“I guess.”
“Now, you’re a lot stronger than the tadpole, but you won’t get through this experience without a lot of lingering misgivings, unless you see someone who can help you along. What do you think?”
“You don’t think I’m sick? Like Angie said?”
“Definitely not.”
“She said I couldn’t tell the real world from fantasy.”
“Well, Angie had her own needs to be met when she said that. Maybe she needed to keep her own fantasy going.”
I wondered what she meant by that, but I didn’t ask.
“I think you are quite healthy, emotionally. But life will be more fun and less painful for you if you talk through some things with a counselor ― just to help you over this rough spot.”
“Can’t I just come talk to you, Sergeant Conrad?”
“Did I forget to tell you to call me Connie? Sergeant Conrad is such a mouthful, isn’t it? Try Connie.”
“Can I come and see you instead of some counselor I don’t know, Connie?”
I really wanted her to say yes. She knew so much that I didn’t know, but she treated me like a grown-up. That was kind of strange, I thought, that she’d been pointing out to me that I was the child, Fred Sloane was the adult, but I felt grownup with her. Maybe like she treated me with respect. Maybe age didn’t have anything to do with it.
“You can come see me, Cassie, and you can call me on the phone if you want to talk with me. But I can’t be your regular counselor.”
“Why not? It’s easy for me to talk to you.”
“That’s good. I like you and I think you’re going to do just fine. But I’m not a trained counselor, and my boss wouldn’t like it if I were to do that. Anyway, you need someone who knows different kinds of things than I do.”
“I think you know exactly what I need to know,” I said.
“Well, I can tell you something more that I know.”
“What?” I asked.
“I can tell you the names of some counselors who I know are good.”
“Okay,” I said, but I still thought the only counselor I wanted was Connie.
“I’ll take you home now. I’m certain your parents are anxious.”
She picked up her purse, took hold of my arm and led me toward the hallway. “Have we missed anything?” she asked. “Is there anything else you want to talk about?”
“Sort of,” I said.
She stopped at the doorway and gave me a searching look.
“If you’re a sergeant, why don’t you wear a uniform and carry a gun?”
She laughed. “People are more at ease with me if I wear regular clothes. And how do you know I don’t carry a gun?”
“Do you?”
She opened her purse and pointed inside. There, tucked into a special holster, was her police revolver.
“Is it loaded?” I asked. I’d never known anyone who carried a gun.
“Of course it’s loaded,” she said. “I’m a cop! Now come on, let’s go.”
Once in the car she teased me about how she was one of the original Charlie’s Angels, wearing her black disguise. We talked about music. We didn’t like the same kind. When we got close to my house, Connie asked me to show her where the Sloanes lived.
As we drove slowly past their house I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach again. It was an empty, lonely feeling. The house had lights on in the den, kitchen and Tina’s room. I knew that house as well as my own, and I would never ever go inside it again.
I showed Connie where Fred had stopped me on my way home from school, and then we drove to my house. Before I got out of the car Connie said, “You know, Cassie, people who behave the way you’ve told me Fred Sloane behaved are criminals. Certain decisions have to be made about what the next step in this case will be.”
It was hard for me to think of Fred as a criminal. Those words, child molester, and criminal, were like icy cold water thrown in my face ― they chilled and shocked me.
I saw the curtain pulled to one side and knew my mother must be watching from the living room. We got out of the car and Mom met us at the door. She looked tired, and her eyes were red, like maybe she’d been crying. Daddy brought a cup of coffee in for Connie, and we all sat silently in the living room for what seemed a long time.
“Well?” Daddy said, looking at Connie.
“You folks need to think about whether or not you’ll press charges,” Connie said.
“I want Cassie to be safe from that scum, that’s all I care about,” Daddy said. “What would happen if we pressed charges?”
“Would Cassie have to go to court? Testify?” Mom asked.
“Yes, and Lisa, too. Also any eyewitness would be of great help, or any other girls who’ve had similar experiences with the accused.”
I tried to think about what it would be like in court. All I knew about judges and lawyers and courtrooms came from TV. I guessed I would have to tell the whole thing all over again to a lot of people, and in front of Fred. I was feeling all confused again, like I wished I'd never told anyone about Fred Sloane at all. Daddy put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him.
“What would the charges be?” he asked.
“Felony child molestation,” Sergeant Conrad answered. “Any touching with sexual intent of a child under fourteen is a felony.”
“What if we don't press charges? It’s like he’s free to do whatever he likes to girls like Cassie. If we do press charges, Cassie’s got to go through the terrible experience of a trial.”
Mom looked up from the coffee she’d been sipping. “Not just Cassie, either. What about Robbie when all of the neighborhood starts talking? For that matter, Les, what about us?”
Just like Mom, I thought, to be worrying about Robbie when I was being put on the spot.
“You’re right, Mrs. Jenkins,” Connie said. “This kind of case is hard on the whole family. Cassie seems to be strong, and her answers to me during the interview were calm and straightforward. But that interview, difficult as it was, was nothing like being put on a witness stand. You have to think about those things.”
