Principal Meyer smoothed his tie. “This young lady needs to talk to you.”
“Of course,” he murmured.
“But stop by my office later,” Principal Meyer told him. “We’ll finish our conversation.”
Mr. Stewart watched him go. “What is it, Tera?”
Was he mad at me for something? Is that why he wouldn’t look at me? I was the one who should’ve been mad at him, for refusing to help bail out my dad, for calling my drawings trite.
I shifted my backpack to the other shoulder. “My dad’s lawyer wants me to come by this afternoon.”
“And?”
“So I have to miss class.”
Kids brushed past me. Someone bumped me.
“Is your mom excusing this absence?”
“Well, no. I haven’t told her I’m seeing the lawyer.”
“Then I still have to mark you absent.”
“But then I’ll get detention.” I couldn’t deal with that right now. I had enough to deal with.
“I can’t play favorites, Tera.” He looked at his watch. “I have to go.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said as he walked away. “Sorry to keep you.”
• • •
I caught the bus to the lawyer’s office, so nervous that I felt sick. Charlotte Gross had said she’d examined the evidence. I wanted so badly to hear good news.
She was ready to see me as soon as I got there. She wore a gray pantsuit and white blouse with lots of ruffles. A thick gold bracelet dangled from her wrist.
“Tera.” Her handshake was firm. “So nice to see you again.”
“You, too.”
“Please have a seat.”
I perched on the edge of a cushy chair in front of her desk and clenched my hands in front of me. The tighter I clenched, the easier it was to breathe.
“So how have you been?” she asked.
“Fine.” I swallowed. Enough with the chitchat.
“I spoke with your father about the allegations, and he gave me permission to speak to you.”
“Okay.” That was a good sign. He had nothing to hide.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said. “Your father is being charged with possession of child pornography, which has a minimum sentence of five years for each count.”
I nodded. This was nothing new.
“You mentioned to me in our previous meeting that you thought a sketch they found was drawn by you.”
“To practice,” I said.
“To practice.” She nodded. “But the fact remains that the drawing was in your father’s possession. Remember, he’s not being accused of drawing it; he’s being accused of possessing it. Do you understand the difference?”
“Yes, but the drawing was in the trash—not really in his possession.”
“It was in his office.”
“But—”
“There’s good news here. The prosecution has to prove to a jury that a sketch is obscene. Otherwise, it’s protected under the First Amendment.” Her voice softened. “I saw what you drew, Tera, and it’s my strong belief that a jury will fail to find it obscene.”
I tried to make sense of her words. My drawing wasn’t the problem. But something else was?
“I don’t believe the prosecution will try to prove it’s pornographic because any reasonable jury would find that it does not portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way.”
“Okay.” That sounded like good news, but somehow it wasn’t. “What—”
“Let me finish. I just want to stress that none of this is your fault. You understand that, right?”
“Yes.” I almost whispered it. The other shoe was about to drop. I could feel it.
“Good.” She straightened a ruffle on her blouse. “You also need to know that the police found photos and some digital art on his computer. The images had been deleted, but they were still present on his hard drive.”
A tiny spark of panic flared in my chest. “What are you saying?”
“They found child pornography,” she said. “Children engaged in sexual acts with adults and other children.”
I stared at her. “No,” I said. “That can’t be right.”
“But let me stress.” She went on like I hadn’t spoken. “This doesn’t mean your father is guilty.”
I felt blind. The panic I’d been forcing down rose higher, made it hard to breathe. “How could it not mean that?”
She spoke softly, calmly. “Sometimes people are not aware they’ve downloaded pornographic images.”
I squinted at her, not daring to hope. “What do you mean?”
“We’re not really sure how the images ended up on his computer. We’re running a full analysis of his hard drive to find out, but there are a number of ways these kinds of things happen. They could have come from pop-up advertisements on pornography sites. Or maybe he downloaded adult pornography, but it was bundled with pornographic images of children.”
So what was she saying? That the photos got on his computer by accident?
She was still talking. “Like any reasonable person, he tried to delete the offensive images once he discovered what he had downloaded. But he didn’t realize the images remained on his hard drive, just waiting to implicate him.”
I felt numb as I studied her through glassy eyes. The hotshot lawyer with her fancy pen and gold bracelet. So sure of herself. “Is that what really happened?” I asked.
Her lips curved up in a smile. She tapped her pen against her chin. “That’s what we’re going to prove.”
CHAPTER 22
Before I left her office, Charlotte Gross told me she’d won several cases where her client had accidentally downloaded child pornography. It could happen to anyone, she said. She told me not to worry, that everything would work out the way it was supposed to.
It was almost five o’clock by the time I got home from the lawyer’s. Still no call from Joey. I came in through the kitchen. Mom was watching TV in the living room and didn’t look up. It seemed she hadn’t noticed I was late coming home from school.
The phone in the kitchen rang. The word attorney popped up in the caller ID. I answered it before Mom could pick it up.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice. He sounded old. “May I speak to Tera Waters?”
“This is Tera.”
“Miss Waters, my name is Herman Liebowitz. I’m the lead prosecutor in your father’s case.”
