Cheated (15 page)

Ex-Dad looked at me, puzzled. I wanted to go on and say,
Dad, are
you
sorry? Not just for this morning, but for everything
. Or,
If you can't say you're sorry, then at least admit the sin. Are you ready?
He didn't apologize or confess, just made more empty promises: “I'll make everything up to you.”

“Sure thing,” I said as I studied the floor of the car. I didn't believe his words, or mine.

“What the hell!” ex-Dad said out of nowhere. I felt the car speed up as my head jerked up to stare out the windshield at the police car sitting in my driveway.

As we drove toward the house, my mind raced through my choices. The Tahoe was going slow enough, I could jump out and take off running down the street, which would connect to another street, then another, and one of the roads might allow me to escape. Maybe I could turn toward my father and admit it all.
Dad, something happened nine days ago. We'd been drinking, and things got out of hand. It was my fault. You see, I spilled the bottle, and I was the one who mentioned the Scarecrow. Aaron started it, or maybe it was Brody, but it all connects back to me
. Or I could turn
toward him and admit nothing, saying instead,
Look, Aaron and Brody, they went crazy and killed this guy. I didn't do anything, I tried to stop them. I wanted to tell. But I have to stand by my friends. That's what you want, right, Dad?
Or I could turn toward him but not turn on my friends:
Dad, I did it. I'm willing to take the consequences. No, nobody else was involved. I'll take the punishment. I'm not afraid of anything anymore
. But I didn't say or do anything; it was like I was paralyzed. When Dad pulled the SUV into the driveway, Mom came to the car with the police at her side.

“Mick, get out of the car please,” a black cop said, pointing his finger at me.

As I got out of the SUV, I thought how this must be what a car accident is like: everything happening so fast, and yet you can see everything, take in every detail. I noticed a mole on the white cop's neck and a small scar on the forehead of the black cop. I smelled the Kool smoke surrounding my mother, tasted the donuts from that morning on the back of my teeth, and felt the moisture of the sweat coming from my father's forehead. And I heard every vowel sound of every syllable of every word the white cop spoke when he said, “Michael Salisbury, you're under arrest for the murder of Edward Shreve.”

· · ·

All the way to the police station, I didn't speak a word. I just sat in the back of the car. I kept my head down and tried not to look into the rearview mirror at ex-Dad's SUV trailing behind us. Mom had stayed behind with cops who were
searching the house. My eyes searched the car's floor for a sharp object, not to cut my handcuffed wrists, but to sever my vocal cords.

From the police car, everything happened just like I'd seen on TV: photos, fingerprinting, body searches. From the booking office, I went not to jail but to a holding cell in the courthouse. The room was purgatory: not heaven, not hell, just a place to await my fate. Finally, the door opened and I was taken to another room. There my parents were standing with a guy in a suit whom I didn't know. My parents played their roles perfectly: Mom was worried; ex-Dad was angry.

“Michael, my name is David Richards. The court's appointed me to represent you in this matter.” The guy stuck out his hand, but I couldn't move a muscle for fear that one muscle could move another and then another, and then my mouth would move. I did not speak or shake.

“In a little while, you're going to go before a judge,” Richards said. “You're going to be charged with the murder of Mr. Shreve. This is a serious offense. Mick, do you understand that? They have just enough evidence to arrest you, maybe even to hold you, but not to convict.”

I didn't even blink until Richards looked away and asked my parents to leave us alone.

“You've got to tell me what happened,” Richards said, gesturing for me to sit at the table as he sat down next to me. “I can't defend you unless I know what happened. Tell me who this man is, what your connection to him is, and what you did. I need to know the whole story.”

I nodded, then cracked my knuckles, but said nothing.

“Mick, this isn't the trial. It's only an arraignment, but it's important. It will determine if you go free today, or if you'll be detained until the next hearing. So, you've got to talk to me.”

Nothing.

