Handcuffs

  My mom walks after him.

  “Is this about my daughter?” she asks. “Has something happened?” The police officer looks at me. I am so scared that I feel my legs getting trembly. I wonder if it would look suspiciously weird if I sat down right here in the hallway. Skinny Policeman frowns and walks up the stairs and directly into my room. He’s facing my canopy bed with the pink stripes and the frilly pillows. The princess room. My room. I follow him.

  “This is it,” he calls to the other policeman. “This computer could be the one.”

  “How do you know?” The skinny one clicks something and both of the officers loom over my tiny seventeen-inch monitor.

  “Can we take this computer?” the fat policeman asks. My dad is in the doorway, and I can tell he’s struggling with what to do.

  “Don’t you need a warrant to take something from my daughter’s room?”

  “Not if you give us permission.”

  “I think we need to know what’s going on before we allow you to take anything,” Mom says.

  My mom is holding on to Preston as if he might float away. I wish she would wrap her arms around me and hold me the same way.

  “Is this your room and your computer, young lady?” The skinny policeman doesn’t look so much like a teacher now.

  “Yes.” I feel my mouth move, but I don’t have a voice. I reach for my mother but she’s too far away.

  He comes toward me, and I see his handcuffs dangling from his belt. Real handcuffs.

  He puts them on me. They’re cold. They don’t feel sexy at all. Mom’s mouth drops open and Daddy’s face is bright, bright red.

  “Parker Prescott, you have the right to remain silent,” he begins.

  “How do you know her name?” my mom asks. Something about the way she says it sounds unfamiliar, and I’m afraid to raise my eyes and see how she might be looking at me. “You can’t take her outside in those handcuffs. The neighbors might see.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. I want to throw myself into her arms, but I’m frozen, turned into an icicle with the cold metal handcuffs holding me in place.

  The police officers whisper to one another, and after a couple of minutes they take the cuffs off and the skinny one escorts me to the police car without them. The other officer stays back to talk to my parents. I want to hear what is being said, but I don’t want to see the looks on their faces.

  When we reach the police car, its lights still flashing, the fat police officer opens the door for me, even though I could have done it myself since my hands are free. I stand beside the police car for several seconds. Long enough to make the skinny cop frown. Finally, I force myself to climb into the backseat. The vinyl makes a squeaky sound as I sit back and put my head in my hands.

  40

  I don’t think or feel anything as they drive me downtown. Sure, there is an occasional stab of fear, a bit of shame, but overall I am only numb. Empty.

  The police station is a big dingy building. A lady comes out and whispers with the officers who brought me in, and then she takes me into a room. There’s a rough orange couch made out of some kind of woven material, a couple of chairs in the same rough weave, only yellow, and a rug over the concrete floor.

  I expect them to fingerprint me and take my picture. For some reason I imagine a hideous mug shot plastered all over Marion Henessy’s blog. I clasp my hands and unclasp them over and over, wipe the sweat on my jeans, try to focus on something besides the fear that is building up in me.

  “We don’t know yet if charges will be pressed. Sit in here, honey. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Is that good news? She called me “honey,” is that good? Does it possibly mean she likes me or feels sorry for me, or does she call everyone “honey”? Can I start feeling hope now? The little glimmer of hope just makes me that much more aware of the fear I’m trying to keep under control. I had American government last year, why can’t I remember the difference between a misdemeanor and a felony? Where does two thousand dollars fall? Am I going to jail?

  There’s a noise, a creaking footstep noise, and I look up so quickly that a sharp pain twists its way through my neck. Kyle Henessy is in the doorway. The security in this police station must be pretty lax if they’ll let my sister’s stalker come into this room. I mean, there is a restraining order requiring him to stay fifty feet away from each and every member of our family. I take a gaspy breath. Me and Kyle both at the police station—that means I’d better start figuring out how to talk him out of pressing charges.

  He sits down in the yellow chair and turns toward me.

  “I knew it was you,” he said. “I found the picture on your computer when I was visiting Paige last week. The one I assume you tried to sell me the first time?”

  I stare at his eyebrows. For a guy’s eyebrows they are fairly neat, not bushy or anything. If I stare at them, then I don’t have to meet his eyes, and we’ll never have the deeper connection that comes from looking into another person’s eyes. My own eyes feel weird, like they’re made of plastic, like they could burn right out of my skull. I stare at Kyle Henessy, with his wire-rimmed glasses that are exactly like my dad’s.

  “How old are you?” he asks.

  “Sixteen.”

  “Old enough, I guess. If you’re old enough to blackmail me, I guess you’re old enough to hear some ugly things about your sister.”

  “I know some things about her,” I say for some idiotic reason.

  “You probably know more than you think. I noticed you never went to parties with her, after that first one.”

  “No.”

  “I guess you were aware of the big stupid crush I had on her.”

  “Everybody knew,” I say. It was pretty obvious.

  “Before the restraining order and everything, even when we were kids.”

  “Yeah, everybody knew,” I repeat.

