by Marlowe Blue
Anyway, it was what I did after juvie that made me the most horrible person in the world.
12
Two Years Ago
When I was released from juvie, my parents banned me from seeing Coach and any of the others. The other parents were in agreement with this as I was now labeled a juvenile delinquent and they didn’t want me rubbing off on their kids.
Not seeing Coach didn’t bother me at all because I never wanted to see or speak to him again. Staying away from Charlotte, Brayden, AJ, and Zander was going to hurt.
I was kept on lock down—not allowed to go anywhere or do anything without my parents. My life consisted of summer school to complete the eighth grade, staying home, going out to dinner with my parents, or going to the homes of their boring friends for game nights. Still, they had to sleep sometime and I managed to get out when I really wanted to.
I didn’t want to get into any more trouble, I just needed a few moments to breathe. Some nights I would sneak out and go to Charlotte’s. We would lay in her bed for hours talking and catching up. She filled me in on who was dating who, who had finally grown boobs, and the latest challenges.
“You know you guys can’t trust Coach, right?” I told her. “Just look at what he did to me.”
Charlotte paled. I knew she didn’t want to choose sides. “Lee, he feels really bad about what happened, but it was an accident. You know he didn’t mean to get you in trouble. Besides, if you hadn’t gone out there to get the stroller—”
I sat up abruptly. “Someone might have died. Are you seriously blaming me for that? Are you telling me you wouldn’t have done the same thing?”
She took a deep breath and stared at her bedroom ceiling. “Lee, you look at the worst parts of everything. Maybe nothing really bad was going to happen. A car would probably just swerve and keep going. Maybe they would stop and check on the baby. Maybe they would hit the carriage and freak out, but then discover there was never really a baby inside. It would just give them a little scare.”
I knew she didn’t believe any of that. Those were Coach’s words not hers.
“Besides,” she continued. “He feels really bad and he promised to make it up to you.”
Coach had totally uprooted my life. I didn’t see how he could possibly fix that. When school started again my parents had to release their grip a little as their workloads increased. Still, I was to go to school and come directly home—but since I had to go to school with my friends, they couldn’t keep me away from them.
I was walking home with Charlotte after our first day when Coach caught up to us. “Hey, guys. How was your first day of high school? Not too bad, huh?”
Of course it wasn’t bad for him. Coach hung out with older kids and he already knew so many people. He wasn’t like us, insignificant freshman who would remain anonymous until we were no longer at the bottom of the totem pole. Charlotte had been trying to convince me to make up with Coach so that we could climb the social ladder with him. I couldn’t have cared less about that.
I ignored Coach while Charlotte went on and on about her classes. The whole time Coach watched me from the corner of his eye, not paying Char any attention at all, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Hey, Char,” Coach said, cutting her off. “We’ll catch up to you later, okay?”
Her eyes widened, surprised by the dismissal. “Oh, okay. Sure. Whatever.”
She stalked off toward her house.
“Char, you don’t have to go,” I called after her. She waved over her shoulder, but she wasn’t coming back. Coach had spoken.
I picked up my walking speed. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”
He grabbed my arm and I yanked it away. He gave me a big crooked grin. “Come on, Lee. I’m real sorry about what happened. I really am. But if you had done what I’d told you to do, none of that would have happened.”
I stopped on the sidewalk. “Seriously? You made me take the fall for you, Coach. I didn’t want anything to do with that prank. I didn’t know what you were going to do and when I did, I tried to stop it. What you did ruined my life.”
Coach rolled his eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. I’ve already been to juvie twice. It’s no big deal. It gives you street cred. Anyway, I couldn’t go back there again, not with my record. You were a first-time offender. It’s not even going to mean anything.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t want anything else to do with you or your stupid challenges ever again and I mean that. Don’t talk to me anymore.”
Coach grabbed my arm once more, rougher that time. “I’m going to make this up to you, I promise. You don’t have to be friends with me anymore if you don’t want to be, but let me make this right.”
“How are you going to make it right, Coach?”
His eyes flashed with excitement. “Come to my house tonight at eleven.”
I pulled away from him, taking wide steps. This time I wasn’t stopping. There was no way I was going to his house or ever trusting him again.
At 11:45 that night I got a call from Coach.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not coming!” I yelled into the phone before hanging up.
He called right back. This time he didn’t give me a chance to say anything before he spoke. “Lela, you didn’t come and something really, really bad is happening.”
I’d never heard him use that tone before, but he sounded terrified. I threw my bed covers off me. “What are you talking about? What’s happening?”
Muffled sounds were in the background. “Um . . . um . . . um . . .”
“Coach, what?”
“The police guy that arrested you. I wanted to have a little fun with him but you didn’t show up and he woke up and things got out of hand.”
My pulse raced as I shot up from my warm, comfy bed. “Coach, what have you done?”
He sounded like he was crying then. “Just get here.”
Every ounce of my common sense was telling me to stay put, but I had to know what was going on and what it had to do with Officer Downs. I slid into my sneakers and threw a denim jacket on over my pajamas. After sneaking out of the side door of the garage, I took a bus to Coach’s. There was no car in the driveway so I knew his dad was away working again. Coach met me at the door wearing a creepy monkey mask that scared the hell out of me. He thrust a bunny mask at me. “Here. Put this on.”