My mind whirled to catch up. This was the lawyer going against my dad.
“I’m calling to introduce myself,” he said.
Mom chose that moment to wander into the kitchen.
“Okay,” I said into the phone. But what was this about? Why was he calling me?
“I’d like to invite you to stop by my office so we can talk. Are you free tomorrow?”
Did he think I was on his side? Did he think I had some kind of dirt on my dad? “I can’t,” I said. “I have school.”
Mom tapped my arm. “Who is it?”
“Perhaps you could stop by my office after school. Or we could meet on Saturday, if you prefer.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I don’t know what this is about.”
“Well, it’s about your father’s case.”
Could he be more vague? “Just so you know?” I said. “I’m the one who hired my dad’s lawyer. So if you’re thinking I want to help you, you need to come up with another plan.”
A pause. “That’s fine, Miss Waters. I simply wanted to introduce myself. Will you take down my name and number?”
“My dad didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.
“Well, maybe you can tell me about that.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Take down my name and number, Miss Waters. You may find yourself needing to contact me.”
“Fine.” I grabbed a pencil from my backpack and flipped open a notebook. “Go ahead.”
Mom looked over my shoulder as I scribbled down his information. “I got it,” I s
aid. “I have to go now.” I hung up, suddenly exhausted.
Mom sank into a kitchen chair. “I told him not to call you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s the prosecuting attorney. I already talked to him. He wanted to talk to you, but I told him to leave you out of it. You’re too young to get involved.”
“I’m eighteen,” I snapped.
“Don’t you think I know that by now?”
“So what did you tell him, Mom?” I shoved my notebook into my backpack and zipped it up. “What did you tell this Herman Liebowitz guy?”
“I told him the truth.”
The truth as she saw it. She’d said she found “something” on Dad’s computer, and now I knew what that something was.
I pictured Charlotte Gross leaning back in her chair. Charlotte Gross tapping her pen on her chin. She’d said we could build a defense. That’s what she’d said, and I wanted so badly to believe it. Dad couldn’t have known the pictures were there until Mom found them. And like any reasonable person, he’d tried to delete them.
“It’s all circumstantial,” I said. “Whatever you found.” I wasn’t sure if it was circumstantial or not—I wasn’t even sure what circumstantial meant—but Dad’s lawyer thought we could make a case, so the evidence must not have been clear-cut.
I felt Mom’s eyes on me. I couldn’t look at her. Not if I wanted to keep believing Dad was innocent. Instead, I fiddled with the zipper on my backpack.
“I’m worried about you,” she said.
“Don’t be. I’m fine.”
“The lawyers on both sides . . . They’ll ask questions.”
And whose fault is that? I wanted to scream. Who started this whole thing by calling the police? But I didn’t say that. Instead, I lifted my chin and made myself look her in the eye. “I can handle it.”
• • •
Eight days until the contest deadline.
After school the next day, I dragged all my paints and brushes back down to Dad’s studio. Maybe something down there would inspire me. I stood before a blank canvas and tried not to think how it had been two days since I’d seen Joey on my birthday. Two days since I’d had sex with him and still he hadn’t called.
Instead, I thought about that rainy day when I saw my reflection in the bus window—a girl excited to see a boy at work because he’d flirted with her, a girl who didn’t know about the photos on her dad’s computer. The outside world felt desperate and gray, but the girl had hope, so her tiny smile lit up the bus.
I squeezed yellow paint onto my palette, mixed it with purple to form a cool, stony gray. I took a breath, closed my eyes to shut out the world. Then I dipped my brush and began to paint. The picture in my mind spread across the canvas.
But Dad’s shadow loomed. I was in his studio, and the canvas before me was his canvas. The paintbrush in my hand was a birthday gift from him.
It was almost midnight when I stepped back to look at what I’d done. My girl on the bus stared at her reflection in the rain-streaked window, her face pale and shadowy gray. The other riders on the bus wore muted yellows, greens, and blues. They talked, smiled, pointed. But my girl sat alone, wrapped in a coarse coat the color of storm clouds. Her dark hair framed her face in damp strands. Only her smile gave off any kind of color, a bright rosy pink. I wanted the smile to light up the girl’s face, but instead it looked pasted on. False.
Maybe it was the lighting. Maybe after I saw Joey at work in a few days, I’d know how to fix it.
• • •
I tried to finish my Trig homework on the school bus the next morning, but the ride was so bouncy that I couldn’t concentrate. Then my phone rang. My pencil rolled off the seat as I dug the phone out of my purse.
Please let it be Joey, I thought. But it wasn’t. It was Dad’s lawyer. I looked around to make sure no one on the bus could overhear. The closest person was Josh Henderson, sitting two seats in front of me with headphones over his ears.
I flipped open my phone, made sure to speak softly. “Hello?”
“Tera, it’s Charlotte Gross.” A pause. “Your dad wanted me to give you a message.”
“Okay.” I held my breath, waiting.
“He wanted me to tell you that he put you on his visitors’ list. So you shouldn’t have any problems going to see him.”
