by Rachel Hanna
“What’s your name?” The officer stared at her with a look that declared he knew exactly what she’d been up to the night before.
“Sophie.” She returned the officer’s stare, refusing to look away.
“Is this your car, Sophie?”
She paused before answering. She didn’t want to get Abby in trouble, but she couldn’t care less what happened to Mark. Get it together, you need to not screw up here. “It’s a friend’s car.” Well, friend of a friend.
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Mark.”
“Surname?”
Shit. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” The officer looked at her questioningly.
“Okay, look. I don’t know him that well. He’s my friend’s boyfriend. I decided to come and sleep in the car so they could have some private time. I don’t know where they are right now.” Technically that wasn’t lying; they might have changed locations…
“I’m going to need you to get out of the car, please, Sophie.” The officer stood back and looked pointedly at Sophie, who slowly made her way off the back seat before stepping up and leaning as nonchalantly as possible against the car.
“Happy, officer?” Sophie tried not to give away how nauseous she felt as she stared calmly at him.
“Yep, most days I am.” The officer’s tone was friendly but even in her hazy state she didn’t miss the underlying note that declared 'You don’t want to mess with me'. “Sophie, do you have any form of ID on you?”
She reached back into the car for her bag and rummaged for her driver’s license before handing it to the police officer.
The officer examined her license. “Miss Morgan, you said Mark is your friend’s boyfriend. Could you tell me your friend’s name please?”
“Abby Lewis.”
“Please can I have Miss Lewis’ address and contact number.”
“Why?”
“In case I need to contact her parents.”
“Why do you need to do that?”
“Won’t they be wondering where she is?”
“No, she was going to be staying the night at my place.”
“I see. Aren’t your parents wondering where you are then?”
“No…”
The officer grasped the situation quickly. “Let me guess, you told them you’re staying over with Miss Lewis?”
Sophie refused to answer and instead just stared at him.
“Sophie, I’m trying to help you here. Don’t you want to know your friend is okay?”
“She’ll be fine.”
“Miss Morgan, have you been drinking in the past twelve hours?”
“No, officer.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, officer.”
“Hmm, well let’s just say if someone was out drinking with their friend and now they don’t know where their friend is, that person would be worried. That’s a normal reaction, isn’t it?”
“Yes, officer.” Sophie looked down at the ground in an attempt to settle her wooziness.
“Now if that friend was a young woman she could be particularly vulnerable if she has drunk a significant amount of alcohol. What if she’s passed out in a strange place with strange people? Surely the right thing to do would be to make sure she’s okay?”
“I guess so.”
A radio voice suddenly cut through the air, and Sophie noticed the police car that was parked nearby. The officer told her to wait at Mark’s car as he strode to the radio and spoke quietly to the person on the other end. He glanced at Sophie as he listened, though she couldn’t tell what was being said. Eventually he returned to her. “Miss Morgan, if someone were to be drinking around here, where do you think they would go? I would really like you to consider the safety of a vulnerable female before you decide whether to answer or not.”
Sophie scowled as she debated internally with herself. Abby would be pissed off if a cop found her with bottles of alcohol strewn across the sand. Then again, she was worried about her friend. If only this cop would just leave, then she could go and find Abby herself.
“I don’t know, officer.”
“Okay, Miss Morgan. You’re going to have to come down to the station for questioning.”
“What? I’m not doing that!”
“Miss Morgan, I have just received confirmation that this car is stolen. You’ll need to come with me and answer some questions.”
Stolen? The queasiness increased tenfold as Sophie processed this information. Damn it! How dare Mark involve her and Abby in this!
“I didn’t steal this car! Mark told me and Abby it was his car!”
“Well if that’s the case then it would be really helpful for both you and Abby if you tell me where Abby and Mark are right now.”
Sophie waited a few seconds before sighing and pointing to the beach. “The last time I saw them was a few hours ago on the beach. They’ll probably be in the same place, about ten minutes that way. You’ll have to go over the dunes.”
The officer nodded and led her to the car, where she slid into the back seat as the officer’s partner watched her from the front passenger seat. Once she was inside, the partner exited the car and locked it before following the first officer. Turning her head, she watched as both officers strode briskly towards the location she had pointed out. She felt like crap right now but no doubt things were going to get a whole lot worse.
***
One hundred hours of community service and a fine. All things considered, Sophie was incredibly lucky. The fact that the shoplifting was her first offense had played an important part in keeping Sophie out of court. The police had linked the stolen car with video footage from the mall which had captured Sophie escaping into the waiting vehicle. Separate video footage and eye witness reports had linked Mark to the stolen vehicle, and this in combination with his confession that he was the one solely responsible for stealing the car had enabled Abby and Sophie to be cleared of any involvement in the car theft.