  “Paige is nearly a year younger than me, and she’s probably the first thing I remember. Before you or my sister were born, I just remember playing with her in our backyard. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t think about her, though when we were little it wasn’t so much attraction as regular friendship. I had a thing for her in middle school, and I took her to my very first dance. My mom drove, and Paige ditched me for some other boy almost as soon as we walked through the door.”

  “I never knew she ditched you,” I say. He looks down at his ugly Timberland boots.

  “Well, that was about the time the intense feeling started. I call it love, my parents call it obsession. By the time she was a freshman, your sister was extremely, um, notorious on the party scene. It was terrible, Parker. I hated myself for the way I felt and for not being good enough for her and just for being alive.

  “I can’t explain to you why I started going to all those parties. At first it helped me to feel more popular, more in touch with other people. Then there was Paige. She was like an angel, the same angel who kissed me on the cheek when I had my tonsils out and signed all over my cast when I broke my arm.

  “Sort of. We were older, and Paige was different. Like part of her was gone. The sweet part that I remembered from when we were kids, it seemed locked away.” If I hadn’t been so close to hypnotized by his quiet, stumbling voice, I might have agreed, might have told him that it seemed the same to me.

  “Then the thing happened.” He stops and looks at me quickly, and then his eyes dart away again.

  “I was at a party, and I went down to the basement to pick up some more beer, and there was Paige, completely passed out. I went to get a blanket. She was just sprawled there on the floor, but when I got back West was lifting her in his arms.

  “He took her upstairs to one of the bedrooms. I thought he was probably just going to put her in somebody’s parents’ bed, make sure she was breathing, but still wanted to be near her. I wanted to be the one to save her. So I followed. He took her shoes off. I thought that seemed normal, because a person can’t sleep with their shoes on. I came in the room and I asked him if
he needed any help.

  “He started laughing, and said something that I won’t repeat to you. Then some of the other football players came and forced me out of the room.”

  I start to stand up. I suddenly feel deeply afraid. “What’re you telling me? What did the football players do to her?”

  Kyle touches my arm. “No, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to think that. Just West. He was proprietary, but she was his girlfriend. He had this hold over her. The other guys knew she was his. I was the only one who didn’t pay attention when he staked out his territory.

  “I followed her everywhere, trying to help. Trying to save her from herself and from West. She drank way too much, not like she was trying to get a buzz, like she was trying to forget herself, like she didn’t care about being conscious. Three different times she drank so much that I called the hospital and had an ambulance come for her. It made her furious, and she was supposed to go into an alcohol program, but your parents signed for her to get out of it.

  “I watched her on the way to school, I watched her on dates, and I watched her through her bedroom window. It was all to try to protect her. If I had wanted sex, I could have just done what West did. She was passed out so many times and in so many places, it would have been easy enough.” He clears his throat again.

  “I thought I was some superhero guy, but I wasn’t super-sneaky, and I started to seriously freak her out, and she knew that one more trip to the hospital would mean a rehab stay, or some counseling, that there would be consequences. That’s when she got your parents to get a restraining order.”

  Kyle takes his glasses off and wipes them on his shirt. Just like my dad does sometimes. What I want more than anything is to get out of this room with the orange couch and the nubby yellow chairs and to go home and curl up in my frilly canopy bed for about a week. It isn’t that I don’t care about Paige and what happened or that I don’t all of a sudden feel sorry for Kyle, it’s just that this is a jail, and I want to go home to my parents.

  “So are you going to press charges?” I ask. Because what else can I say? I knew he was obsessed with my sister. I knew she liked to party, I didn’t know it was a big problem. I don’t know what to think, really.

  “No. No, I’m not. I reported the original blackmail, but once I figured it was you I was prepared to drop everything.”

  “Um, Kyle, if you were just watching Paige to protect her, what were you doing taking pictures of me? You know, the whole hot tub thing?”

  “I didn’t take those pictures. Marion has convinced some moron to supply pictures of you. She keeps a counter on the blog, and apparently the entries about you get lots of hits. The hot tub pictures and the ice in the locker were done by the same guy. He was planning on taking your picture when you opened it, but you came to school late.”

  “Oh.” What do you say to something harsh like that? Being treated like that. “So you don’t know who did it?”

  “No, but I can promise you that she won’t be posting any more of that garbage.” Kyle looks at me quietly for a second, then changes the subject. “So, Parker, what did you do with the money?”

  “I put it in my parents’ checking account.”

  He laughs. “Seriously? Why?”

  “To keep the mortgage company from foreclosing on our house.”

  He just kind of sits there and looks at me. “Marion’s right. You are different from your sister.”

  “Marion hates me.”

  “Yeah. This whole thing has been hard on her. She always looked up to Paige, and she’s crazy about me.” He smiles here, the way a nice older sibling might smile when thinking about his little sister. It makes me feel a little left out or something. “My parents had a hard time dealing with everything, and Marion had to be the go-between, trying to smooth things over. She was too young for all that pressure. Plus, she lost her friendship with you, and that was important to her, even if she won’t admit it.”

  “Don’t you want your name cleared?” I ask him. It seems like he would.