“I'm going to plead you not guilty,” he said. “I've briefly talked to the DA and with what they have, I don't know how they got this far even to arrest you, but the system doesn't work in your favor. I'm going to try to get the charges dropped at this hearing. If not, they can hold you for a few days while we argue that if the case goes on, it should be tried in juvenile court.”

My eyes must have given away that I felt like he was speaking some other language.

“All they can do right now is place you with the victim. They arrested you on that, but mainly to get your fingerprints and match them with some evidence at the scene,” Richards said.

“What evidence?” I finally broke my silence.

“A lighter. Do you own a lighter, Mick? Bone colored?” he asked.

I could lie, but I knew from watching TV shows that once you got caught in lies, you were toast. The lawyer said he was on my side, but the only thing on my side was my silence.

“I had a lighter. I lost it.”

“Okay, how did it get next to the dead man?” Richards asked.

I shrugged.

“Mick, if I'm going to defend you, you need to be honest with me.”

“I don't know, okay?” I said, then crossed my arms.

“They also think they have a murder weapon, a brick found near the body,” Richards said. I closed my eyes so I wouldn't give away anything. Maybe an eyelash flutter, but nothing else.

“Will they find your fingerprints there?” Richards asked me, to no response. “You need to tell me right now about what happened on that night. I'm not saying you have to talk to the cops, not yet, anyway, but I'm going to tell your parents they need to get a new lawyer if I can't get some cooperation from you. Mick, this is your last chance to let me help you save yourself.”

“Go ahead.” I could barely talk: all my energy was focused on not speaking.

“Don't do this to yourself or your family,” Richards said as he rose from the table. He adjusted his dark blue tie, ran his fingers through his black, gelled hair, and then leaned into me.

I stared at the floor, looking for cracks in the concrete.

“Last chance. You tell me the truth, then I can defend you,” Richards said, then bounced his hands off the table. I wanted to tell Richards, but if I told one person, he might tell another. I couldn't afford one crack in the pavement of silence: one crack leads to another, then another.

“I didn't do anything,” I said.

“Listen, Mick, this is the most important thing for you
to know,” Richards said, then sat back down. He grabbed me by the shoulders, then forced my chin up to look at him. “There's guilt, there's innocence, and there's what they can prove. That's all I care about: what they can prove. They have their version of the truth. I need your version of it so I can defend you.”

My head was spinning in fifty directions by Richards's words smashing against my promise to Aaron, to Brody, but mostly to myself. “I've got nothing to say,” I mumbled.

“Fine, I'll tell your father. He won't be happy,” he said as he left the room.

I wanted to say,
Like I care
, but I let it go. I sat alone in the room for a few moments, cracking my knuckles, looking at the ugly gray walls that seemed to be inching closer.

“Mister, you knock this off right now!” ex-Dad shouted. The door was not shut behind him by the time the sentence was finished. “You'd better start talking, right now, or else.”

“Or else what?” I looked down at the table, but felt like I was standing on it. I wanted to say,
How does it feel to want something and not be able to get it? I've wanted you to be there for me, to be a father, but you wouldn't do it, you selfish bastard. Now, you want something from me. All my life you've had it over me, now I've finally got something over you. I've got my secret
.

“What did you say to me?” He was right in my face. The bulging veins of his neck seemed to be touching the tiny, weak yet growing, hairs on my chin.

“Or else what?” I repeated. “There's nothing you can do to me.”

“This is serious, Mick, very serious.”

“You can't hit me, you can't ground me, and you can't leave me,” I proclaimed.

“I should let you rot in here,” he shot back. “I'm trying to help you, son.”

Try harder
, I wanted to reply, maybe shout, but instead, he pulled out the chair across from me. The scraping of the chair legs on the floor sounded like paper being torn.

“Mick, how did this happen?” His voice was softer now.

“I don't want to—”

“No, not that, this, between us.” Ex-Dad sounded lost. “Why are you so angry at me?”

I wanted to shout,
The fact that you have to ask me is all the answer you should need!

“I'll make you a deal, Mick.”

“What?”