Abby had also been required to pay a fine and carry out one hundred hours of community service. At the moment, however, Abby wasn’t speaking to Sophie. Mark had told Abby that Sophie had made moves on him, and Abby refused to believe Sophie when she insisted that Mark was lying. Wounded pride and a refusal to acknowledge the possibility that her boyfriend had wanted to cheat on her, in combination with the fact that she was still pissed off that Sophie had told the police where to find them on the beach had strengthened the icy barrier between the previously close friends into an impenetrable wall of silence. For her part, Sophie wanted nothing to do with Abby as long as Mark was in the picture. Hell, it was Abby’s fault she was in this mess to begin with. Abby was the one who had encouraged her to shoplift. Abby was the one who had hooked up with some loser car thief.
As far as Sophie’s parents were concerned, none of this was relevant. She wasn’t surprised. They never saw anything from her point of view. Still, screaming at her made a difference from screaming at each other. Sophie watched her mom’s face. The anger was evident but she’d blocked out the sound, instead watching the way her mouth opened and closed. Her dad sat next to her mom, both parents providing a united front for once as they stared at her from across the kitchen table.
“Sophie, are you even listening to me?”
Sophie adjusted her gaze from her mom’s mouth to her eyes. “What?”
Her mom let out an incoherent sound of exasperation before closing her eyes in an attempt to regain her composure. After a few seconds she sighed and opened her eyes to look at Sophie again. “Sophie, this isn’t a joke.”
“No one’s laughing.” Sophie stared nonchalantly back at her, her arms crossed over her chest.
“You don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation, Sophie. You narrowly missed having all of this on a criminal record. Think how that would affect your future, how it would affect your job prospects. All for jeans, perfume, shoes and some boy who’s far too old to be spen
ding time with you.”
“Mark’s only twenty-four. Besides, he’s nothing to do with me. He’s Abby’s boyfriend.”
“You were in a car he stole!”
“I didn’t know!” Sophie glared at her mom.
“Jess, to be fair she didn’t know about the car.”
“Don’t defend her, James!”
“I’m not defending what she did but I’m not going to condemn her for something she didn’t know about.” Sophie’s dad glanced at her mom before looking back at Sophie and speaking calmly. “He supplied you with alcohol. Who knows what could have happened to you on a beach, under the influence of alcohol with a practical stranger? If that’s how Abby wants to behave then there’s nothing I can do about it. But it’s not how you were raised and as your parents we’re going to stop this behavior before it gets any further.”
Sophie eyed both her parents suspiciously. Two and a half months had passed since the shoplifting, and relations between Sophie and her parents had deteriorated to barely on speaking terms. By the end of the month her community service hours would be complete. Looking at them squarely, she shrugged defiantly. “So what do I have to look forward to now? Being grounded?”
Sophie’s mom stared back at her. “No. A trip over Christmas.”
“A holiday? What, time for some family bonding?”
“In a sense.” Her dad clasped his hands together and rested them on the table. “We’ve arranged for you to spend the Christmas holidays with Aunt Kay and Uncle Philip.”
“They live in the middle of nowhere!” Sophie protested.
“Texas isn’t nowhere,” her dad replied evenly.
“Their ranch is! What the hell am I supposed to do on a ranch?”
“Watch your language, Sophie.”
“Don’t tell me to watch my language! This is bullshit!” Sophie pushed back from the table and started to stand up. As she did so, James sighed and spoke quietly to his daughter.
“Sophie, please sit down. We need to discuss this as a family.”
“That’s rich! You didn’t bother trying to discuss this with me before you and Mom decided to just ship me off without asking me what I wanted.”
“We’re discussing it now. We’re trying to help you, Soph, not punish you.”
“Yeah, right. I’m just one more problem you don’t want to deal with.”
“Sophie, that’s not true. Please sit down.” Jessica reached out to take Sophie’s hands where they rested on the table as she leaned on it, but Sophie pulled them back as she stood straighter.
“If it’s not true then why aren’t you and Dad coming with me?”
Jessica and James glanced at each other before looking back at Sophie. Her dad cleared his throat. “Your mom is going to spend some time with Aunt Sarah. She’s going to need help with the twins since Uncle Bill will be away on business over Christmas.”
“Well why doesn’t she come here?” Sophie asked.
“It’s a lot of work traveling with two babies. It’s much easier if your mom goes to her.”
“So why aren’t you going? You said she needed the help, surely you can help.”
“I want to give your mom and your aunt time to catch up.”
“So what are you going to do over the holidays?”
“I’ll stay here.”
“You’ll stay here?” Sophie eyed her dad and he shrugged.
“Yes, I’ll stay here.”
A few moments of silence passed as Sophie glanced from her mom to her dad, before she suddenly started laughing.
“What’s funny?” The note of irritation was hard to miss in Jessica’s voice.
“You guys. Both of you are just hilarious.” Sophie’s laugh faded and her tone became suddenly bitter. “Do you really think I’m buying this crap? You guys can’t stand each other. You argue all the time and you don’t know how to deal with each other so you’re just bailing. Same thing with me. You see me as a problem you don’t know how to solve so you’re just dumping me somewhere far away to be somebody else’s problem. You think I’m treating things like a joke but this whole situation is a joke!” Her voice had become increasingly louder and the last words were shouted at her parents.
