Bijoux simply could not tolerate Mom’s refusal to go to the police and press charges against Danko.
“I don’t care what her reasoning is,” Bijoux said emphatically. “What he did was against the law, and he should go to jail.”
She got it into her head that we’d go together to the police station as soon as it was a reasonable hour, which for Bijoux could have meant anything from eight in the morning until six at night. I strongly did not want to accompany her to the police station. What was done was done. Mom had already talked to her divorce lawyer to get paperwork started but wasn’t sure yet if she was going to go through with it. More than once, she said that she and Danko were experiencing a “tough patch.”
Everything was gleaming as the sun rose, with light bouncing off all of the glossy surfaces outside Bijoux’s bedroom window. “We have to do this, Betsey,” Bijoux coaxed me. “I’ll go with you. You’re not alone.”
“No,” I said emphatically. “If I go to the police, then everyone in the world will know what he did.”
My sister shook her head gently. “You’re a minor. The press can’t print your name. And even if they do, you didn’t do anything wrong. He did. The whole world should know what he did. Every single person he meets for the rest of his life should know what a disgusting pig he is.”
Her point just made me wonder how I’d feel if everyone I met for the rest of my life knew what Danko had done to me. I stared out Bijoux’s window toward the street, which was bathed in a crystalline platinum shade of early morning sunlight. “I don’t want to. I just don’t want to think about it anymore.”
“If you can’t do it for yourself,” Bijoux said, pulling out her wild card, “You have to do it for Magda. If you pretend like nothing ever happened, then what does that mean for her? That it wasn’t important enough for him to be punished for what he did to her? You’re the stronger person, Betsey. You’re even stronger than Danko. Magda needs you.”
I thought about everything in those terms for a few minutes, hugging my knees into my chest and squeezing my eyes shut. Even after all the months that had passed since that miserable inky black night in Croatia, when the only witnesses to what Danko had done to me on that quiet road had been the solemn unblinking stars in the sky, the terrible feeling in my stomach returned the second I began thinking about it again. Maybe if I had said something sooner, it would have spared Magda from having to endure what I’d experienced. The mere thought made me feel horribly guilty, and I felt like I’d assisted Danko in hurting her by keeping his secret so safe. I had been a dutiful little accomplice to him, and I was angry once I saw the events in my head from that perspective.
We tried to make coffee in the kitchen using the fancy espresso maker that Tobin had left behind, and failed miserably. We laughed about that and selfishly left a mess for the maids to clean up, then bundled up in our rubber-soled snow boots and ski jackets.
We slipped and slid, laughing like lunatics, on the five-block walk to the police station. When we arrived, it was curiously quiet and unassuming at the early weekday morning hour. It would have been so easy to have talked my sister into instead going to Veselka for pancakes. If I learned anything to be true about myself since the summer, it was that I was a powerful manipulator, capable of twisting and turning events to my liking. Just like Adrian had convinced us all of his outrageous stories about the constellations in Croatia, I had managed to craft my own reality with lies and suggestions. I stopped and hesitated in front of the station, mentally weighing the pros and cons of just distracting my sister and walking away.
“Let’s do this thing,” Bijoux said gently, sensing my reluctance to move forward. “I’ve got your back.”
She followed me into the station, both of our heads held high. I had never before been more willing to let my sister have her way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caitlyn Duffy survived life in a New England boarding school and now lives in Brooklyn, NY surrounded by her Chihuahua, BF, and BFF's. By day, she writes copy for emails and banner ads at an advertising agency. The Treadwell Academy series of novels is her first venture into fiction for teens. She regularly blogs about her fascination with all things preppy.
Send Caitlyn a note at her blog: http://www.caitlynduffy.com
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