The mask wasn’t cute at all. It was white with angry eyes and two protruding teeth that looked more like sharp fangs.
I tried to speak, but he shushed me by putting a finger to my lips. After sliding the creepy mask over my head, I followed him to his basement. Once we reached the door, he placed his hands on my shoulders. “Listen to me. Only speak when necessary. Don’t act like you’re scared and whatever you do, do not say our names.”
“Our?”
Coach stepped into the basement with me on his heels. On the concrete floor in the middle of the room lay Officer Downs, bound and gagged, wearing khaki pants and a polo shirt. He lay there motionless with a dried trickle of blood on his forehead. Against a wall stood a tall lanky guy in a donkey mask with his hands folded over his chest. He seemed bored as if this were something that happened to him every day.
Coach pulled me into a corner. “Listen. This was all supposed to be a little joke. We blindfolded the guy so he wouldn’t know where he was going. Then wearing the masks, we were going to give him a little scare. Kind of play around with him and make him feel as if he were in a horror movie or something. Then we were going to dump him somewhere. No harm done.”
I grabbed the skin on Coach’s chest with my thumb and index finger and pinched. He grunted and pushed my hand away. I shoved him against the wall. “Are you crazy? What the hell were you thinking? Really? A police officer?”
He shrugged. “The guy arrested you for no reason. You told him the truth and he lied on you. He deserves this. If it wasn’t for his lying testimony, you would have gotten off. He was the reason you went to juvie.�
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I shouldn’t have been surprised by his explanation because Coach had a way of making anything not his fault. Although what he said had some truth to it—Officer Downs shouldn’t have lied on me—if it hadn’t been for Coach, I would have never been on that dangerous curve pushing a stroller in the rain.
“No, you were the reason I went to juvie. He shouldn’t have lied, but if I were him, I wouldn’t have believed me either. Why would anyone be standing on the side of the road in the rain with an empty baby carriage? Of course he thought I was up to no good. He wanted to make sure I was punished.”
The kid standing against the wall finally spoke. “Look, what’s done is done. The only thing that needs to be discussed is what to do next.”
I turned back to Coach. “Who is this?”
“No names!” the kid shouted.
Coach held up his hands. “Just a buddy of mine. He helped me get this guy. He has experience with things like this.”
Experience? How old was this kid and exactly how much experience did he have with kidnapping and false imprisonment?
I took another look at the knocked-out cop, trying to come up with a way to end this catastrophe without ending up in prison. “So, he’s still blindfolded. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t know who we are. Just put him back where you got him from.”
The guy in the donkey mask sucked his teeth. “Yeah, we went through all the trouble to get this guy just to put him back. Where’s the fun in that?”
I glared at him even though he wouldn’t be able to tell through my mask. “Well, what do you want us to do? Write dirty words on his face? Give him a wedgie? Put his underwear in the freezer? There’s nothing fun about any of this.”
Coach scratched his head. “She’s right. Let’s just take him back.”
The kid shrugged and finally moved away from the wall and toward Officer Downs. “Whatevs, dude. Help me pick him up.”
Donkey’s car was parked in the garage so no one could see them carrying Officer Downs inside. I got in the front seat while Coach rode in the back with the cop. Thank goodness for the cloak of night and dark tinted windows.
“Do you know where he lives?” I asked.
Donkey shook his head. “We’re not taking him to his house. His house probably has surveillance cameras. People might notice this unfamiliar car.” His car was a bright yellow eighty-something Cadillac. It would definitely stand out.
My insides swelled with dread. “Then where are we taking him?” Obviously ending this wasn’t going to be as simple as I’d hoped.
Donkey made a left turn onto a side street. “We’re just going to drop him off somewhere we won’t be spotted and we’ll have enough time to get away. Don’t worry, princess. Someone will come along and spot him and no time. Your boyfriend will be fine.”
I relaxed a little and let the princess comment go, figuring he was probably right. There was no way Officer Downs could identify us. After about fifteen minutes, Downs woke up with jerking motions, trying to release himself from the duct tape. His panicked moans made me feel guilty.
I tried to put myself in his shoes, waking up blind and bound and having no idea where I was. He must have been so scared and confused. Next thing I knew, his hands were free, flailing around him wildly.
Donkey turned in his seat, taking his eyes off the road. “What the hell, man! Why’d you take the tape off?”
“I didn’t. He just broke through it.”
Downs grabbed the first thing he could get his hands on. Me. Blindly, he pulled off my mask and wrapped his arm around my neck and squeezed. I dug my nails into his skin, applying as much pressure as I could, but that seemed to have no effect on him. He had me pinned to the seat. He crushed my throat with so much pressure I couldn’t breathe. I imagined him snapping my neck like a toothpick.
Donkey swerved off the side of the road. I heard a tussle going on in the back seat, but all I saw were stars from the lack of oxygen. Coach was trying to help me, but what he was doing wasn’t enough. Downs was so much stronger. Donkey got out of the car and went around to the back seat. I don’t know what he did, but Downs released me and I could breathe again.
