Where It Began

by Ann Redisch Stampler

  You have to figure that Billy has somehow charmed her into the car and down the hill with my address and instructions to save me.

  And you have to figure that even if I have to stay away from him until he charms the hell out of his probation officer or whatever it takes to get me out of the Probation Violation category and back into the Girlfriend category, he must still kind of want me.

  My plan is to plow my way through the fastest rehabilitation in the history of mankind so I can give Billy Nash what you have to figure he still kind of wants.

  XXVI

  BILLY NASH.

  I am in a haze of total adoration.

  More than usual, to the extent it is possible for my mind to be any more hazed over than it already is. And then, in one of those perfect moments of perfectly fulfilled wishes, when I am staring at the screen of my computer and playing auto-solitaire trying to calm down and wishing he was there, there he is.

  pologuy: r u feeling better now G?

  gabs123: ur a god and your mother is, damn, i don’t even know what she is. seriously. i don’t even believe this.

  pologuy: believe it. how do u think a dangerous guy like me is still walking around?

  gabs123: well thanks for sending her my way.

  pologuy: my pleasure

  gabs123: exactly nash. i’d like to thank u in person. In the interest of ur pleasure. i was thinking the door by my laundry room might have some potential.

  pologuy: sorry juliet. might not get out of this house until the princeton letter is bronzed. fml. she went berserk when i was at the castle. she bribed the guy at the guard gate and kap’s housekeeper to rat me out if i show up there after 6 p.m.

  gabs123: too bad the KGB went out of business. she could run it.

  pologuy: thx for the fun fact. will it b on AP euro?

  gabs123: u know what i mean.

  pologuy: i know. it’s child abuse. i’m in rooster shack withdrawal. among other things

  gabs123: what things would that b, nash?

  pologuy: u know what things

  I do know what things.

  And I know where I have to be to have the slightest chance of getting a crack at those particular things.

  Unfortunately, the prospects for my glorious return to Winston School, where I could actually be somewhat near Billy without sneaking through someone’s abandoned shrubbery on Via Hermosita, close enough so he could actually figure out what things he still kind of wants in person, are looking kind of grim.

  Unfortunately, the Agnes Nash plan for avoiding all consequences of bad behavior entails meetings with a cast of thousands of helpful professionals who have to sign off on my every move, and going back to school is apparently on the bottom of the juvenile delinquent to-do list.

  Something it is difficult to explain to Anita and Lisa.

  “Okay,” Anita says, sitting on my bed eating the carrot cake Lisa made. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but do you know when you’re coming back? I mean, you’ve already missed two weeks of school, not even counting break. Everybody wants to know how you are.”

  Lisa has actually collected my books from my locker, a get-well card organized by Sasha Aronson and signed by everyone in permission-only advanced painting, and horrifyingly detailed assignment sheets from all my teachers. My math teacher, Miss Lewin, had written, “No pressure. Just do what you can and we’ll deal with makeup work as soon as you get back,” as if the concept of no pressure makes any kind of sense in connection with trig.

  “I have to see a bunch of people first.”

  “Neurologists?” Anita asks.

  It is all just so embarrassing.

  “Do you have a good lawyer?” Anita asks.

  “I haven’t seen him yet.”

  Lisa and Anita exchange looks. “I’m sure your parents are totally on top of this and it’s all going to work out,” Lisa says. “But do you want me to ask my uncle? He’s a lawyer in San Francisco.”

  “My mom knows some law professors,” Anita says. Her mom is an ethnomusicology professor at UCLA and an expert on South Asian percussion, so unless there are some law professors drumming up a storm and banging gourds together down in Westwood, this doesn’t sound like much of a plan.

  “Thanks for the thought, but I’m pretty sure my guy is decent. Billy’s mother found him.”

  Lisa and Anita exchange more looks, as if the first annual Nonverbal Communication Fest of Casa Gardiner is in session but I’m not invited.

  Anita clears her throat. “Are you sure this is smart?”

