I nodded. It really didn’t matter much to me whether we called or not. All I wanted was to be at the beach with Grammy, and then to come back in September and have the whole Fred Sloane thing be gone.
When we drove into our driveway, Angie was parked in front waiting for us. She got out of the car, yelling at Tina and Dorian to stay in the backseat. She walked over to where I was getting out of the car and started screaming at me.
“You liar! You’re coming with me right now down to the sheriff and you’re going to tell her what a liar you are!”
She was shaking me by the shoulders and screaming in my face. She looked wild! Mom ran over to us and tried to pull Angie’s hands away from me.
“Angie! Stop! This won’t help!” she said.
Angie just kept screaming at the top of her lungs, “Liar! Liar! Liar!”
“I’m no liar!” I yelled back. “I don’t lie! Leave me alone!” I tried to get away from her but she was hanging on tight. I kicked and shoved, but still she hung on. Mom was yelling at her to stop all the time we were yelling at each other. I could hear kids crying and the dog across the street barking. Angie reached for my hair and started pulling. It hurt like anything.
“STOP! ANGIE! STOP!” Mom yelled. She yanked at Angie’s arm one more time and when Angie didn’t let loose, she turned and ran to the garden hose. My head was hurting and Angie kept pulling and screaming.
“Liar! You’re no different than the others! Trying to hurt my Fred!”
Then I felt water splashing on me. Mom had the hose aimed right at Angie’s face, turned on full blast. Angie spit and sputtered and then let go. She turned away from the blast of water, but Mom kept it coming. She ran to her car and Mom ran after her, still spraying her.
“Get out of here and stay out!” Mom screamed. “You leave Cassie alone! Both of you!”
Angie opened the door to get in the car and Mom sprayed water straight inside. She kept aiming the spray at the car, even after it was out of range. My head hurt and my face was scratched. Robbie was crying and old Mr. Putnam had come outside and was staring at us with his mouth open. I was soaking wet. Mom was crying, still holding the blasting hose.
“Robbie, turn the water off, please,” Mom sobbed, dropping the hose. She came over to me and hugged me and we both cried and cried. Robbie was hugging our legs and pulling at my hand.
“Why was Angie hurting you, Cassie?” he asked. Mr. Putnam walked over to where we were standing. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded.
“What was that all about anyway?” he wanted to know. “I bought this house to retire in because it was such a quiet neighborhood.” He was looking at my mother out of his cloudy blue-gray eyes. He was a little man, kind of shriveled looking.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Putnam,” Mom told him. “I don’t think this will happen again.”
He smiled a feeble smile. “You sure took care of that woman, didn’t you, Mrs. Jenkins?”
“I sure did,” Mom said.
“Just like a mother hen, protecting her chick,” Mr. Putnam laughed. “My, but that was a sight to see.”
He seemed to be enjoying the whole thing now. I could see he was ready to talk on and on. I guess Mom saw that coming, too. She said, “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Putnam, but I think I’d better get Cassie inside and into some dry clothes.”
“Yes, you’d better, Mother Hen,” he giggled, then shuffled back to his own yard.
We walked inside, Mom still with her arm around me and Robbie holding my hand. Mom sat me on a bar stool under the light in the kitchen and checked my face and neck for scratches. There was only one scratch and several little red spots. My shoulders hurt a little where Angie had held me so tightly, but I wasn’t hurt much. Mom took a cotton ball soaked in alcohol and cleaned the scratch.
“If there’s as much poison in Angie’s fingernails as there is in her heart, we’ve got to be very careful not to let this scratch get infected,” Mom said.
Robbie crawled up onto the stool next to mine.
“Why, Cassie? Why was Angie hurting you?”
Once Robbie asked a question, he didn’t forget about it until it got answered.
“She’s mad at me,” I told him.
“Yeah, but why? Why did she say bad things about you, like you’re a liar and everything?”
