Strays (4 page)

My meditative bliss eventually wore off, and, after a crappy meal consisting of mushy beans, corn, and turkey, a guard came to my cell.

“Moody, it's time to go.”

I followed the guard to the registration officer from earlier; she handed me a sealed envelope containing my gold necklace and pocket contents.

“Dad knows best. Just remember that,” she offered.

Not my dad
, I wanted to say, but I just nodded and took my things. Dad was talking to the female officer as I slowly approached them.

“She's a good kid,” he was saying. “I just don't understand how something like this could have happened.”

“Make sure you both show up to her court date. Judges like to see that incarcerated teens have family support.”

Great.
Incarcerated teen.
My new label.

Dad and I walked to the car in silence. I had to break the tension.

“Dad.” It came out quieter than I had intended.

When he turned to face me, he didn't even make eye contact and instead looked beyond me to the cars in the lot.

“What in the world did you do?” he asked.

“Nothing. I mean, I was pissed off. I just wrote down—”

He interrupted me. “I had to walk out on a quarterly meeting with corporate. Do you know how embarrassing that was? How it could affect my promotion? I had to meet the cops at our house. They tore the place apart!”

“My stuff?” I could feel the blood rush to my cheeks as I thought of strangers looking through my belongings.

“Our stuff, but yeah, mostly yours. They confiscated your computer. And took some journals.”

My old diaries had been lined up in chronological order under the bed.

“They read them?” I asked, panicked at the thought of more of my private thoughts becoming public.

We had reached our car.

“Well, I don't think they plan on using them as doorstops,” said Dad.

“That's bull—” I began.

“Watch your language,” Dad snapped. He unlocked the door, then got into the car and slammed the door shut. I sat in the backseat, as I had in the police car.

After staring at the steering wheel for what seemed like ages, he lifted his head and finally spoke. “What's gotten into you lately, Iris? First the grades. Now death threats and physical assault?”

I felt the tears well up in the corners of my eyes. I tried to form my thoughts into articulate sentences before speaking. I was about to tell him everything—lay it all on the line: how the breakup affected me, how I'd been feeling so isolated and depressed. How it felt as though no one wanted to hear anything negative come out of me so I just kept it all inside. But before I could get the words out, Dad spoke again.

“I don't have time for this, Iris. Things are happening for me at work. Big things. I'm up for that promotion. I just really need to focus right now.”

I felt so stupid for assuming I was going to have a heart-to-heart with a man who was so self-consumed he didn't possess the ability to see the person sitting two feet away from him. Fighting a burning feeling inside my throat, I said the words he wanted to hear.

“I'm sorry. It won't happen again.”

At home, we didn't say anything to each other for the rest of the evening, each of us holed up in our respective ends of the house.

*

By morning, the stress from the day before had gathered between my shoulders and at the base of my neck. On the table was a note from Dad, scribbled on a paper towel:
Making up for lost time at work. Stay out of trouble
.

I made a fresh pot of coffee, poured myself a bowl of cereal, and sat at the kitchen table. At least with my computer confiscated, I didn't have to deal with any of the girls' IMs. And Dad had stripped me of all cell phone privileges, so I could avoid their texts as well. God knows what rumors had circulated about me yesterday. The only thing I had going for me was that school was out for the summer—so if anyone wanted to talk about me, they'd have to do so off campus.

When the house phone started ringing, I thought it best to ignore it and just let the machine pick up.

“Iris, this is Mrs. Harrison. This is a very uncomfortable call for me to make because I know how much Conor and Hunter love you, but in light of recent events, I'm going to have to cancel my babysitting request for this summer.”

In the background, I could hear Conor calling my name before Mrs. Harrison hung up.

My stomach cramped up. It was one thing to let myself down, but now I'd disappointed these two boys.

I wondered how she had gotten wind of my situation and then remembered that the whole reason I had gotten the job in the first place was because my PE teacher, Coach Lutz, knew Mrs. Harrison because they lived on the same street. He must have called her as soon as word got out at school.

My dream summer was turning into anything but.

