Shock Point (2 page)

Jackie sat back in her chair, shaking her head. “I just don’t think it’s natural to put Cassie on something to change her moods.”

“Natural?” Rick echoed. “What’s natural? If everything was natural, we would be naked, running around on our knuckles, and eating raw roots.” It was already clear that Rick wasn’t a big believer in nature. He had his hair colored at a salon, his teeth were dazzlingly white, and just last month he had undergone LASIK so that he could do away with his glasses. No matter what he did, though, Cassie thought he couldn’t hide the fact that he was old—at least fifty—and short. “Besides, Socom changes kids’ lives, Jackie. You’ve seen for yourself what a difference it makes.”

Her mom looked down at her plate. Her voice was soft. “You’re right. It did help them. But Cassie’s not really to the point that we need to put her on a drug.”

“But Socom’s not a drug. It’s an organically occurring peptide some people are deficient in. You wouldn’t deny a diabetic insulin just because it ‘wasn’t natural,’ would you?” He leaned forward, gesturing with his fork. “It’s the same with Socom. It’s not much different than a multivitamin.”

“But you told me there had been some problems with it.”

A frown crossed Rick’s face. “A few patients have been refractory, but we’re already working on fine-tuning that by taking out the right-handed molecules. And that issue only affects a tiny percentage. For everyone else, Socom is making a huge difference. Socom gives kids the piece they’re missing, Jackie. It makes them whole again.”

Her mom held firm. “Cassie’s just adjusting, that’s all. She doesn’t have the kinds of problems as the kids you see in your practice. It’s a big change for her—us getting married, and then moving to Portland, and the baby coming. Give her a little time and she’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

But after dinner Jackie came to Cassie’s room and begged her to try to be more cheerful around Rick. “I know it’s hard,” she said. With a sigh, she sat down on the edge of Cassie’s bed. There were dark circles under her eyes. The doctor had told her she had to take it easy. Otherwise the baby might come too early.

From the side, her mom looked misshapen—her breasts were swollen, her belly was swollen, and even her feet, tucked into stretchy black sandals, were swollen. Although they had never talked about the exact due date, it was clear to Cassie that Jackie must already have been pregnant when she and Rick got married.

“Rick really loves you, but because of his work, he jumps to conclusions. Every day he sees kids who use drugs, who get pregnant, who drop out of school—and he worries you could end up like them. He’s only trying to help.”

“But I’m not like that,” Cassie said. “You know that.”

Her mom sighed and ran her hands through her hair, tucking the strands of her bangs behind her ears. She had short dark curly hair, the same as Cassie’s. “But lately you seem to go out of your way to aggravate him. You’ve changed so much, Cassie. You never acted like this before.”

“That’s only because he’s always telling me stuff, but he never listens. I thought that was what therapists did—listen.”

Her mom toyed with the giant diamond ring on her left hand, turning it around so that it looked like a plain gold wedding band. “But you’re not helping, Cassie. The more you talk back, the more you roll your eyes or use that sarcastic tone of voice, the harder he comes down on you. And it just leaves me feeling stuck in the middle.”

“I’ll try,” Cassie told her mom. Even to her own ears, it didn’t sound convincing. She stayed in her room until Rick and Jackie went out for ice cream. Rick allowed Jackie a daily kid-size cone, as long as she otherwise stuck to the strict diet he had devised. As far as Rick was concerned, this baby was going to be perfect.

As soon as Cassie heard his BMW pull out of the garage, she went downstairs to the kitchen and turned on the computer. But instead of starting up, a question mark began to blink in the middle of the otherwise gray screen. Cassie didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be good. She shut the computer off and turned it on again. The same question mark appeared. The third time, the screen stayed black.

Great. Her history paper was due tomorrow, and here it was, 8:17 P.M., and she didn’t even have a way to start it. The library closed in less than an hour, and the last time she had been there, all the Internet terminals had been taken. Besides, Cassie only had an instructional license and couldn’t drive on her own.

She had figured she could cobble this paper together, do a keyword search on Google, snip a bit here, a bit there, and stitch it together with a few sentences of her own. Good enough for a C, maybe a B minus.