“It’s complicated,” Mom told Robbie. “You’ll just have to understand that she was very angry. It was not at all Cassie’s fault, and Cassie’s not a liar, and that’s enough for you to know right now.” She was looking me over again.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Cassie? I thought she was angry enough to kill you. It scared me.” She put her arms around me again.
“It scared me, too. It was awful. It was like Angie was a total stranger. And she was so strong, I couldn’t even begin to get loose. You were great, Mom. I’ve never seen you do anything like that before. As soon as you started with the hose, I knew I’d be safe,” I smiled.
I thought I could feel Mom crying again. Her body was shaking and she was sort of gasping for air. But when I pulled back to look at her, she wasn’t crying at all. She was laughing.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” she gasped through her laughter. “It sure worked, though. I wish your dad had been here to see my heroic hose act.”
She laughed and flexed her muscles. I was laughing, too. Just the thought of my sensible mother chasing someone around with a garden hose, blasting water ... It was pretty funny.
Robbie began shrieking, the way he does when he’s all excited about a story he’s telling. “Her hair was hanging down, and dripping wet, and Mom’s face looked like a bulldog!” We all laughed even harder.
Robbie said, “Boy, I bet Tina and Dorian know who’s boss now!”
The thought of Tina and Dorian stopped my laughter. It was a relief to think of Angie as a madwoman or a villain or something. But Tina and Dorian? In the back of my mind I thought I could hear them crying when Angie was yelling at me.
Mom sighed. “Tina and Dorian.”
We were quiet for a while.
“What a mess,” Mom said.
She put her arms around me again and kissed me on top of the head like she used to when I was little.
“I love you,” she told me. “I thought about what Sergeant Conrad said last night. I know you’re not a liar, and I think we did the right thing by talking with her. I’m nervous about this thing, too ― you know, like what will the neighbors think, and if some of the boys at school hear about it, will it ruin your reputation. I’m sorry I’m not more on top of things for you, Cassie, like your father is.”
I pushed away from her a little, so I could see her face. She looked worried.
“You were on top of things today, when you got the hose out,” I said.
We both laughed again. I liked her better that day than I had for a long, long time. It’s hard to stay critical of a person who’s just saved your life with a garden hose.
I changed clothes, and then Mom and Robbie and I went down to KFC. We got home just as Daddy was driving into the driveway. Mom and I made a salad, and we put out paper plates.
“I wasn’t expecting a picnic,” Daddy said, kind of sarcastically. He doesn’t like to eat from paper plates.
“Well, some things happened here today that we weren’t expecting, either,” Mom said, and then went on to tell him the story.
“What do you think Angie meant when she told Cassie she was no different than the others?” Daddy asked.
“I have no idea, Les. Even at the time, in the middle of all that water, I thought it sounded strange. What do you think, Cassie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe this has happened with Fred before,” Daddy said. I wondered if all of this Fred Sloane business was ever going to stop.
I went to bed kind of early that night, and I took my vocabulary cards with me. I’d heard that if you studied something just before sleep, it stayed in your
brain better. I was propped up against my pillows, going through my cards, when Robbie came in wearing pajamas and smelling of toothpaste. I think Robbie eats toothpaste instead of brushing his teeth with it.
“Dorian’s not my friend anymore,” he told me, climbing into bed beside me.
“You mean because of what happened today, with Angie?”
“Yeah. And stuff.”
“What stuff?” I asked.
“At school today he said you were a bad girl.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said shut up, and you’re not my friend, but then I didn’t have anybody to play with at recess time.”
“Couldn’t you play with someone else?” I asked.
“But no one I like as much as Dorian. Dorian’s my best, most fun friend. I mean, he was, before.”
Robbie was frowning, and picking at the lint from my blanket. I thought of Dorian, how serious he would be when we were playing games, and then he’d just start laughing hysterically, like Robbie does. And I thought of all the forts they’d made, with towels and boxes, and how the two of them would play together for hours.
“Maybe it will be okay,” I told him.
He kept at the lint.
“Maybe,” he said, but I could see he wasn’t convinced. I wasn’t convinced either.
