who had just had the worst day of their lives, were going to get sucker punched again. This time by me.
“It wasn’t me! It was Molly O’Connor. She screwed me, just like her dad screwed you!” I pictured myself saying those words to my parents, then scoffed out loud. A convenient excuse for sure. Who would believe it? Probably everyone would just believe I was trying to exact revenge for the board’s verdict.
The board’s verdict.
My head felt swimmy. No women preaching. No women in positions of authority. What would my parents do now? Would they stay and lead a church where they disagreed with half the congregation (and a majority of the board)? Or split and start another church on their own?
I hope they leave, I thought. Because how could I respect them if they stayed? And yet, how could they leave everything they’d worked so long and hard for?
Just then the door burst open and both my parents rushed in, Lizzie in tow. How had they found Lizzie? Did that mean they’d talked to Jake? Was Jake the one that called to tell them about me getting hauled away?
“Emma!” my dad said, ever the preacher with his resonant voice. “What in the world is going on here?”
I was still seated, so he and my mom were standing above me. The light was behind them and for a second their shapes were ethereal, like angels.
Mom sat in the chair next to me and faced me full-on, like getting closer might get better words out of me. Lizzie stood behind her chair, hiding her face like she was afraid to look at me.
I looked at my mom and tried to see her—really see her—but I couldn’t do it. There she was, just as she was: a forty-something woman who had still managed to put on fresh lipstick, even when visiting her daughter in jail in the middle of the night. I looked down, ashamed that I had no idea what was happening inside of her and aware that she probably felt the same way about me.
“Emma,” Dad said, “speak. What happened?”
I looked at him too and saw how angry and frustrated he was. His church abandoned him and his daughter got called down to the police station, all in one day.
“Dad,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, “please sit down.” To my surprise, he actually seemed to calm down for five seconds and slowly lowered himself into the chair across from me.
I took a deep breath. “I know this sounds crazy and you probably won’t believe me, but Molly O’Connor set me up.”
My dad immediately pushed his chair back from the table, but he didn’t stand up. Still, the sharp noise startled Lizzie, who jumped a bit.
“I think I’m going to take Lizzie into a different part of the station,” Mom said. “I trust you two will work this out.”
Of course. Absolutely she would do that. She’d focus on Lizzie and not me, since Lizzie was the good kind of Christian and I was the kind who got thrown into jail. Maybe she could counsel some church members on her cell phone while she waited. Same as it ever was.
I willed myself to evolve to a higher level of numbness. I wouldn’t cry about it. Not now. Not at the police station.
She and Lizzie exited just as Officer Malcolm came in. Without a word, he settled himself into the chair my mom had just vacated. He splayed his feet out in front of him, then pushed his clipboard at my dad.
“I need you to fill out the top form, sign at the bottom,” he said. “It ensures that the minor in custody is yours.”
Dad pulled the clipboard toward him and glanced at it. “Are there charges being pressed against my daughter?” he asked Malcolm.
“That depends. We’re bringing in the potential plaintiff.”
“Bear?” I asked.
Officer Malcolm blew air through his narrow nose. “You mean Arthur Holden?”
“I guess,” I said. “I just knew him as Bear.”
“Well, I sure hope it’s him, then,” said Malcolm, and he left the room again.
And then it was down to me and my dad.
Chapter Eighteen
I’m sorry about the board,” I said softly, tracing an invisible pattern into the chrome table while Dad filled out the paperwork. As I stretched out my arm, I was suddenly very aware I hadn’t showered in two days. I glanced up at the two-way mirror and saw how greasy and unkempt I looked, how wild and unsettled.
“Don’t make this about the board,” he said, his voice low, his head bent over the clipboard.
“What, like everything that happens to us isn’t connected to the church?”
Dad put down the pen and pushed the clipboard away, apparently finished. “That’s a pretty convenient excuse, Emma.”
“But it’s true.”
“Perhaps you should think about how all this might not have happened if you’d come home when your mother told you to. Instead, you sent that O’Connor boy to babysit. Here your mother and I were, on the brink of facing his parents, and he shows up to care for Lizzie. And then, to have to hear from him that you were in jail. We had to go to the camp to pick up Lizzie before we came down here. I’m so disappointed in you, and so completely confounded by this situation, I don’t even know where to begin.”
