I pretended not to hear. I didn’t want to sit and wait. I had to do something.
I lurched toward my dad, but Jenks blocked my way with his arm. Stop.
“Why?” I pleaded. “Why can’t I go to him?”
Then one of the cops searching the bedrooms came tromping back with my green laptop under his arm.
“What’d you find?” Caine asked.
“Just a laptop. I think it’s the girl’s.”
It was mine. I reached out, knowing it was useless. “What are you doing with it?”
No one answered me. The cop with my laptop started opening kitchen drawers. Another cop searched the antique desk in the hallway where my parents kept important papers. I heard voices from Dad’s studio, things being moved around. Then silence. The silence went on for a long time. Jenks gave a questioning look to Caine. She shrugged.
The two cops searching my dad’s studio came stomping back up the stairs. One of them carried the hard drive from Dad’s computer. The other had a sheaf of sketches thrown into a cracked leather binder. Dad hated when his drawings got creased, but his head was down, so he didn’t see. He didn’t see the crumpled drawing on top.
The sketch I had wadded into a ball not ten minutes ago. The sketch of the naked girl. They thought Dad drew it. They thought he was some kind of perv.
Jenks stepped around me. The next thing I knew, Dad’s arms were being wrenched behind his back. I saw his face as the handcuffs snapped around his wrists. Eyes squeezed shut, lips pinched tight.
“Timothy Waters,” said Jenks. “You are under arrest for possession of child pornography.”
What?
My vision zoomed out, and for a split second, I saw my dad the way a stranger might—a creepy, sullen-faced thug who deserved what he got. But this was my dad, and he didn’t deserve this. I was the one who drew the naked girl, not him.
I reached out a hand. “Wait a minute!” But when Caine looked at me, my throat closed up. The old secret clawed at my gut. If I said something, they’d know. I threw the photo out years ago because I didn’t want anyone to see it. But maybe the digital file still haunted Dad’s hard drive. Was that why they took his computer?
I finally found my voice. “You can’t do this!”
Jenks gripped Dad by his elbows and led him toward the door. Dad stumbled like a sleepwalker.
“Mom, tell them!”
Still, she wouldn’t look at me. No one looked at me.
“Please!” I cried. “He didn’t do anything!”
They were out the door. I stumbled after them, squinting in the bright sunlight. Dad’s feet got tangled on the porch steps. I couldn’t help him, but I reached out anyway.
And that’s when I saw Haley across the street. Watching.
Our eyes met as she tossed a lock of dark, waist-long hair over her shoulder. I felt myself shrink into a tiny speck. If the wind blew, it could carry me away.
Dad craned his neck to look at me. Scared. Not the Dad I knew. “Go back inside,” he told me.
I didn’t go back inside, though, even when he kept stumbling and the cops had to help him down the driveway. I watched his humiliation. Because turning my head felt too much like abandoning him.
CHAPTER 3
Self-Portrait
Sunlight brightened the kitchen table where Tera sat waiting with her paper and crayons. Her dad put his leather bag on the floor and sat beside her. He smelled like paint. Better than her mom’s flowers.
She opened her drawing pad and held it to her nose. Paper was another good smell.
Her dad was shaking his head. “That cheapo paper is for kindergarteners.”
“But I’m in kindergarten.” Maybe he forgot how big she was.
“Not today you’re not. Today you’re an artist.”
He reached into his leather bag, the one he carried with him everywhere, and slid out a thick pad of paper. This was the special paper, the stuff she wasn’t allowed to borrow when she wanted to draw horses. She leaned in closer as he opened the pad. He flipped through drawings of all kinds of things—trees with kites stuck in them, men with swords, monsters with sharp teeth. All of them so good. She’d never be that good.
He stopped flipping pages when the drawings ran out and all that was left was blank paper. His hand slapped down on a page of clean white. “What do you see?”
At first she didn’t see anything, but she leaned closer, just to make sure. That’s when she noticed how the paper wasn’t really white. Up close she saw gray and red and blue threads, all tight and mashed together.
“It looks dirty,” she said.
“Not dirty, but not pure either. That’s your blank slate. Tabula rasa.” He smoothed his big hand over the paper. Took her hand and did the same. “Feel that?”
“It’s bumpy.”
“Right. That’s real life. This is what you draw on. Those little bumps give your drawing texture.”
She didn’t know what texture was, but that didn’t matter. He was sitting here next to her, teaching her stuff. She pulled her box of crayons closer.
“No crayons. Not today. Use this.” He handed her a pencil. Not a fat pencil with an eraser, but a thin one with a flat top and a point that looked sharp enough to cut.
“What if I mess up?”
“No big deal. Artists learn from their mistakes.”
“They do?”
“And disguise them sometimes. Do you know what that means?”
“They hide them.”
“Right. Or turn them into something else.”
“So no eraser?”
“Erasers are for babies.”
Could that be true? She saw lots of grownups with erasers.