“Is it okay if I sleep with you tonight?” he asked me.
“Sure,” I said.
He always kicks a lot in his sleep, and my bed’s not very big, so usually I won’t let him sleep with me. But I felt kind of sorry for him that night, and I felt close to him, too. Even if he was real young, and kind of spoiled, he was my friend and I was his.
I kept thinking and rethinking the fight in my mind. Angie hated me. That was obvious. But I wondered again what she’d meant when she said I was no different from the others. The fight had been awful, but in a way it was exciting. It was exhilarating ― exhilarating was one of my vocabulary words.
I was still real worried about stuff. Daddy had called Sergeant Conrad to tell her about the fight and ask her to put a restraining order on both Fred and Angie. And I felt very sad about Dorian and Tina. Things were in a terrible mess. Still, I felt better than I had a few days ago. Maybe I was getting used to having things in a mess. Or maybe it helped, knowing that Mom cared enough about me to fight for me.
Robbie kicked me in the stomach and I moved over to the other side of the bed. I put my left leg over both of his legs, just to hold them down. The shadows on the wall were playing soccer.
Chapter
15
Mandy caught up to me just before first period. “Did Jason call you last night?”
“No, why?”
“Eric called me last night. He and Jason want us to meet them at the Cineplex Friday night.”
“Nobody called me,” I said. “I don’t think Jason even likes me anymore.”
“But he does. Eric told me that Jason likes you a lot. He’s just shy. Hey, Cassie!”
Mandy grabbed my hand like she’d just had a brilliant idea.
“Let’s look in your locker! I’ll bet there’s a note from Mr. Shy Guy.”
The warning bell rang.
“After class,” I told her.
I thought Mandy was more excited about me and Jason than I was. She was right though. In my locker was a big picture of this really ugly looking cartoon guy. It was a character Jason drew a lot. He, the character that is, had this big, crooked nose with a wart on the end of it. His head was real big and his body was about the total same size as his head.
He was wearing heavy-looking boots, with chains wrapped around his neck, arms, and legs. Under the picture it said, “Don’t be a punk. Tell Jason you’ll meet him at the Cineplex Friday night.”
It made me laugh. I folded the picture carefully and put it in a special section in my notebook.
At lunchtime, Mandy and Julia and I went out to the front steps. Julia and Mandy talked about boys and love, and I listened and wished I had more to say. I couldn’t take my eyes off Mandy’s Twinkie. She finally got the hint and offered it to me, but she’d already eaten more than half of it.
Eric and Jason came over just as I had stuffed the last of the Twinkie into my mouth. I was embarrassed. My mouth was so full I couldn’t even open it to say hi. Eric talked with Mandy and Julia while Jason stood looking at his feet, and I sat trying to swallow the Twinkie. Jason and I didn’t even look at each other until Eric said “Later,” and turned to walk away. Then Jason moved closer to me and tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up.
“Say yes, Cassie,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered back.
He smiled this really big smile and then ran to catch up with Eric. His smile did kind of knock me out. He wasn’t much on conversation, but he sure had a great smile, braces and all.
“Nice smile,” I said to Mandy and Julia. That cracked them up. I didn’t mean it to be funny, but they both fell apart laughing.
“You like him, all right, Miss Cool,” Mandy said, still laughing. “Look at you, all cow eyes over a metal mouth smile.”
That got Julia laughing even harder. She tried not to spit out her soda and gave this little choke and blew her nose instead. That was so gross I started laughing so hard I almost wet my pants. Talk about gross! I ran into the girl’s room, Mandy and Julia chasing after me, laughing even harder. I made it just in time.
They were splashing water on their faces, getting control of themselves, when I came out of the stall. Mandy splashed water on my face and I suddenly pictured the whole water hose thing of the day before, which started me laughing all over again. I don’t know why ― it just seemed so funny. I was so weak I had to lean against the sink to keep from falling over. Finally though, when the eighth graders started coming in to put on their lipstick before class, we managed to get calm enough to walk to fifth period.