“But I couldn’t come home tonight,” I said. “You don’t understand. I was in the middle of something.”
“Really?” His blue eyes flashed with anger. “Please, I’m fascinated to know what was that important at a donut camp.”
I looked up and didn’t flinch. “I’m writing an article for the Paul Bunyan Press. They’re having a contest and the prize is a college scholarship. I’m going to win it. And I’m going to go to a non-Christian college. The one I choose for myself. That’s what’s so important.”
I certainly succeeded in surprising him. He sat up straighter and looked at me for a long moment.
“That’s what made you stay? For heaven’s sake, Emma. That?”
“You say it like where I go to college doesn’t matter.”
“You sent us Jake O’Connor in your place!” Dad said, throwing up his hands. “An O’Connor! And you know as well as I do what they ’ve done.”
“Actually, no, I don’t,” I said. “Not officially, anyways. I’ve been trying to figure it out for myself because you and Mom never told me, or even hinted to me, what was happening with Mr. O’Connor and the prophecy. Not once. And you should know that Jake and I were on our way to the board meeting to try and help defend you. So before you go blaming him, you should think—”
Dad slammed his fist on the table suddenly. “Enough!”
The son of a Southern preacher, he had inherited what nearly all Southern preachers are known for: their temper. He’d grown up in Texas and preached in the South before moving to Minnesota, and when he got really mad, his long-lost accent came through a bit. Just then, enough had sounded like “aye-nuff!”
I hated it when my dad got mad, but I hated it more when he got stubborn and stopped listening. Mom used to say I did the same thing, and she used to compare us to two rhinos charging at each other. They ’d smack together, and the force of the collision would set them right back to where they started from. They’d get nowhere—just like we were doing right now.
“Watch yourself, young lady,” he said. “I don’t need to hear anything from you right now except your version of how you came to be here tonight. Understood?”
I clenched my jaw and nodded.
“Now, this Bear,” said my dad. “Who is he?”
“I think you can ask him yourself,” I said, since, at that moment, Bear’s shape filled the entire doorway.
“Bear,” I said, like I hadn’t just been accused of stealing all of his gambling rehab money, “this is my dad, Pastor Goiner. Dad, this is Bear.”
“Sir,” Bear said politely. His lips and whole face seemed stiff whe
n he spoke, like he was trying to be on his best behavior. My dad nodded at him curtly, apparently unsure of what to make of the tattooed, leather-clad giant now in the interrogation room.
I looked at Bear and tried to be cool, I really did. I tried to tell him that I never would have betrayed him. I tried to tell him everything—tell him anything—but I could only cover my hands with my face. I was embarrassed and ashamed and sorry he had to be there after he’d been so nice and let me write about him.
“Now, Em,” said Bear, eating up the distance between us in one single stride. “Come on. I know you didn’t steal that money. Come on now. Look at me. I know you didn’t do it.”
Somehow, Bear knowing I didn’t do it made my heart fill with more emotion, not less. I screwed my eyes closed and tried to keep the tears from leaking out of them. Bear’s leather jacket creaked as he reached out and gently pulled my hands away from my face.
“I know you didn’t take that money,” Bear said again. With the huge thumb of his right hand, he squeegeed a tear off my cheek. “You know how I know that?” Bear asked.
I shook my head no.
“Because anyone who spends five minutes with you can tell you’re a good kid. In fact, I told myself that if my Emma grew up to be an Emma like you, then she’d be all right. In fact, she’d be better than all right. She’d be someone I’d be proud of forever.”
I put my fist up to my mouth, like I was trying to keep all the emotion from escaping my throat.
“No more tears, now,” Bear said. “We’ll get this sorted out just fine. Okay?”
I finally raised my eyes to meet Bear’s brown ones, which were tender even though they were bloodshot from not sleeping.
“I swear, B-Bear,” I stuttered. “I never would have taken that money.”
“I know,” said Bear, putting both my hands in one of his enormous ones.
“If Emma didn’t take the money, who did?” my dad asked.
“I think we should ask the guests of honor,” said Bear. “Anita made sure they could be part of the show. I think they ’re set to join us right about now.”