  “Of what? I guess I am a stalker, really. I sat outside your house for hours, sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the cold, just to get a glimpse of your sister. What does that make me?”

  A stalker? And yet, if he was doing it for a good reason . . .

  “You still want to go out with her, after the way she treated you?” I can’t help asking.

  “Yeah.” I knew he was lying whenever he said he was over her.

  “You’re crazy,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, but see, I think she felt the same way about West that I felt about her, which means that she would do anything to keep him. I understand her.”

  “I don’t know why she had to stay with him and why she needed to get drunk all the time.”

  “Your parents seemed to think it was just regular teenager stuff, but I think she needs help. With the drinking and maybe with getting away from West.”

  “And then she’s going to go out with you?”

  “I hope so,” he says quietly.

  “You and Paige are both crazy, and maybe you deserve each other.” Except that he’s nicer than my sister, but maybe her hotness makes up for not being nice, who knows?

  “Parker, I hope you are much happier with your current obsession.” I wonder what he knows about that. Probably just what he’s read on Marion’s blog. I think he means it, he isn’t even being sarcastic. Wow.

  “Do you think Paige is happy?” I ask him.

  “No.”

  “Do you think Paige was happy in high school?”

  “No.”

  “Not ever?”

  He shakes his head. “She smiled a lot, but it hardly ever touched her eyes. I don’t think she was happy.”

  That’s the part that’s a revelation. I knew she drank sometimes, and it’s becoming clear that she probably should’ve stayed away from West, but I thought that behind all that partying, she was happier than I would ever be. I thought she was bubbly, happy, alive.

  “I never wanted to press charges, but since I filed a complaint the officers wanted to bring you down here, to scare you,” he says, his voice apologetic.

  Kyle walks me out of the police station. My dad is there waiting for me. We walk silently to the Jeep and get in. Mom is sitting in the passenger seat. She looks like she’s been crying. I get in the back and buckle my seat belt.

  “You put the money into our bank account,” he begins.

  “Yes.”

  “But she stole it,” Mom says.

  “I know, but she was trying to help.”

  “I stole the money, Daddy. It was wrong,” I say. I’m tired of excuses.

  “I know it was wrong,” he says, “but I am aware of why you took it. It does make a difference to me.” I look up and see his eyes in the rearview mirror. For the first time since the handcuffs incident he is looking straight at me. We smile at each other. I can almost hear my mom’s eyes rolling. She sighs. It’s okay. She has her favorite golden princess, and Daddy has me.

  “I guess I need to pay Kyle Henessy back the two thousand dollars,” I say.

  “I already gave him a check,” Mom tells me. I can’t help wondering if we have enough money in the account to cover that check, but I don’t ask.

  Dad drives up to our house. Even though I was kind of hoping that it would have disappeared, the for-sale sign is still in the yard. I go into the house and straight upstairs to my room.

  41

  My mom comes upstairs and sits on my bed.

  “Your sister’s going into rehab tomorrow. She wanted me to tell you something. Let’s see if I can get this exactly right. She wanted me to tell you that it’s hard to focus on other people when you are completely focused on yourself, and when you’re drunk.”

  Mom had to memorize that? Really?

  “Why didn’t Paige tell me this herself?” My voice always sounds abrupt when I talk to my mom, and I don’t know how to change it.

  “I don’t think Paige knows how to tal
k to you, Parker. You’re so different from her friends.” Yeah. None of us knows how to talk to each other, only at least Mom’s trying. I lean forward and press my face into her for a minute, and she has her arms around me before I’m even all the way forward, like she was just waiting for an excuse to touch me. I don’t think about what that means, because it feels good.

  I lie down and try to relax, to hide under the pink comforter for maybe half an hour, but then I can’t, and I realize that it isn’t even late, not even late enough for Preston to be in bed.

  So I get up and plod downstairs. My parents are sitting on the couch. The recliner seat part is broken where Preston kept pumping it to make it pop out over and over, so Dad is sitting kind of slumped over with his elbow against the armrest. Preston is sitting at the coffee table with a big piece of notebook paper. On it he has drawn five stick figures and labeled them, Mom, Dad, Parker, Paige, Me. His Preston stick-boy is only slightly shorter than the one that’s supposed to be me.

  “You want me to help you with that?” I ask him.

  “You don’t ever draw people,” he says.

  “People are really hard, ’cause it’s hard to get all the little details right. Sometimes you don’t even notice the details, but I think we can do better than that.” I jab my finger at the corner where he has drawn and labeled Mom and Dad. They look like identical stick-twins except Dad is wearing enormous glasses.

  “Do you want me to go get your special pencil?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I tell him, “that would be cool.”

  42

  We’re back at the nice place, the place he took me on our first date. Things are almost like they were the first time, except some things have changed and I’m not so nervous. I’m watching him over the linen tablecloth, around the lighted candle and the white rose in a cut-crystal vase.

  “I’ve never had dinner with an ex-convict before,” he says.

  “I’m not . . .” I make a face at him and pretend to study the menu. It’s been exactly one week since I, um, went to jail.