I stumbled out of the car, gasping to catch my breath in the cool nighttime air. Everything was happening much too fast for me to make sense of it. Downs was on the ground. Donkey and Coach were pummeling him, but the more they hit him, the bigger the fight he put up. I wished he would just quit fighting and then we would leave him alone. We would hop back in the car and leave him there. I yelled for them to stop but I could only manage a hoarse whisper.
Downs straddled Coach, punching him repeatedly in the face, screaming every obscenity known to man. I feared he would kill him. Donkey got on top of him, but Downs flung Donkey away, sending him flying into the rear car door. Donkey’s head bounced off the metal with a sickening bang. The sound reverberated through me. I had to do something to help Coach.
I attempted to tackle Downs, but he threw me off like I weighed nothing. Coach’s face was almost a bloody pulp. On the ground, my hand rested on a good-sized rock. I didn’t want to hurt Downs, I just wanted him to stop before he killed Coach. I raised the rock and brought it down on his head. There was a crack I hadn’t been expecting. His body tensed and then rolled over to the side.
Coach sat up, breathing heavily. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth. He looked like he’d been hit in the face by a truck.
Donkey stirred behind us. “Oh, shit. That son-of-a-bitch is dead.”
What was he talking about? Downs couldn’t be dead. I’d only hit him once and not that hard. He was so big and the rock was small. “No,” I argued. “He’s not dead. He can’t be.”
Donkey groaned and crawled over to the motionless body. He touched the side of Down’s neck and checked his wrist. “Yeah, he’s dead. I know a dead body when I see one.” He said it so casually like he had a PhD in dead bodies.
I looked back and forth between the bloody rock and Officer Downs. Maybe the rock wasn’t so small. It seemed to grow in size the longer I stared at it. It was half the size of my head. “I—I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to make it stop. I didn’t want him to kill you.”
Coach squeezed my hand. “It’s okay, Lee. It was an accident. We’ll fix this.”
That didn’t make me feel better at all. Every time he said he was going to fix something, he made it worse. Once again, I should have been home in the safety of my bed, not on some dark deserted road with him and a dead cop.
We loaded Downs back in the car and drove for another hour. I stayed in the car as Coach and Donkey carried him off into the woods. I don’t know what they did with the body, but they had no shovels and weren’t gone long enough to have buried him.
Later that night I learned that the boy in the Donkey mask was nineteen-year-old Shawn Perkins. He ended up going to real prison a month later for stealing cars—including the yellow Cadillac he had driven that night. Coach told me not to worry because Shawn would die before he snitched on me but I couldn’t trust that. I didn’t know that kid from a hole in the wall. I didn’t even know what he looked like.
As far as I knew, Shawn kept his mouth shut. Coach was the one I had to worry about. I’d stayed home from school the next day. I told my parents I had a sore throat and they’d believed me. Coach came by my house after school. I winced when I saw him. Somehow he looked worse than the night before. His eyes were both blackened and his lip was busted. There wasn’t a part of his face that wasn’t bruised.
“I told everyone I got jumped by a gang,” he said as soon as I opened the door. “They all felt sorry for me. The cafeteria lady even gave me a free brownie—the kind with the walnuts.”
I didn’t understand how he could go to school and carry on normally as if nothing had happened. A man was dead and if it hadn’t been for us, he would still be alive. A man who’d only been trying to do his job of keeping the town safe.
“I don’t want to see you anymore. I told you that before. Noth
ing that happened last night would have happened if it weren’t for you. I killed someone because of you.”
Coach grinned in a way that made me want to beat the shit out of him. “You’d better be nice to me if you want me to keep your secret.”
“My secret? I think you mean our secret.”
He touched a strand of my hair and I flicked his hand away.
Coach leaned in close to me. “Our secret? As I recall, you were the one that bashed his head in with a rock. Tsk, tsk, tsk . . . so violent. Sure, me and Shawn are accessories after the fact but that’s a lot different from homicide—the homicide of a police officer. They don’t play around with that shit.”
I balled my fist and gritted my teeth. “I only did that to save your life. He was going to beat you to death. You guys shouldn’t have kidnapped him in the first place. I didn’t ask you to do that.”
He moved even closer to me, so close I could smell the Juicy Fruit on his breath. “Here’s how this is gonna go—you’re gonna be my girlfriend and you’re gonna do whatever I tell you to do.”
“Or what? You’re going to tell someone about the cop? You wouldn’t do that because you’d be in trouble too.”
Coach thought that over for a moment. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
He was crazy and impulsive. He didn’t think before he did things, so I wouldn’t put it past him to go to the cops even though it would incriminate himself. That was how I became forever indebted to him.
Officer Downs was discovered a few weeks later. Obviously, because of the bruises, the head wound, and the remnants of duct tape, foul play had been involved, but no one had a clue who the culprits were or what their motive would have been.
There wasn’t a day that went by that I hadn’t thought about Officer Downs. He was single with no children, but I remembered seeing his parents crying on the news. There’s nothing like killing an innocent person to make you feel like a worthless lump that should have never been born. My life was ruined before I had even turned fifteen.