Shock Point (3 page)

The next few pages were written in Rick’s distinctive handwriting, which slanted to the left, sharp narrow letters, all upper-case.

Her eye was drawn to an entry dated October 3. “Has been responding well to Socom. Moods more stable. Mother reports he is more obedient.” She turned the pages, looked at the last entry.

“Patient claims that he can become a bird, and has flown over his school. Last Socom injection ten days ago. Drug’s side effects are worrisome.”

Cassie looked at the date. October 29, three days before Darren died. She remembered because Darren had killed himself the day after Halloween. She wasn’t sure what the entry meant. If Socom was so good, why had Rick been worried about Darren being on it?

On a hunch, she looked more closely at the names in the filing cabinets. Two more of them sounded familiar. Ben Tranbarger had gone to Cassie’s high school, too, but had been a senior. Carmen Hernandez had dropped out in ninth grade. Ben had drunk silver cleaner; Carmen stabbed herself in the abdomen. The newspaper interviewed experts who cautioned that media attention could prompt copycat suicides. One story said that after Ben killed himself, his mom found a clipping about Darren’s death on top of his dresser.

Maybe it was copycatting. Or maybe it was only a coincidence. Crazy people went to therapy, at least that was how it was supposed to work. Even so, doctors couldn’t fix everything.

But when Cassie opened the two files, she saw that both Ben and Carmen had been on Socom. And just like in Darren’s file, Rick had notes about how they were starting to become delusional—and that he was taking them off Socom.

Cassie needed to show these files to someone. But if she took them and he found out—well, she didn’t even want to think about how angry her stepfather would be. If only Rick had a photocopier!

Then Cassie thought of her digital camera, the one Rick had bought her to try to soften the move. She had already had a camera, a Minolta her father had given her for her fourteenth birthday. The new camera had intrigued her, even if it seemed too easy. No film to buy, no f-stops to fiddle with. “Just point and shoot,” Rick had told her.

She looked at her watch. 8:44. How long did she have until they came back from Baskin-Robbins? She ran upstairs and snatched up the camera from her desk.

As she steadily turned the pages and pressed the camera’s button, Cassie tried to reason with herself. Minor was a small town. Rick had been one of just two therapists who specialized in adolescents. It probably was just a coincidence that he had been the one who had treated these three teenagers.

She jumped when she heard the garage door whine. Cassie wasn’t done, but she hurriedly closed the files, slid them back in the right places, turned off the light, and slipped out of the office. By the time her mom and Rick came in, Cassie was coming down the stairs, as if she had been in her room all along.

But at three o’clock in the morning, panic jolted her awake. Had she remembered to turn off Rick’s computer?

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Cassie repeated, putting her plan into motion.

Leaning forward, JJ got what looked like a broken-off car antenna from the floor by his feet. He turned and poked it through the bars. Cassie flinched as far back as she could. JJ’s laugh was a bray. He prodded the white five-gallon plastic bucket closer to her.

“Use that.”

She recoiled. There was no way she was even pulling her pants down in front of these guys, let alone peeing. Then she realized there was no way she could—and that maybe her idea would still work.

“How am I even supposed to get my pants down with my hands cuffed?”

JJ’s sneer turned into a leer. “Stop the van, Marty, and let me get in back with her.”

“Nuh-uh.” Marty shook his head. “I’m not letting you handle the merchandise.”

Cassie said in a meek voice, “Can’t we stop at a rest area or something? I promise I won’t run away.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Marty said with something like a laugh. “I don’t think so. You put up a pretty good fight when we grabbed you.”

Cassie kept her eyes on the mat. For the first time she noticed the rusty-brown stains. She couldn’t let herself think about what they might be. Instead, she concentrated on looking broken. “That’s when I thought you were kidnappers. Now that I know this was my parents’ idea, what good would it do? If I get away, they’ll just send me back. My mom made it pretty clear that she doesn’t”—the words stuck in her throat, and Cassie had to clear it—“that they don’t want me.” She looked at JJ with her chin tilted down and her eyes wide, the classic submissive pose they had learned about in biology. Dogs did it, chimps did it, even fashion models did it.

JJ was going for it, too, Cassie could tell. But then Marty shot down the idea. “Every girl we get is a lying skank, you know that, JJ. Remember the last one? I’m not losing my job over this.”

Cassie realized she didn’t need to get out of the van to be alone. All she needed was them
out
of the van. “Can’t you just pull over on the side of the road and give me some privacy? I’ll pee in the bucket if that’s what you want, but I won’t do it in front of you. I don’t think I could even if I tried. Then, afterward, you could dump the bucket. You don’t want to smell pee the whole trip, anyway.”

There was a long silence. JJ watched Marty, so Cassie did, too. It was clearly his decision.

He scratched his belly. “All right. But not until after dark. Then I’ll stop on a side road. And afterward,
you
empty the bucket. And if you can’t wait that long, then you’re going to have to pee your pants.”

“I can wait,” Cassie assured him. “Thank you. I really, really appreciate it.” Cassie settled back to wait and wiggle her fingers. When the time came, she would have only a few seconds to act. She didn’t want to think about what they would do to her if her plan failed.

The next day, Cassie only went through the motions in her classes, paying just enough attention to keep from getting called on. She kept thinking about Rick’s computer. When she had tiptoed down the stairs in the middle of the night, the computer had been dark. But had she left it that way—or had her stepfather discovered it was on and turned it off himself? When everyone passed forward their papers in history, she didn’t even care she had nothing.