  “Of course it’s smart!” I say. “Why wouldn’t it be smart? Billy has a lot of experience getting out of this kind of stuff.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you want to get a lawyer just for yourself?” Lisa asks.

  No.

  What I really want is for this whole thing to go away and never have happened and for Lisa and Anita, who have never so much as shoplifted a peanut butter cup and whose entire knowledge of the criminal justice system comes from watching Law & Order reruns, to stop giving me legal advice.

  XXVII

  I HAVE MY HANDS FULL WITH LEGAL ASSISTANCE from Vivian, which turns out to be one of those hideous life lessons in the Be Careful What You Wish For category.

  Vivian is so enthusiastically down with Agnes’s directives, you would think she was gearing up for a shopping trip to the fashion capitals of Europe. Apart from the fact that she keeps coming back from Barneys with the world’s ugliest clothes and forcing me to put them on, such as a bottom-of-the-unwashed-bowl-of-oatmeal-colored cashmere sweater Amish women would wear if they happened to shop Wilshire Boulevard.

  “There,” she says, picking at some oatmeal-colored fuzz balls because God knows how long this puppy has been languishing on a remote shelf. “Demure.” She looks me up and down. “Agnes says you can’t miss with demure.”

  The Barneys trip, it turns out, is just part of her agenda. She has a calendar; she has a list; she has a telephone voice so obsequious and kiss-ass that you’d think she was trying to get me off death row. My life is now dominated by the Agnes Nash Get Out of Jail Free flowchart that Vivian has fastened to the refrigerator door with retro magnetic pineapples.

  And first on the agenda for the upscale delinquent youth of today is a visit with the lawyer. All I can think is: Okay, Gabriella, you can stop being freaked out now.

  But it doesn’t work.

  The faint but persistent hope that now the whole thing can maybe start to be over is completely overwhelmed by the less-than-faint fear that getting too optimistic might not be such a great idea. So I get dressed for the occasion, trying not to flip out, getting dizzy when I look down to pull on my sandals.

  Unfortunately, Vivian’s idea of looking demure for this lawyer is not exactly what you’d think Agnes Nash had in mind. She comes back from Sunset Plaza holding out a little burnt-orange suit with the kind of boring jacket I’m not planning to wear until I turn forty and a six-inch-long pleated skirt. But before I have a chance to point out that I can’t wear it or anything like it, I am wearing it and in the car on the way to Century City to see the lawyer Agnes picked out for me.

  His office is in one of the towers with the thirty-eight-dollar valet parking, and Vivian doesn’t even try to get around this by parking for cheap under the shopping center next door and walking over.

  His suite is so big that the elevator opens into his reception area, acres of massive Persian rugs and soft lighting, and two receptionists who either have to be earning mega-bucks for answering the phone or some lawyer’s hot mistress based on the size of the giant diamond studs in their earlobes.

  It’s hard to believe that springing teenage thugs could be such a ritzy profession, but according to Billy, all the best law firms keep someone on hand who can spring their top clients’ little thug kids and someone else who can hide their money and scare the shit out of their old wives when they want to get new wives.

  Vivian heads to the shiny mahogany counter and says, �
��We’re here for Ted Healy. Agnes Nash sent us.”

  This perks the receptionist right up. She comes out from behind the counter, possibly just so we can see that she’s wearing Manolos and we aren’t, walks us over to leather chairs big enough to swallow and digest us in a single gulp, and sends the assistant receptionist to get us cappuccinos.

  To add to the surreal experience, when Mr. Healy finally ushers us into his gymnasium-sized office, he looks like an extremely well-dressed, ginormous teddy bear. This is probably why he got stuck doing juvie, where it doesn’t matter if your flaky little clients sit there marveling that you can even find pants that big and wondering just how much you have to eat to fill out those large pants. Probably the DA takes his plea bargains because he’s afraid that Mr. Healy will sit on him and squash him like a Swedish pancake. Although, thanks to Agnes, we are probably going to get our own personal, cooperative DA.

