Broken Wings (23 page)

He laughed.

“You’re crazy. C’mon. Get up and get dressed before the cavalry arrives.”

“Don’t worry about it. They would never do that. They couldn’t stand the embarrassment of any bad publicity,” I told him, but started to dress.

“You haven’t done anything like this before, have you? I mean, stay over a boy’s house without their knowing?”

“No, I didn’t stay, but I went to a party I shouldn’t have gone to when I was in the ninth grade. It was a party for seniors and I got drunk. They found out I was with a senior boy that night, too.”

“What happened?”

“I made love or let him. It was my first time, so I wasn’t really in any sort of control. I think I was just trying to shock my mother. I even told her what I had done.”

“You told her?”

I slipped my blouse over my head and pulled it down.

“Well, I came to her and I told her I thought I might be pregnant. She never paid more attention to me than she did those weeks. Almost every morning she was there to see if I had gotten my period.”

“What happened?”

“She almost had a nervous breakdown, and she had me swear and promise that I would not tell my father anything. In the end she set up a secret appointment for me with her doctor and I had to confess I had gotten my period.”

“You mean you had and you hadn’t told her?”

“Like I said, as long as she was concerned, she was paying attention to me. She was so relieved when I told her. She didn’t even care how I had been playing with her.”

Del shook his head in disbelief.

“Most of the girls I have known would have done everything they could to keep such a thing from their mothers. They certainly wouldn’t brag about being with an older boy and making love when they were only in the ninth grade.”

He paused and thought a moment, nodding to himself.

“What?”

“You must really hate her,” he said.

That made me pensive.

“I don’t hate her,” I said. “Just the opposite. I wish I had a mother.”

“You and me both,” Del said.

He walked me to the door, pausing at his mother’s bedroom to listen. It was dead quiet.

“She’ll sleep into the late morning and then tell me I’m lying about everything I said happened.”

“I’m sorry about her,” I said. I really meant I was sorry for him and his brother and sister. He nodded and followed me out to the car.

We kissed and I got in and started away. I was more than halfway home when I saw the police car behind me, its bubble light going. I checked my speedometer. I wasn’t speeding. They pulled alongside and waved me off the highway. As soon as I stopped, I heard one of them through the loudspeaker on their vehicle.

“Get out of the vehicle with your hands up,” he ordered.

“What?” I cried.

What was going on?

“Out of the vehicle now!”

Heart pounding, I stepped out and kept my hands up.

“Lie down on the road and put your arms straight up,” I heard.

On the dirty road? I thought. I started to turn to argue when I saw one of the policemen was out of the vehicle and had his pistol drawn and pointed at me. I practically fainted. I went to my knees and then slowly did what they had asked. Moments later, I heard them beside me.

One took my left arm and brought it around behind me, then took my right arm and did the same. The handcuffs were locked on my wrists, and I was told to stand.

“What is this?” I cried.

“This car was reported stolen,” the officer who had put the handcuffs on me said.

“No, it’s my car. It’s my family’s car. I’m—”

“Move,” he ordered, turning me toward their vehicle.

“I’m not lying. Check my purse. Check the registration,” I pleaded.

Without responding, he opened the patrol car’s rear door and guided me into it, closing the door. I watched them search the SUV, and then they returned and got in.

“I’m Teal Sommers. That’s my family’s car!” I screamed when neither of them made any attempt to let me free. “Didn’t you look at my license?”

“Just relax,” the driver said. “The car was reported stolen, and that’s all we know.”

He drove off. I looked back at the Lexus and then slumped in the seat.

What was going on?

At the police station, they brought me to the desk and had me booked as a car thief. I was placed in a cell, and no matter how much I protested, no one stopped or seemed to care. Finally, because I remembered from watching movies, I asked to make my one phone call and I was led to a phone.

I dialed home. It rang and rang. I was calling Daddy’s direct line. He always picked up when that line rang, but instead, I got his answering machine.

“Daddy!” I screamed. “I’ve been arrested for stealing our own car. I’m in jail. Come and get me.”