What could she do, she kept asking herself. Who could she tell? There were kids she said hi to, even people she sat with at lunch. But this called for more than that. In biology, they watched a film about cell division, but hardly anyone, including Cassie, paid attention. The guy next to her was reading a magazine article called “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 6: The Spine-Tingling Sequel.” The guy on the other side was drawing a picture of Mr. Meiner being shot in the back with an arrow. Only Thatcher, who sat in front of Cassie, seemed to have his eyes on the screen.

After class was over, Cassie hurried up to him, catching him just outside the door as he swung his backpack on one shoulder.

“Can I talk to you?” Unconsciously Cassie stood close, kept her voice low. He ducked his head to hear her. His breath smelled like coffee.

Thatcher looked curious. “Sure, what about?”

“I need your advice. It’s really complicated. But nothing to do with school. And not here. Someplace more private.”

He hesitated, then said, “We could go to my house after school. There’s no one home until six or so.”

This was taking their acquaintance forward one huge step. But where else could she turn? “Okay.” Cassie nodded uncertainly and looked up at Thatcher. His eyes were a pale blue that was almost gray. She realized how close they were standing and took a step back.

“Meet me out front after seventh period, and we can walk to my house.”

“All right. And, um, thanks.”

Cassie ducked into the bathroom, took the little cell phone out of her pocket, and dialed. Her mom answered on the third ring.

“Hi, Mom. Um, I forgot to tell you, but we’re having a meeting about the yearbook after school. So I won’t be home until dinnertime.” As Cassie spoke, she looked at herself in the mirror, seeing herself as if she were a stranger. Who was this too-tall girl with black curly hair, the one wearing the vintage black thrift store shirtdress, the black fishnets, and the pink Chuck Taylor All-Stars?

“That’s great, honey. Maybe you can make some friends there.”

“Mom!” Her mom’s worries made Cassie feel pathetic. A friendless loser.

“Oh, you know what I mean, honey. You’ve just seemed so down lately. I know how hard it’s been moving here.” Her mom sighed. “Will you need me to come pick you up?”

Cassie had a moment of panic. She certainly couldn’t have her mom pick her up at Thatcher’s house, but she also realized she had no idea how far away he lived. “No, that’s okay. I’m going to walk home with somebody.”

Another sigh. “Call me if you change your mind.”

After school, Cassie found Thatcher waiting across the street. He was smoking a cigarette, and had a skateboard tucked under one arm. Cassie walked over to him, and without speaking they fell into step. Cassie wondered if anyone was watching them, two losers walking off together. Then she wondered why she cared.

He held the cigarette out to her. She took a quick drag. She didn’t really like to smoke—she just liked feeling like an outlaw for a second. That, and the look on Rick’s face if she passed him in the hall and he caught the faint scent. It was so easy to bug him that sometimes Cassie surrendered to temptation.

“Do your folks care about you smoking?” she asked as she handed the cigarette back.

He shrugged. “These are my mom’s cigarettes. I try not to smoke too much. For one thing, it’s expensive. And before you say it, I know smoking causes cancer, and that it’s ironic,” he stressed the word
ironic,
“that we both smoke when my sister died of cancer. But after my sister got sick, my mom started smoking again, because of all the stress. Plus there’s a lot of time to kill when someone’s at the hospital. But my mom’s going to a hypnotist next week, and if it works, I guess I won’t be smoking anymore, either.” He took one last drag on his cigarette and ground it out beneath his Adidas with the laces tied under the tongue. “So, what’s up?”

Cassie took a deep breath. “Okay. My stepfather, Rick, is a therapist. He specializes in adolescents who need behavior modification.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know, kids who skip school or start getting bad grades, who drink, who use drugs, who shoplift, who”—she was about to say “have sex,” but that would be just too embarrassing—“who do other stuff.”

“So he—what? Fixes them by talking to them?”

Cassie shrugged. “I thought that at first, but it seems like he just gives most of them drugs. He’s been testing this one drug, Socom. That’s how he and my mom met—he hired her to be his study coordinator. They only got married a few months ago.”

“Socom? I’ve never heard of it.” They were walking about three feet apart, taking turns glancing at one another.

“That’s because it’s not on the market yet. It’s supposed to help kids concentrate in school, have a better attitude, and stop acting out.”

“So it’s like Ritalin, Prozac, and a mother’s prayers combined?”

“Kind of, I guess. Rick says it makes you compliant.”

“Compliant!” Thatcher stopped and stared at her. “That sounds heinous! You’d better not tell my mom about it or she’ll have me on it in a minute.” But he smiled as he said it, so Cassie was pretty sure he was joking. “Do you really think it could be that easy? Just give everyone a pill and they won’t do bad stuff?”

“Rick says it works. He thought it was so great that he bought into the start-up company that makes the stuff. That’s partly why we moved up here—to meet more investors. It’s being submitted to the FDA. Rick thinks first-year sales would be over ten million dollars.” They were walking past some run-down-looking apartments.

“Ten million dollars!” Thatcher said as he walked down a narrow driveway that ran next to an old, gray, two-story house. He let out a low whistle. “Some people would do almost anything for that kind of money.”

“Where are you taking me, anyway?” Cassie asked the two men.

“It’s great. You get to go to the beach, work on your tan!” JJ sniggered, then held up a brochure. She recognized the starfish on the front. It was the same brochure her mom had been holding when they grabbed her.

He opened it and slid it through the bars until it was next to her knee. She leaned closer to read it. It began with a series of questions.

 

 

She found herself shaking her head.

“What’s the matter?” JJ asked.

It was stupid to answer. Cassie knew she shouldn’t. Still, she couldn’t help it.

“I’m not like that. I don’t ever get in trouble. I’ve never gotten anything lower than a C, and I never skip class. And I don’t drink or anything like that.”