A year ago, she would have worked on the paper for weeks, would have gotten an A. But a year ago, her mother hadn’t been married to Rick, hadn’t even been dating him. A year ago, Dr. Rick Wheeler had been Jackie’s boss and Jackie certainly hadn’t been pregnant by him. Which was so gross. Her mom was thirty-nine, way too old to be having a baby.

Everything had changed, but as far as her mom was concerned, Cassie was still supposed to be the same quiet little girl who got straight A’s. And both Jackie and Rick would really be mad if Cassie got a D for turning the paper in late. Her stepfather had already had several talks with her about her lack of motivation.

Now, as Cassie stared at the blank computer screen, she thought about how one more bad grade might be all it took to get her mom to agree with Rick that she needed Socom to change her attitude and help her focus.

Cassie had better figure out a way to get this paper done, and fast. Should she call that guy, Thatcher Hedrick, from school? He had told her he worked part-time at a computer store.

She knew Thatcher a little better than most of the other kids because they had both spent a few hours after school each week working together on the yearbook. He looked kind of scary, with a pierced eyebrow and shoulder-length hair dyed dead black. But a few weeks ago he had told Cassie he wanted to be a doctor because his older sister had died of cancer. He had said it offhand, like it was no big deal, but his eyes had blinked several times.

Maybe Thatcher could fix the computer. Except what would her mom and Rick think if they came home and found her alone with a boy—even if it was just in the kitchen? Besides, there wasn’t time to call him.

Rick’s computer.
Cassie looked over her shoulder, as if someone was watching her. Which was silly. She was completely alone. But Rick had emphasized that no one was ever to go into his office. All his patient records were kept there, and he said the government had new, strict laws about confidentiality.

Cassie looked at the digital clock on the stainless steel range. She had maybe a half hour before they would be home. She went down the hall, took a deep breath, and opened the door to Rick’s office.

She wasn’t going to let them hear her cry. Cassie promised herself that as she sat on the cold rubber mat in the back of the van. The one whose nose she had broken—at least she hoped she had broken it—was half turned in his seat, smirking at her through the bars. To gain privacy, she dropped her chin onto her chest, let her bangs cover her eyes, and turned as far away from him as the handcuffs would allow.

Her chest ached as if someone had torn out her heart. She still couldn’t believe her mother had done this. For seven years, Cassie and Jackie had been on their own. “It’s just us against the world, kid,” her mom used to say. After Cassie’s dad had moved out to be with his new girlfriend (who later became his wife), Cassie had brought all her stuffed animals to her parents’ queen-size bed. For the next year, she slept next to her mother. During the day, they never talked about the nights, about how her mom had night-mares and Cassie would wake her up because she was screaming. Or worse, sobbing so hard, it sounded like something was ripping inside her.

“Better stop your bawling and get used to the new reality,” the guy with the bloody nose said now. Cassie had thought she was keeping her tears a secret, but he must have seen them anyway. Out of the corner of her eye, Cassie watched as he pinched the end of his nose and then examined his fingertips. He looked over at her again, his mouth twisted and ugly. “You really messed up my nose. I can’t breathe right anymore.”

“Oh, c’mon, JJ, your nose has been broken before,” the fat one said. He had tattoos all up and down his arms, colorful ones that must have taken hours and hours. “You’re just mad that this time it’s a girl.”

“Yeah, and now she’s crying just like a girl.” JJ turned back to her. “Don’t you get it? Your parents don’t want you. Looks like your mom has a new baby on the way—you know how much people like babies. A lot more than they do kids who do drugs.”

“Rick’s not my father. And I don’t do drugs.” It was stupid to appeal to them. Still, Cassie couldn’t help herself.

JJ just laughed. “Oh, right. That’s a new one. Marty and I will have to remember that one.”

Marty acted as if he hadn’t heard Cassie at all. “Once you start taking drugs, you lose all self-respect. Next thing you know, you’re tricking yourself on the street, driving off with some man old enough to be your daddy.”