The policewoman hung up the phone and led me back to the cell where I sat waiting. Hours went by and no one came. Finally, tired from screaming and protesting, I sprawled out on the hard wooden bench and fell asleep. I woke when I heard the door of the cell rattle. The policeman said my father had come to get me.

“Finally,” I moaned, and walked out.

“Just get in the car,” Daddy said when I saw him at the front desk. “Go out and get into the car. It’s right in front.”

“Why didn’t you come earlier? Why didn’t you call to tell them I didn’t steal the car?” I asked.

He looked at the police dispatcher and then at me and said, “But you did steal the car, Teal. I told you that you couldn’t have it and you took it. That’s stealing. You don’t own that car. I do. Now you’re known as a car thief. Happy?” he asked. “Get in the car,” he ordered before I could respond.

I went out and got into his sedan. When he got in, he said nothing until we had driven away from the police station and I asked him why he had let this happen.

“You let it happen, Teal. I am not going to coddle you any longer, young lady,” he said “From now on, whatever you do, you will pay the consequences that result, no matter what those consequences are, understand?”

I didn’t say anything. I turned away and pressed my forehead to the window. Right now, I thought, I’d trade places with Del in a heartbeat.

Mother was waiting in the hallway when we arrived. She stood there with her arms crossed and her lips pursed.

“Well, what do you think of yourself now?” she asked as soon as I entered. Before I could respond, she cried, “Look at yourself, your hair, your expensive jeans. You’re absolutely filthy. How could you want to be seen in public like this?”

“She wasn’t in public, Amanda,” Daddy reminded her. “She was in a jail cell.”

“Oh, dear me, dear me,” she wailed. “Will it get out, Henderson? Will it be in the newspapers?”

“No, she’s still a minor,” he said, and looked at me. “I’m afraid she will be a minor for a long, long time, the way she is going.”

“Well, we can be grateful for that, I suppose,” my mother said, and sighed. “Go up to your room, Teal, and sit and contemplate what you have done and what you are becoming. I have to get to an important luncheon,” she added. She made it sound as if, otherwise, she would sit and talk with me.

“Get upstairs, young lady,” Daddy ordered. “Don’t even think of leaving this house.”

I walked up the stairs slowly and just collapsed on my bed. All I wanted to do was sleep, sleep forever. Hours later, I woke, groaned, and stretched. I did feel terribly dirty and decided to take a bath. How would I contact Del? I wondered after remembering his phone had been turned off. I had to let him know what had happened to me. I thought he was the one person who would have any sympathy.

After I had gone down to get something to eat, it occurred to me that Del would be at work. I flipped through the yellow pages and found the number for his pizza parlor in the mall and then called. He answered the phone.

“It’s me,” I said. “Can you talk?”

“Yeah, there’s a lull.”

“You won’t believe what happened to me,” I began, and described it all without taking a breath.

“Your own father had you arrested and left you there?”

“You heard it,” I replied.

“Well, you weren’t actually convicted of anything,” he said, sounding like an attorney, “so he wasn’t right that you’re labeled now as a car thief. Besides, you’re still a minor in the eyes of the law, so no one can hold what happened against you or use it as evidence in any other court proceeding.”

“I’m not in the least bit concerned about any of that, Del.”

“You should be,” he said.

“How are things at your house?”

“My mother was still sleeping when I left the house. I made her some coffee. She sipped it and passed out again. I got the kids up and dressed and came to work,” he recited, “just like I do almost every day. I hope she will get up and give them lunch at least. I can’t call the house to check on it, thanks to her.”

“We should both just run off,” I suggested. I was more than half serious, and he heard it in my voice because he was silent for a long moment.

“I wish I could,” he said. “I’d hate to think what would happen to Shawn and Patty Girl if I left them with dear old Mom.”

“I shouldn’t have given away that diamond bracelet yesterday. You could have pawned it and used the money.”

“No, I wouldn’t have taken it, Teal. My brother and sister and me are in trouble enough. I go to jail, and they go to foster homes in a heartbeat.”