“So what would you advise, Sergeant Conrad?” Dad asked. “What if Cassie were your daughter? What would you do?”
“Look, I can’t tell you what to do. You’ve got to make that decision, as a family.”
“Do you think Sloane would be convicted?”
I was getting more and more scared. When my parents decided to call the cops, I wasn’t thinking about any of that stuff, like trials, and convictions. Would Fred go to prison? I wondered how things ever got to be so messed up.
“Mr. Jenkins, I can’t predict who’s going to be convicted and who isn’t. These kinds of questions are more in the realm of legal advice. Maybe you’ll want to talk with a lawyer before you make a decision about pressing charges.”
I looked over at Mom. She was chewing on the edge of her thumb, her eyebrows pulled together in a deep frown.
“How do we know he won’t come after Cassie again?” Mom asked. “When I first heard of these incidents, I thought Cassie was in no danger as long as she avoided Fred Sloane. But after today, when he went out of his way to stop her and threaten her . . .” She left the statement hanging.
Connie said, “You don’t know what he’ll do next. I’ll tell you what I’ll do next though, whether you decide to press charges or not. I’ll call him in to the station and set him straight on some of the basics. If he’s worried about his family, or his reputation, that may be enough to keep him away from Cassie forever, and other twelve-year-olds for a while. Not for sure, mind you, but maybe.”
“Couldn’t we please just forget this? Please?” I asked.
“What do you mean, set him straight on some of the basics?” Mom asked. It was like they hadn’t even heard me.
Connie said, “I’ll advise him of his rights, then I’ll tell him that he’s been accused of felony molestation. I’ll let him know in very certain terms that he must do ev
erything to avoid being anywhere near Cassie, and that if he sees her, the court could see that as trying to dissuade a potential witness, another serious felony.”
“But he’ll just say I’m a liar,” I told Connie. “And he’ll be even madder at me.” I could feel my heart pounding and my hands sweating.
“Yes, he probably will say that, Cassie. But he knows the truth, and he’s probably going to be worried about people finding out about him. If you’ve given me an accurate picture of how things have been with him, he’s been pretty careful not to be seen, or to get caught by his wife. This says to me that he’s a man who wants what he wants, but he doesn’t want trouble with it.”
“But do you have to call him in? I’m not scared of him. I’ll just stay away. I won’t even walk anywhere near his house, or the muffler shop. Please?” I was crying again, and wiping my nose on my sleeve. Daddy smoothed my hair and handed me his handkerchief.
“Why are you so worried about Fred being called to the station?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know. It just sounds awful to me.”
“Cassie,” Mom gave me one of her searching looks. “I have to ask you this one more time. Fred Sloane really did all the things you’ve been telling us about, didn’t he? You’re not making even a tiny bit of this up, are you?”
“What do you think?” I screamed at her. “Do you think I’m doing this for fun?”
“No, I don’t think that at all. But it’s a very serious accusation, and you could get us all messed up in a big court case. I just hope you realize how serious this all is,” Mom said.
“Really,” was all I could say. I was totally disgusted.
Connie turned to me. “Cassie, it’s important for all of you to say what you’re feeling, or what you’re wondering about, even if it’s unpleasant. Don’t you think it’s better for your mother to ask you that, and to ask for your reassurance, than to keep all those doubts hidden?”
“I guess,” I told her, “but I’m not a liar, and she should know that by now.”
After we all just sat there, staring at the walls for a while, I got back to my main worry.
“Are you still going to call Fred Sloane into the station tomorrow?”
“Yep,” she said. For the first time I thought she was kind of hard, like some of the cops on TV.
“What if he doesn’t come?” I asked.
“Then we’ll go to his house, or where he works. He’ll come, though. He won’t want me stopping by just as the family is sitting down to dinner, you know, and talking about child molestation. These guys nearly always come to the station when I call them. Especially the ones with families.”
She took three cards from her purse and handed one to each of us. Her name, title, and phone number were on them.
“Please call me if you have any questions, or if you think of anything else I need to know,” she said. Then she told my parents some of the same stuff she’d told me in her office, about how important it was for me to see a counselor, and it didn’t mean there was anything wrong with me, or them, or any of that. She told them it was often helpful if the whole family went together a few times, and gave us a list of names to choose from.
By the time Connie left it was about 11:30. I went straight to bed. I was trying to think of something happy, watching the shadows on my wall, when Daddy came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“It’s going to be all right,” he told me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “Try not to worry.”
He bent his face to mine, kissed me on the cheek, and walked quietly out of my room.
I did try not to worry, but it didn’t work. All I could think of were words like child molestation and criminal and felony and court and all of the pictures that went with them. And I felt sorry for Fred, and scared, and I felt terrible knowing that Connie was going to see him the next day.
I was mad at my mom again, too. And all of that stuff Connie had told me about not feeling guilty, or ashamed, wasn’t making as much sense as it had when she was talking to me. I was all mixed up again, and I didn’t like it. I made myself think about being at the beach with Grammy, and I finally fell asleep.