When Mom and Robbie got me from school that day, Mom told me that Daddy had talked with a lawyer, and with Sergeant Conrad again, and that she had made an appointment for me with one of the counselors.
“I’m kind of scared to see a counselor,” I told her.
“She, Betty Shipper is her name, said she’d like to see the three of us together for the first time. Will that be easier?” Mom asked.
“Maybe.”
“Let’s just give it a try, Cassie. If it’s awful, we’ll stop.”
“Okay,” I said.
We stopped by Lisa’s house on the way home so Mom could return a big roasting pan she’d borrowed. Aunt Trudy and Lisa were both home. Sometimes Aunt Trudy works weekends and is home during the week.
Lisa fixed lemonade for us all, and we sat outside. Aunt Trudy was wearing a T-shirt that said “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” and purple cut-off sweatpants with red high top Keds. She was wearing a white terry cloth headband, with wings on each side.
“What’s new in the Jenkins/Sloane department?” Aunt Trudy asked.
“What a mess this has all been,” Mom said. Then she told about Fred stopping me on the way home from school, and the water fight with Angie, and the restraining order.
“Weren’t you scared when Fred stopped you?” Lisa asked me.
“I was really more scared with Angie,” I told her. “It was like Angie was a crazy woman!”
“Wow, what a trip! Aren’t you scared she’ll try to get you again?” Lisa asked.
“I hadn’t even thought about that. Thanks a lot for bringing it up,” I said, sarcastically.
“If either Angie or Fred gets anywhere near Cassie we can have them arrested,” Mom said. “It seems as if when Sergeant Conrad called Fred into the station, that set Angie off. But now Connie has talked with Angie, too ― told her that assault is a serious crime, and so is any kind of intimidation of a potential witness.”
“Do you think that’s the end of it then?” Aunt Trudy asked.
“Who knows? I asked Sergeant Conrad the same thing. She said she would
n’t make any guesses, and that she couldn’t tell me anything about how either Fred or Angie responded when they were at the station. She said it would be an invasion of their privacy.”
Aunt Trudy groaned. “They sure weren’t worried about invading Cassie’s privacy, either of them! Sometimes the law burns me up!”
“Trudy,” Mom said, in her sisterly, pleading voice.
“Well, it does, Helen! Doesn’t that anger you? I mean, really.”
“Well, yes, in a way it does. But I do respect this Sergeant Conrad. She’s been very helpful to us.”
“So are you just going to drop it, or have Fred arrested, or what?”
“We’ll talk more about that after Les gets home this evening. A lot of what happens is up to Cassie. You know, whether or not she wants to go through the hassle of being the main witness against him. Lisa would probably have to testify, too.”
My stomach was doing its thing again ― tightening and churning at words like arrest and testify.
“Oh, no,” Lisa moaned. “What if I don’t want to testify?”
“You probably wouldn’t have any choice,” Aunt Trudy said. “They’d subpoena you if they thought you’d be an important witness.”
“Yes, and Mandy, too,” Mom said.
“Mandy?” Lisa said. “Why Mandy?”
“I think Fred tried something with her once, too,” Mom explained. “Isn’t that what she told you, Cassie?”
“Yeah, just that he brushed his hand across her . . . chest.”
“I’ve been talking with one of the psychologists at the hospital,” Aunt Trudy said. “These Fred Sloane types usually follow a pattern, according to Dr. Sturm. I didn’t talk with her about Cassie, specifically, but I told her I’d heard of a case, and what did she know about men who do that kind of thing ― were they likely to get violent, or commit rape, or incest with their own kids ― that kind of thing.”
“So what did this doctor tell you?” Mom asked.
“Well, she told me that these guys usually stay with a particular age, or time of development. For instance, Fred Sloane is probably mainly interested in girls who are just beginning to develop. When Cassie starts to look more grown-up, be more fully developed, he’d probably stop trying to fool around with her.”
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