“Sophie, don’t shout. It’s not helping –”
“No, James. She’s right.” Her dad’s words were cut off by her mom, who stared at Sophie with a calm bitterness that echoed Sophie’s own. “Let’s just state things as they are. Your father and I aren’t getting along. We haven’t been getting along for months. For your part, you’re like a stranger to us. You’re our daughter but you’re not you. You always got good grades, Sophie, and now you’re failing. How many phone calls have we received from your school office informing us you’ve skipped classes? Where do you go? Are you shoplifting? Are you getting high? Are you drinking? You refuse to answer our questions and you hardly talk to us at all nowadays unless it’s to scream at us. This can’t go on.” Jessica narrowed her eyes resolutely. “It won’t go on, Sophie. Your father and I are not going to stand by and see you ruin your last few months of high school. You need to think about your future but if you can’t do that right now, then we’ll do it for you.”
“I want to stay here. I’ll stay out your way,” Sophie directed her words at her dad. “You won’t have to see me at all.”
“That’s the problem, Soph,” James sighed. “We never see you. We don’t know where you go. We don’t know how many times you’ve lied to us when you said you were spending the night at Abby’s house and instead went off who knows where. We’re worried about you, Soph. You’re young. I know when you’re eighteen you don’t think you’re young. You think you’re all grown up, but you’re not. You think you know so much about the world and you can handle yourself but I can tell you from experience that it’s a really big world out there, Soph, with a lot of different people. Sometimes the people and situations you experience are great but at other times they’re not, and the way you’ve been carrying on the past few months has your mom and I increasingly worried that you’re going to run into a situation or person or people that you can’t deal with yourself. We’re not trying to scare you; we’re trying to open your eyes and let you see how we view things because the truth is that we’re scared something will happen to you and we would never forgive ourselves if it did.”
James paused as he assessed Sophie’s reaction to his words, but she said nothing so he continued. “The thing is, Soph, we don’t have all the answers all the time. Your mom and I have made mistakes with each other and with you but it’s hard to fix things because we can’t see the situation clearly. We need to step back and take some time to think. One thing that your mom and I both agree on is that a change of situation will be good for all of us. With your mom at her sister’s and me here we’ll have our own time to just think and focus on ourselves for a bit. Then we can start to think about our relationship when we’re feeling more relaxed. When it comes to you, we both feel it would benefit you to spend some time apart from us. We didn’t want our problems to affect you, Soph, but they have and we’re so sorry for that. However, you don’t need a break just from us. You need a break from this situation you’re in. Skipping classes to hang out with your friends, the alcohol, getting high…your mom’s right. This isn’t you.”
“Okay, so I skipped some classes. I can make up the work. It’s no big deal. The weed wasn’t mine. A friend stored it in my jacket pocket without telling me. I didn’t know it was there. And the alcohol was Mark’s. I didn’t ask him to buy it.” Sophie didn’t feel guilty at lying because most of what she’d just said was true. So what if the weed was hers? It wasn’t like she got stoned every day.
“Maybe you didn’t ask him to buy it, but that didn’t stop you from drinking it. If the police hadn’t found you, you would have concealed the fact that you got drunk with a practical stranger at night on an otherwise deserted beach apart from the three of you. Maybe the weed wasn’t yours but the fact is you were still in a situation involving
weed. Alternatively it was yours and you’ve just been careful not to come home high. Maybe you’ve been drinking on numerous occasions but made sure there was no sign of it when you got home. We just don’t know, Soph, and that’s why we want you to get a break from this situation. Get a break from the influence of your friends.”
“Dad, it’s not like you have to worry about that. Abby isn’t speaking to me and I’m not speaking to her.”
“Sure, Abby may be your closest friend – or was, but the chances are you’ll both patch things up eventually – but that doesn’t mean you’re not drinking and/or getting high with your other friends or mixing with unsuitable guys who are only after one thing.”
Sophie scowled. “We really don’t need to be having this conversation. Mom’s done ‘the talk’.”
Her dad shrugged. “Maybe we do. I know what goes through the heads of young males, particularly twenty-something males spending time with high school girls. I don’t like the idea of you spending time with them.”
“Geez, Mark is Sophie’s boyfriend. I don’t even like the guy,” Sophie huffed in exasperation.
“Doesn’t matter, you’ve already experienced a potentially dangerous situation courtesy of him. The fact that he involved you and Abby in a theft situation proves to me that he doesn’t give a damn about either of you. Maybe he can sweet-talk Abby and give her some sob story about how he was going to sell the car because he needed the money for a sick relative but I can guarantee you that her parents will be making every effort to break off all communication between her and Mark. She wants to visit him in prison, did you know that?”
“No. Like I said, we don’t talk anymore.” Sophie stared beseechingly at her dad. “Just give me a chance.”
“You’ve had months of chances, sweetheart. Things are just getting worse. Besides, it’s only going to be two weeks. It’ll be over before you know it.”
“Easy for you to say. You won’t be stuck with nothing to do all day.”