  “Well,” Vivian says, leaning into the giant, shiny lawyer desk, fluttering her eyelashes as if being really, really charming will help make my little legal problema go away, “Now what, Mr. Healy?”

  “Well, Vivian,” he says, disgustingly charming right back at ya, tilting his head to one side and pursing his lips. “That depends on Gabriella here.”

  “Gabby,” I say, in what comes out in too much of a sullen teen voice under the circumstances. Pissed off as I am to be walking around in tiny little mincing steps for fear the tiny little pleated skirt will fan out and show off my panties, I am not so brainless as to miss the part where this guy has to more than like me.

  Why else would Vivian have stuck me in the six-inch pleated skirt in the first place?

  But Mr. Healy, presumably familiar with the sullen disposition of teen thugs in strange outfits, doesn’t seem to mind. “Gabby it is,” he says. He is quite enthusiastic about this, actually, as if having a nickname is an asset for the youthful offender.

  Then he gives us this big, dopey spiel about how he’s my lawyer blabitty-blah until Vivian figures out he is tossing her out of the room and she wriggles out the double mahogany doors as if her dress itched. It is extremely embarrassing, but Mr. Healy seems to be enjoying it.

  So then he can give me his even bigger dopey spiel about how for him to be able to work with me effectively, I have to level with him when he asks me a question.

  “But I don’t remember anything.”

  He looks mystified.

  “Gabby,” he says carefully. “I’m not sure I’m clear on what you’re trying to tell me here.”

  “It probably doesn’t matter anyway,” I say. “It’s just that I don’t remember anything to level with you about.”

  “Really?” he says. Only it’s more like REALLLLLLY!?!?!?!?!?!?

  “Yeah, like if I said I remembered what I did, I’d be making it up.”

  “Oh, I see.” Mr. Healy leans back in his big leather chair, which creaks pathetically, as if it were hoping that someone would put it out of its misery. “Then you really will be comfortable telling the police and probation that you don’t, in fact, remember?”

  Like I’m going to be comfortable telling anyone anything.

  “I guess,” I say. “I mean, I’m definitely not going to be comfortable having a big courtroom scene where I have to take an oath and have to . . . you know . . .”

  By now, the guy is grinning from huge ear to huge ear. “I don’t think we have to worry about what would happen if you were testifying in the kind of trial you see on TV,” he says. “I think we can work this out without that. As for what happened on, er, Songbird Lane, your mom was kind enough to fill me in, and, unfortunately, the facts do seem to speak for themselves.”

  Drunk blabitty-blah car wrapped around a tree blah-blah car keys in my hand blah-blah-blah.

  This is the part where Mr. Healy tips all the way back in his immense leather chair and explains in detail how if not for the vehicular pyrotechnics, maybe I could get away with being a penitent-yet-dopey teen led astray by peer pressure and a low, low tolerance for canned, chilled daiquiris. But now, in the eyes of the State of California, if I don’t deal with the Problem that led to all these hijinks fast, next thing you know, I’ll be off on a drunken vehicular rampage. If someone doesn’t rehabilitate me immediately, a life of crime, mixed drinks, battered sports cars, and carnage spreads before me where some mediocre college and a sub-regular career used to be.

  As a result of the State of California’s unfortunate opinion of me, the helpful helping professionals Agnes Nash has picked out for me have to love and adore my perfect self. Because: If I’m not really really convincing, I’ll be singing my sad, alcoholic ballad of teenage depravity in a locked juvenile rehab jail in Arizona.

  He has the brochure.

  I’ll be taking wilderness walks in a one-hundred-and-ten-degree desert wonderland. And I’ll be doing it sober. Which would pretty much work for me since I only drink at parties north of Sunset and gated ones in the Valley on streets like Songbird Lane, and all right, also at picnic lunches in the Class of 1920 Garden, which involves white wine in tiny Dixie cups and shouldn’t even count, or just something relaxing with Billy and company after school, which seems a lot more like a bonding activity the Brady Bunch would go for after turning off the cameras than a hard-core criminal activity. But even so, I sort of doubt they have anything like that in locked rehab facilities no matter how many zillions of dollars your parents have to pay to get you in there and, more importantly, to keep you out of California Youth Authority where they have actual gang members and where Mr. Healy seems pretty convinced that someone like me could actually get killed.