“I'll tell you what you want to hear—what we talked about this afternoon—if you tell me what happened. You don't have to tell the lawyer, the cops, or even your mother. It will be a secret just between us,” he said.

“Between us?”

“I'm sorry, Mick.” Ex-Dad spoke like a first-grader stumbling over a new vocabulary word. “I'm sorry I haven't been a better father. But most of all …”

My father let it dangle in the airless room for just a moment.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you this sooner,” he continued, as his words bounced off each other but failed to hit the target of responsibility. “It's hard for me to admit it, to face it.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked, knowing I didn't need to explain the pronoun.

“Because, because, Mick, I was selfish. There, I said it, are you happy?”

“Why?”

“Why was I selfish?” Ex-Dad seemed confused. “I don't know, I can't explain.”

“I know,” I mumbled through the smile I was trying to cover up.

“How do you know?” ex-Dad said.

I was thinking about Brody's and Aaron's dads as well. “Because you were weak,” I said, sighed, then put my head facedown on the table. I pretended to hear the molecules of the wood bouncing against each other rather than ex-Dad's grinding teeth and choked-back sighs. I didn't have a watch and there was no clock in the room, but I guessed it was ten minutes before he spoke again.

“Okay, son, now it's your turn,” ex-Dad said, each word measured like a precious metal.

I chewed my tongue as the different versions of events flashed like lightning behind my eyes.

“Mick, be a man, keep your promise,” Ex-Dad said, but I wanted him to add,
Mick, be a better man than me and keep your promise
.

“Okay, but, Dad, this is between us, right?” Ex-Dad extended his hand and I shook it. “We decided not to go to the football game. We were hanging around the Big K. This homeless guy was bothering us. He asked me for a light, and I handed him my lighter. He ran off with it.”

“So you had nothing to do with this?” Ex-Dad spoke the question as a statement of fact.

I nodded with closed and hidden eyes, then asked, “Do you have to tell the lawyer?”

“I'm going to tell him only that you told me you're innocent and that should be enough for him.” Ex-Dad had a proud sound in his voice that I'd never really heard before.

“Okay, just tell him I'm innocent. This is just a mistake,” I said, still without making eye contact.

“A mistake.” Ex-Dad repeated the magic words and then opened the door to leave.

After a few minutes, the lawyer came back into the room and spoke. “It's time.”

A cop entered the room. Like kids in costumes marching down the street on Halloween, my lawyer, my parents, the cop, and I walked down a beige hall toward the courtroom. When the courtroom door opened, my senses slowed down again to take it all in. I stared at Aaron and Brody, who were already seated, along with men I guessed were their lawyers, before the white-haired judge. I wasn't given a chance to say anything to Brody and Aaron, but as our lawyers entered our not-guilty pleas, we looked at each other, then nodded. As we were led out, I stared at Brody and at Aaron; I knew no matter what—come hell or high water—none of us would be the first to talk.

Thursday, November 18

What would you do?

If I tell on my friends, then I won't go to prison, but how could I live with myself? Your friends are all you have, especially when your family has let you down. They don't lecture you or judge you or ground you or make you feel bad like your parents or teachers do. They're your escape from all that. If you don't have friends, then you don't have any escape. But if I don't tell, then maybe I will go to prison, another place without escape. If none of us tells, maybe we'll all go free; if one of us tells, then that one goes free and the others stay behind bars. I don't know what Brody is saying, what Aaron is saying. I don't know what they're going to do, so how can I know what to do? What would you do?

“It's really simple, kid,” the investigator barks at me from across the table. He's trying to scare me. “The one who talks is the one who walks. So, I'll ask you the same thing I did when you came in here four days ago. What happened on November fifth?”

I'm trapped in an impossible situation. He's asking questions but I've got no answers I can give—yet there's so much I want to say. My mind is a mess, littered with fear of the future, thoughts of the past, and one nagging question: how did my fifteen years of life lead me to staring death—in the form of a bloody dead body—in the face?