Chapter
14
My mother woke me earlier than usual. “Get up, Cassie, I want you to be ready in time for me to drop you off at school.”
I groaned. I hated having to wake up in the morning. Mom did her usual open-the-curtains routine, and I did my usual pull-the-pillow-over-my-head routine. The sun was already bright and warm coming in through my window.
“It’s going to be hot today. Come on, Cassie.” She shook my shoulder, then took the pillow from my head. “I’m going to drive you to and from school for a while, until things calm down. I don’t want you to be faced with Fred Sloane again.”
I dragged myself out of bed and into the shower. Fred Sloane, Fred Sloane, Fred Sloane, I thought. It’s the last thing I hear at night and the first thing I hear in the morning. I turned the water on full blast, hot, and stepped in. I stayed for a long time, feeling the sting of the water on my body, and worrying about what was going to happen when Connie called him to the station.
At school, before first period, Mandy came to get my geography homework.
“Sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t do any homework last night.”
“But, Cassie, I depend on you,” she whined. “You’ve let me down, Old Buddy.”
I looked into her clear blue eyes and her lightly freckled face. “Maybe you ought to start doing it yourself,” I told her. “Or better yet, maybe I could depend on you for a change.”
She looked shocked. “Well excuse me,” she said sarcastically, and walked on to class without looking back.
I followed, way behind her. Everybody said hi to Mandy as they walked past her, even the eighth graders. Hardly anyone even noticed me. I felt awful. Even though Mandy could have been best friends with almost anyone, she was always my best friend, and now I’d been mean and stupid.
Valerie Biggers was absent from Marlow’s class, so I had to sit up front in my assigned seat, instead of in front of Mandy. I felt lonely, and I was bored with prepositional phrases. I wrote a note to Mandy. I wrote “Y-R-R-O-S” in great big letters on a piece of notebook paper, folded it about ten times, wrote her name on the front and passed it to Danny, behind me.
In the fifth grade we always used to write backwards notes to each other. We thought it was a secret code. In a few minutes Danny tapped me on the shoulder and handed the note back to me. Written in teeny tiny letters under my big ones was “o-o-t e-m.”
At lunchtime we sat on the front steps again. Mandy was sure Eric would be there.
“I just want to see him,” she told me. “I like to look at Eric. Don’t you like to look at Jason?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it.” It seemed kind of funny, wanting to look at someone like that.
“Don’t you think about Jason a lot? I think about Eric all the time.”
“I guess I don’t,” I told her. “I kind of like him, but maybe
not as much as you like Eric.”
“I think I’m in love,” she told me.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be in love,” I told Mandy.
“Not ever in love!” she screeched. “Why not? That’s stupid. You’re just saying that because you don’t know. Why wouldn’t you ever fall in love?”
“It’s too confusing,” I told her. “And if you fall in love, then sooner or later you’ve got to have sex, and that’s really confusing.”
“Well, yeah. I guess. But people seem to like it,” she told me. “Don’t you think you will?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. And then I told her all about Sergeant Conrad, and the stuff we talked about. “It helped to talk with her, but I still feel all confused.”
“So confused you can’t even do your geography homework,” Mandy said, giving me that innocent smile. “I’ll help. I’ll do geography tonight, and you can copy it in the morning.”
>
“Thanks a lot. You’re probably even willing to do our geography assignments every Tuesday night, Tuesday being the one day of the week we don’t get geography homework.”
“Sure. I can do that,” she smiled, then froze. “Look, it’s Eric,” she sighed. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
I swear, I thought I was going to throw up. “Beautiful isn’t exactly what I’d call Eric,” I said.
“That’s ’cause you don’t know about love,” she whispered. Eric was way over on the other side of the steps, not even looking in our direction, but she whispered anyway.
I knew she was kidding. But it was true. I didn’t know about love. I didn’t even know about like.
I wanted to tell Mandy how scared I was about Fred being called in to the sheriff’s station, but Mom had said not to talk about Fred at all, even to Mandy. I probably would have told her anyway, except she was so busy looking at Eric I was afraid she might not hear me.
Mom was waiting for me when school was over, just like she said she’d be. Robbie was in the backseat, pressing his nose flat against the side window and sticking his tongue out at me. He was getting the window all yucky. Mom had made special arrangements to get off from work early for a week or so. I guess she really was worried about me.
We stopped for ice cream on the way home. I got my favorite, a double dip chocolate chip on a sugar cone. Mom just got sherbet because she was watching her weight. Robbie got a chocolate sundae, no nuts. I’d only had about two bites of my ice cream when I dropped the whole thing on the floor. It wasn’t important, but I felt like crying. Robbie handed me his sundae.
“You can have mine, Cassie,” he said, smiling. “I’m not so hungry.”
That did it. I started to cry. Sometimes I can’t stand for people to be too nice to me.
“It’s okay, Cassie,” he said. “Eat some.” So I did. I stopped crying almost as soon as I’d started, but I felt funny about it.
In the car Mom said to me, “I know this has been hard on you. I think Sergeant Conrad is right about counseling. Let’s call one of those numbers when we get home.”
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