  XXVIII

  “SO,” MR. HEALY SAYS, “ARE WE ON THE SAME PAGE?”

  Given that the only other page involves me going to juvie jail and being a car-thief drunk-driver with a criminal record for about ten minutes until a gang girl stabs me to death with a stiletto-sharp, rat-tailed comb, you bet we’re on the same page.

  But now that I can barely breathe because it feels as if my throat is closing up, there’s The Bright Side. It’s my first offense; nobody got all that hurt; and probation is a real good option.

  This is so so not totally reassuring.

  “So,” he says, making a brave but unsuccessful attempt to push his sleeves half an inch up his arms. “When you were arrested, do you recall what you said to the police?”

  “I was arrested?”

  “You don’t recall being arrested?” Mr. Healy starts thumbing through the files with increased interest.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “This is interesting,” he says, plucking papers from the file. “Let’s see what we have here. . . . Wait a minute, is this the LAPD or the sheriff or what?”

  I am trying to look as calm as possible while waiting for this to make sense.

  Mr. Healy looks perturbed. “I don’t see an unbooked DUI, I don’t see a citation. . . . Wait . . . okay, this paperwork is not in your name.”

  “What isn’t?”

  Mr. Healy heaves a giant sigh. “Tell me you didn’t give them a false name. Heidi?”

  “No way! It must have been the nurse or someone, seriously. I was delirious. I was in some kind of coma.” It is hard to tell if he believes me.

  “We’re going to have to fix this,” he says, frowning at my file. “I’m going to have to take you in there.”

  I’m too scared to ask what the this we have to fix is, and where we have to go to do the fixing.

  “And you weren’t handcuffed to the hospital bed?”

  “What? No!”

  Mr. Healy shakes his head. He looks somewhat disgusted with the wrong-name paperwork, or me, or both. “Okay, do you remember talking to a sheriff at the hospital?”

  What I remember is the gun lady and the vigilant nurse. I remember telling people who, when you think about it, had no reason to be there if they weren’t police, things like “I don’t know” and “I don’t remember” and “I really don’t remember” and shutting my eyes and pretending they wer
en’t there and falling asleep. I remember drip bags full of clear liquids that greatly enhanced the possibility of falling fast asleep in the middle of a sentence.

  “Well, I know they wanted to talk to me. But the nurses kept telling them I was comatose and they couldn’t come in. And that they had my blood alcohol level so what else did they need.”

  “I see,” Mr. Healy says, apparently pleased with this turn of events. “Blood draw. Blood draw? I see the blood draw. What I don’t see is a warrant. And I don’t see a consent form. And I don’t see that a certified nurse or a phlebotomist did the draw either. You don’t recall signing a consent form, do you?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Well, well,” Mr. Healy says. “This might give us something to work with. No bottles in the car or at the scene. And maybe no usable blood work. Just maybe they’re going to have to break more of a sweat than they like breaking to find someone who saw you putting it away.”

  “Good luck with that one,” I say. “No one will say they saw me. Are you kidding me?”

  “Pardon?”

  “No one will ever say anything like that.”

  Mr. Healy looks up from the file. “How can you know that?”

  How could he not know that? That no one would ever tell. That Winston and every place else like it is a sacrosanct no-snitch zone, the Citadels of Silence of the Western World. Even in seventh grade, when Buddy Geiss and his eighth-grade a-hole pals were sticking little kids’ heads in the toilet and flushing for no apparent reason and everybody hated his guts and was afraid they’d be the next upside down, little seventh-grade kid with pee in their hair, nobody said a single word.

  And because I’m Billy Nash’s girlfriend, sort of, if anyone does say a single word, they’ll come out of this looking worse than me, which is, all things considered, someplace pretty damn far south of happy.