He tore a sheet from the pad. “Today I’ll use the tear-out sheet. You draw in the sketchpad.”
He slid the pad of special paper over so it was right there in front of her. That made her feel proud, like maybe it was hers, not his.
“Now, when you’re drawing a face, you want to get the proportions right—unless you’re Pablo Picasso.” He smiled, and she smiled, too. Because her dad made a joke and Pablo Picasso was someone important.
She watched him draw an oval on the paper, watched him cut the oval into four pieces with a cross.
“This is where you put the eyes.” He pointed to the top pieces of the cross. “This is where the nose goes, and this is for the mouth.”
She drew an oval on the sketchpad, making sure to get it right. Then she drew a cross on it.
Already he was filling in his oval with eyes, the beginning lines for a nose, a slit where the mouth would be.
“I started learning by drawing myself,” he told her. “That’s a good way for you to learn, too.”
“You want me to draw me?”
“I love to draw you.”
His hand moved over the page, making little strokes with the pencil, using his thick fingers to smudge black lines into gray. In only a few minutes, the oval with the cross turned into a face—her face. The way it looked when she saw herself in the mirror.
“That’s a portrait,” he said. “And when you draw yourself, it’s called a self-portrait.”
“It’s good,” she said, because that’s what you said when you liked what another kid was coloring. She wanted to say something else, something that would let him know how good it really was, but she didn’t have the right words.
“Now you try it.” He guided her hand to the first cross section of her oval. “Right there. Draw your eyes.”
She squeezed the thin pencil, pressed the sharp tip down on the paper—too hard. The point broke off.
“Careful. Don’t try so hard. Let it flow the way you think it should feel.”
She tried again. Already she could tell hers wouldn’t be as good as his, but maybe he’d still be proud of her. She drew a circle for an eye and added eyelashes, then another circle for the other eye. The nose came next—easy except for the nostrils, which turned out way too big. The mouth came last. She drew a smile
y face, then round circles. The circles she colored gray, for rosy cheeks.
“Is that you?” he asked.
“Do you like it?”
“Hmm.” He leaned back and tilted his head. “You’ll get better.”
His hand flashed across the paper. A sharp rip and the page came out. Like pulling a loose tooth. Quick hurt and then it was over.
The thick pad of special paper went back in his bag. So did his pencil, but not the one he had let her borrow. That one she kept under the table. Maybe he’d forget to take it back.
He did forget. He forgot her drawing, too. But that didn’t matter so much. Her heart felt excited when she looked at what she’d done. A self-portrait.
She pulled it closer. Maybe later she’d get an eraser and fix it. Maybe later her dad would hang it on the fridge.
CHAPTER 4
I stood on the porch, numb. The police cars were gone. Haley was gone too.
And Dad. What was happening to him? They were taking him to jail, and I had no idea what to do. Would they let him go once he explained? Would Mom and I have to bail him out? Did Mom and Dad even have enough money for something like that? And who were we supposed to call to make things happen?
I shivered in the cool breeze. A squirrel dashed up the porch steps. It stopped, its tail rippling, and then it was off, leaping for the nearest tree. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a child shrieked with laughter. And somewhere in a police car, Dad sat in handcuffs, on his way to jail.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I should have told them it was me in the drawing. Me in the photo.
If the photo even existed. I thought it was long gone.
I should have explained how it happened, and now it was too late.
Someone came up beside me on the porch. I opened my eyes. Mr. Stewart. He looked up at the darkening sky with his arms folded. Finally, he spoke.
“Do you need anything, Tera?”
I did, but already he’d seen too much. I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t look at him. If I didn’t speak, maybe he’d go away.
He waited another few seconds. “All right then.” He started down the porch steps, stopped and looked back. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
I pressed my lips together and nodded, afraid of what noise I might make if I opened my mouth.
• • •
Mom sat at the table with two bottles of pills and a glass of water. Back in the day, she was pretty, but now she looked old and worn-out. I knew she couldn’t help the way she was, but sometimes I got sick of tiptoeing around her moods.
And today wasn’t a day to call her out. I needed her to stay calm. She had to take back whatever she told the police. They had to know—whatever she thought Dad did—it wasn’t a big deal.
I sat across from her at the table, tried to smile. “You look like you’re feeling better,” I said. Which was true, even though her hands shook as she lifted her glass.
“I have a new doctor,” she said. “We’re trying something different.” Mom was always trying something new for her depression and her “panic attacks,” as she called them. New pills, mostly. Most of them didn’t work. Either that or she quit taking them.
“That’s good.” I took a breath. The air inside the house felt sweaty. “Mom, you need—”
“Stop.” Her glass thumped to the table.
“What am I doing?”
“You’re not listening, that’s what. I tried to get you to leave before they got here, but you never listen to me.”
Suddenly I wanted to grab her glass of water and throw it in her face. I was sick of her mental excuses. She was to blame for this. They arrested Dad because she called them. And if this whole thing was about that photo—if it even existed—then she was mostly to blame for that, too. Because of her, I had to practice drawing nudes in secret.