“It’s not fair,” I said.

“I stopped thinking about what’s fair and what isn’t a long time ago. I got to get back to work. We just got a crowd of teenagers, and they all look hungry.”

“I’ll try to see you later,” I promised. I had no idea how I would, but I felt I had to hold on to the hope.

“Good,” he said, and hung up.

I sat in the kitchen, moping. I was still in a bit of a daze from the night before. I heard the vacuum cleaner go on in Daddy’s office. The maid was permitted in there on Sundays only, which meant he wasn’t home either. I was glad of that. I didn’t want to have another lecture. Lately, that was the sole sum of all our onesided conversations: sermons on behavior.

Moving like a sleepwalker, I went back upstairs and moped about my room. I had a pile of homework to do, but just starting it seemed like a monumental task. I flipped through some pages and then fell back on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Prohibited from leaving the house, I felt just as trapped as I had the night before in the jail cell. I kept thinking about Del and our time together.

Suddenly, I heard the door slam downstairs and then heavy footsteps on the stairway. Moments later, there was a knock on my door.

“Who is it?” I called.

The door opened and Carson stepped in. He was wearing a sweater and sweat pants and looked like he had just come from his gym.

“Dad told me what you did last night and what happened,” he began.

I sat up.

“He left me there all night.”

“You’re lucky he came to take you home at all,” Carson said. “What is wrong with you, Teal? Why do you keep doing these things? What do you want?”

“I want to be left alone,” I snapped back at him.

“You don’t want to go to school? You don’t want to achieve anything with your life? You just want to party, get drunk, screw around? What?” he shouted at me, his face red, his arms out.

For a moment Del’s relationship to his siblings flashed across my mind. He was the older brother and he showed them so much love and affection. Carson and I rarely ever kissed each other, rarely held each other’s hands, and rarely hugged each other, even on birthdays. He was so much older than I was in every way that it turned him into a stranger, not a brother. It wasn’t hard to see that he really wasn’t here this morning for me; he was here because he was upset for our father and mother.

“Just leave me alone,” I said, falling back on the bed.

“Daddy thinks you might need some sort of military school, Teal.”

“You mean prison, don’t you?”

“The last step before it, yes,” he said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him wander over to the windows and stare out.

“I guess I should have done more with you,” he said in a tone of voice that was softer than ever. It widened my eyes. “Your birth was quite a surprise.”

“For me, too,” I muttered. He nearly smiled when he turned to look at me.

“I used to resent you,” he confessed. I looked up at him. “You came when I was a teenager, and for nearly fifteen years, I had been the center of all the attention.”

“As it turned out, you had nothing to worry about, Carson. You still were and you still are,” I fired back at him.

“That’s not true, Teal.”

“What do you know? You were out of this house by the time I was five.”

“So that’s why you’re doing all these things? Just for spite?”

“I’m not doing anything. I needed the car yesterday and he wouldn’t let me have it. He was doing that just for spite.”

“You were sent home drunk from school! What was he supposed to do, reward you?”

“He loves punishing me. It helps him forget his mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“Having me!”

“They’re not sending you to the right therapist,” Carson decided after a moment. “You do need real help.”

“Right. You can go now, Carson. You did your duty. Go make your report to Daddy and tell him I haven’t set the house on fire again.”

He stared at me.

“I came to offer you help, Teal. I’m willing to listen to you and to give you advice.”

“If you want to help me, tell him to stop punishing me so much and treating me like a common thief.”

“Give him reason to have faith in you, and he will. You’ll see,” he promised.

I thought for a moment. There was a line I remembered from a story we had to read for English class. A grandmother told her granddaughter, “You can get more with honey than with vinegar.”

“Thanks,” I said, and looked up at him. “I really don’t have anyone to talk to, Carson. Mother is so involved with her social events and Daddy’s always so busy and you’re hardly here. None of the friends I have at the new school are nice. They’re all so snobby. They hold it against me because I was in public school all this time.”

“Really? What creeps.”