Cassie dropped her head again. How
could
her mom have abandoned her like this? How could her mom have believed Rick? Jackie must know that Cassie didn’t use drugs.

But Rick had so many horror stories. About teens gone bad, runaways who didn’t come back, kids who tried heroin once and were addicts for life, who started hanging out with the wrong friends and somehow ended up living at the bus station. Rick must have scared Jackie into doing this. He’d brought them to Portland, cut them off from all their old friends, and then had gone to work on Jackie so it could be just the two of them. Them and the baby in her mom’s belly.

And now it seemed he had backed up his lies by planting drugs in Cassie’s room.

She had to get free and find someone who would listen to her. Cassie shifted on the floor, which wasn’t softened at all by the rubber mat. When she did, she became aware of something hard in the right pocket of her jeans. Her cell phone! It was one of the tiniest models, bought by her mom as a major bribe for moving to Portland.

The two guys hadn’t had time to search her before they hustled her into the van. But what good would the phone do her? With her hands behind her back, she couldn’t even get it out of her pocket.

And who would Cassie call, anyway? It would take too long to explain things to her dad. Thatcher knew what was happening, so he would catch on a lot quicker, but how much could a sixteen-year-old do? The best bet would be 9-1-1, Cassie decided.

But first, Cassie had to figure out how to get her hands on the phone and a little bit of privacy. And soon, before they got to where they were going. Then the chances of them searching her would go way up. The thought of their hands on her made Cassie feel like throwing up.

She swallowed hard, hearing her mom’s voice in her head.
Don’t go borrowing trouble. One thing at a time.
And the first thing was the phone. She shifted so that her hands were hidden from view, then pretended to stretch her shoulders. Instead she tested the handcuffs by quickly jerking her wrists apart. They didn’t budge.

Ignoring the shooting pains that resulted, Cassie wiggled her sluggish fingers. Ideally, she needed a place where she could be by herself, unobserved, for a few minutes. But how was she going to manage that?

Then she had an idea.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Cassie said.

Everything in Rick’s office was so neat—she would have to be sure not to leave any trace. While Cassie waited for the computer to boot, she spun around in his leather chair. Only the best for Rick. She looked at his filing cabinets and thought about how he had begun to treat her like a potential patient. She wouldn’t put it past him to have started a file on
her.

Opening the top filing cabinet, Cassie looked at the tabs.
Adams, Elizabeth. Bowers, Jeremy. Candlewick, Samantha.
She recognized several of the names as being kids from Minor, but she didn’t really know them. They were all older or younger than Cassie. Some of them were already out of high school. She was about to close the filing cabinet and go to the next one, where
Streng, Cassie,
might be. Then she saw a name that made her stop.

Cartright, Darren.
She hadn’t realized Darren had been Rick’s patient. Of course, it wasn’t like Rick was going to talk about it, especially after what had happened.

Darren had had black-framed glasses and thick brown hair that stuck up like an animal’s pelt. Tall enough to play basketball, he was too awkward to dribble a ball, let alone make a basket. He had been in honors English and math with Cassie, but they had never really talked. Later, after everything happened, she realized he didn’t really have any friends. Nobody had paid much attention to him until he leapt off the tallest building in Minor. The mailman who saw him said Darren seemed to think he could fly. He was still flapping his arms when the pavement rose up to meet him.

In the weeks just before his death, Darren had changed. In class, he started whispering to himself, so low that only the people nearest him could hear it. Cassie had asked him “What?” a couple of times, but when it was clear he hadn’t been addressing her, she tried to block it out.

Death made Darren someone special, romantic. A lot of people went to his funeral, cried and hung on to each other. Candles appeared on the sidewalk—still stained with his blood—and bouquets wrapped in clear plastic, and sometimes an open can of beer, although Cassie had never heard that Darren drank. People talked about him far more than they ever had when he was alive.

Cassie surrendered to temptation and slipped out Darren’s file. It was surprisingly thin. On top was a sheet labeled
Socom Informed Consent.
So Darren had been on Socom? Obviously, it hadn’t worked.