“That’s great!” Sudden relief made my voice too loud. I glanced over at Josh, but he seemed engrossed in something on his phone. “Did he say anything else?” I asked. “Is there any news on the case?”
“Nothing I can talk about right now. I have to go.”
As usual, her goodbye was abrupt, bordering on rude, but I didn’t care. I searched my phone until I found the number for the jail. Josh still had his headphones on, so I went ahead and dialed it.
It took a minute to get through the automated voice system. By that time, Lindsay Price and her sister Molly were on the bus, too. But they always sat in the first seat. There was no way they could overhear.
The man at the jail who answered sounded like the same man I’d talked to before.
“I need to schedule a visit with my dad,” I told him. “My name’s Tera Waters. W-A-T-E-R-S. My dad’s name is Timothy Waters.”
I stared at my Trig book as he looked me up in his computer.
“Okay,” he said. “When would you like to come in?”
Relief almost made me smile. “Tonight?”
“His cell block isn’t allowed visitors on Wednesday evening. You can come Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday during the day. Monday or Thursday evening. Saturday or Sunday, nine to eight.”
I had to work on Thursday, and I had school on Friday. “I’ll come Saturday,” I said. “Can I come in the morning?”
“Make it ten o’clock.”
I closed my phone and bowed my head, so relieved that my chest hurt. Now Dad could explain to me how those photos had ended up on his computer, and I’d know for sure he was innocent. Now I could see how he looked, how he was holding up. And he could thank me for helping him. I didn’t realize until that moment how much I needed his gratitude.
CHAPTER 23
Joey still hadn’t called by Thursday, so on the bus to work, I thought of what I’d do when I saw him. I’d act casual, like we were friends. I’d ask him about his band, how long it had been since he played a gig, whether he played any instruments other than bass.
By the time I clocked in, I thought I was ready to see him. I thought I was ready to talk to him. But when I saw him coming out of the walk-in, my throat closed up. I kept on toward the dining room like I hadn’t seen him.
He smiled and put out his hand to stop me. “Hey, I didn’t know you worked tonight.”
And yet, I knew his entire schedule. How pathetic was that? I made myself shrug. “I’m here all evening.”
Mr. Barnes came hustling out of his office, straightening his tie. “Joey, did you mix up that extra pizza dough?”
“Yeah, it’s in the walk-in.”
Mr. Barnes turned to me. “You should make good tips. There’s some kind of comic or science-fiction convention going on at the Marriott. It starts tonight.”
“A geek con,” Joey said. “People walking around in Star Wars costumes.”
“It’s Adventure-Con,” I said. I knew all about Adventure-Con. When Dad was trying to break into the comic-book business, he’d bring his portfolio to Adventure-Con to show it to the editors and agents.
“You’re into all that?” Joey asked me.
Would he like me less if I was? I shrugged. “Not really.”
“I remember now,” said Mr. Barnes. “Your dad’s a comic-book artist. Is he over there signing autographs? Tell him to send people to Papa Geppetto’s for dinner.”
“Sure, okay.”
Joey raised his eyebrows at me. Maybe he thought I had lied when I said my dad was in jail.
I leaned closer, so only Joey could hear. “No one here knows about my dad.”
He shrugged. “That’
s cool.”
At least we were talking. That night of my birthday—the night I’d had sex with him—I lay in bed and imagined what it would be like to work with him. I pictured us smiling at each other from across the room, exchanging knowing glances, maybe sneaking off to the back room to kiss. Maybe it was normal for guys to act like nothing had changed after you slept together. Maybe it didn’t mean anything that he hadn’t called.
Sadie worked the dining room with me, and a tall Asian guy I’d never met worked in the kitchen with Joey. He looked about my age and had a sprinkling of acne on his cheeks.
Dinner was crazy busy. Most everyone who came in wore a costume—Star Trek, Star Wars, fairies, anime. They looked like they were having fun. If Dad hadn’t been in jail, I would have asked if they’d heard of Timothy Waters, the guy who drew the After End series of graphic novels. I could have bragged how he was my dad.
Finally, the dining room cleared out except for one table of guys wearing superhero costumes. Sadie and I took a break behind the server station where we could keep an eye on the floor.
“How’d you do?” she asked me. “I cleared a hundred bucks.”
Then Joey was beside me, filling a glass with ice. I forgot Sadie’s question when his arm brushed mine. Did he want to talk to me? The tall Asian guy joined us, too. Cam, his nametag said. Cam smiled an apology when he reached in front of me for a glass.
Joey leaned against the counter next to me, but his eyes were on Sadie. A twinge of jealousy made me look away as he tugged one of the strings of her smock. I sipped my drink, trying to pretend it didn’t bother me.
“Hey, Sadie,” he said. “I dare you go out there and tell those guys how sexy they look in their tights.”
She rolled her eyes and popped a piece of ice into her mouth. “Give me twenty bucks and I will.”
“They’ll pay you,” Joey said. “You know they’re virgins. Twenty bucks is a bargain if you take them out back.”
She punched him in the arm. “What do I look like?”
Joey grinned and rubbed his arm. “You really want me to answer that?”
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