“You don’t make any sense,” I said. “That’s why I don’t listen to you.”
“So you’re taking his side.”
“Someone has to.”
Outside, the wind picked up. Another spring storm. I stood.
“Where are you going?”
“To get my laptop.”
“Your laptop’s gone.”
And then I remembered. The police took it. I sank into my chair. Now what? My antique phone didn’t have Internet, and I had no idea how to get Dad out on bail.
“Did they leave a number for the jail?” I asked.
“You can’t bail him out, if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re too young, for one thing. And they’re not going to let him go.”
“You don’t know that!”
“You’d be surprised what I know.”
“So you won’t even try?”
She took a sip of water. So smug, now that she thought she’d won. “He can rot in there for all I care.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. I clenched my hands into fists, tried to think. Maybe I could get someone else to bail him out.
Her fingers tapped her glass. “You think I wanted this to happen, don’t you?”
I stared out the window. The sky was thick with gray clouds. Tornado weather. “I think you’re jealous,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad and I get this big article written about us, and you can’t stand it. You want to punish him. You hate to see me happy.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Then why, Mom? Tell me why you go against everything Dad does.”
“It’s not like that.” She bowed her head, her fingers squeezing the glass. “I found something on his computer.”
So she did find it. The photo of me naked. A gust of wind sent a branch scraping against the window, like nails on a chalkboard.
“Mom, I know what you’re thinking.”
Her voice turned vicious, and she jabbed a finger at me. “Don’t tell me you know anything about this! Don’t tell me that!”
I blinked, startled by the sudden force of her anger. “I won’t. I wasn’t going to.”
“Because I can’t deal with that right now.”
“Fine.” I clenched my jaw to keep from yelling at her. For every second we sat here fighting, Dad’s nightmare got more real. Would they strip-search him? Take away his belt and shoelaces? I forced myself to breathe, to think.
Would they let him go if I told them it was my fault, that I did it to practice drawing the human form?
Her voice cut into my thoughts. “You can’t help him, Tera.”
“That’s not true. I’ll go visit him. Find out what to do.”
“They won’t let you see him without a parent. You’re not even eighteen.”
“You can take me.”
She picked up one of her pill bottles and pretended to read the label.
“Mom, you have to take me. I need to talk to him. He needs to know.”
“Know what?” A growl of thunder vibrated the table. “That you follow him around like a puppy dog? That you’ll do anything he wants you to do?”
“That’s not true! You’re just making shit up!”
She slammed the pill bottle on the table. “Then tell me! Tell me what you think he needs to know.”
That I don’t blame him. That I’m out here trying to help him.
But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything while the first raindrops of the storm splattered the window. It’s not like she would have listened.
CHAPTER 5
I took the phone book to my room and closed the door. The number for the county jail was listed in the “important numbers” section. I copied it into my notebook and checked my watch. Dad had been gone for almost an hour.
It took a few minutes to get through the jail’s automated voice system, but finally I got a live person. She sounded old. “Central Intake,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“Um.” Where to start? “My dad got arrested, and I was wondering what I need to do to bail him out.”
The woman on the phone must have felt sorry for me.
“About an hour ago.”
“So that means he hasn’t been processed yet.”
“How long does that take?” I asked.
“Well, it varies. An officer will put his information into a computer. He’ll see a nurse. He’ll be fingerprinted.”
“So this could take hours.”
“It usually does. And he’ll have his photo taken, too.”
“You mean like a mug shot?”
“That’s right. So after the whole booking process, he’ll have his arraignment hearing. But that won’t happen till tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry.” I had to be trying her patience. “What’s an arraignment hearing?”
“That’s when he stands before the judge and the judge decides on a bond.”
“A bond?”
“The amount it’ll take to bail him out.”
“Oh.”
“Some crimes have a standard bond attached to them. What’d they bring him in for, hon? I might be able to tell you the amount before he sees the judge.”
“Do I have to say it?” There was no way I could say it.
“You don’t have to say anything. Just wait till he’s arraigned tomorrow and call back. They’ll tell you how much the bond is.”
“Okay. And what’s, like, a standard bond amount?”
“It depends on what they brought him in for. It could be ten thousand. It could be a lot more than that.”
“Ten thousand dollars?”
“I know. It sounds like a lot. But if you can’t come up with the cash bond, call a bail bondsman. They put the money up, and you pay them a percentage. If your dad doesn’t appear at his summons, the bail bondsman is liable for the bail amount, so sometimes they ask for collateral.”
“So I don’t have to come up with the bail money myself?”
“Not if you use a bail bondsman. You pay the bondsman a percentage. It’s usually fifteen percent of the bond amount.”
I did some quick math. I’d be looking at fifteen hundred dollars if Dad’s bond was ten thousand. I couldn’t imagine it being more than that.
“Can I visit him before he sees the judge tomorrow?” I asked. “Are there, like, visiting hours?”
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