D
ad thought he was punishing me by grounding me for an entire week. Little did he know the last thing I wanted to do was interact with anyone. I was happy to stay on the couch, consume mass quantities of the free juice that he brought home (beet-carrot-apple was my favorite), watch my nature shows, and listen to my music. My two current favorite shows were
The Underwater World
and
Abe Lives with Apes
. Living in the ocean, living in the jungle—I'd take either of those habitats over my own.

About a week after
the incident
, I went back to the police station to collect my confiscated computer and journals. Dad had picked up my totaled bike and had given me his to borrow, but it was a guy's bike, which meant that sitting on it for long periods of time became quite uncomfortable because the saddle was too narrow.

“Did you find lots of incriminating evidence?” I asked the officer who handed my laptop back to me.

“You'll find out soon enough,” she said, referring to my upcoming court date.

I was appointed a lawyer (Nathaniel Spencer), and Dad gave me my cell phone back and let me leave the house only to meet with Mr. Spencer to discuss my case. Mr. Spencer said the best we could do was defend my actions and hope for the best. He said it all depended upon who the judge was the day of my trial and what kind of mood he or she was in.

Great.

The police must have been sorely disappointed by my hard drive. No bomb-making recipes, no plans to follow through on my threats. Just a lot of bookmarked nature websites and a collection of e-mails from Ashley wondering what in the world was going on, each subsequent e-mail decreasing in friendliness. In her first e-mail sent after my arrest, she sympathetically checked in about what she had heard at school. In the second, she mentioned she'd be out of town (San Francisco) and that I should call her when she got back. By the third e-mail she laid out everything that bugged her about me and wrote that maybe we should take the summer off as friends. I had managed to completely alienate my closest friend just by being this version of myself. How could I blame her for criticizing me?

But I was still too hurt to respond, and I convinced myself that I didn't need her anyway.

The television would become my new best friend.

But then, toward the end of the week, I tortured myself by going online and looking at photos of the girls in San Francisco. There was stupid Lydia Cordova posing with my friends on the Golden Gate Bridge, in front of Coit Tower, and in Golden Gate Park.

I had been replaced.

*

Dad was standing in the kitchen hovering next to the coffee machine on the day of my trial. “So what are you doing with yourself today?” Dad acted like he had genuinely forgotten.

“I have my trial this afternoon, remember? You're supposed to be there.”

Dad's big promotion was coming up soon. I figured once he got it, things would calm down again. He'd be in his big new office. Making more money. I only had to deal with this distracted Dad for twenty-one more days.

“Yeah, kid.” His eyes darted back and forth, searching his porous memory for anything to trigger this promise he'd made to be at my trial.

“You
have
to be there,” I said.

“What time?” he asked.

“Two-thirty,” I lied, hoping that faking an earlier start time would get him there by three.

I watched as he entered
be at trial
into his phone calendar. Sometimes I wanted to grab his phone and hurl it into the ocean.

“You have to put it into your phone to remember?”

“Iris, you know how busy things are for me right now. I can't keep it all straight. If it's not in my phone, it doesn't exist.”

I poured myself the last of the coffee.

“Iris, no more coffee.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Two-thirty at the courthouse,” I said as Dad dashed out the door to work.

I took a seat and gave myself a moment to breathe. I'd been dreading this day for two weeks, but at the same time, I was looking forward to getting it over with. I just wanted to fast-forward through time to my life post-sentencing—whatever my fate may be.

I had only one outfit appropriate to wear in court—the dress I'd worn to my mother's funeral. Even though it was two years old, it still fit; the rayon stretched as my body grew. When I first bought the dress in a secondhand store on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, I imagined all of the fun parties I'd get to wear it to. It was stylish and graceful but also rebellious, with an aquamarine sheen shimmering underneath the black tulle.

When my mom died, it was the only dress I owned elegant enough to wear to a funeral, and after that it became my depression dress. If I was wearing it, things were bad. I wore it to Mom's memorial a year after her death, I wore it the day we moved to Santa Cruz, and now I was wearing it to receive my court sentencing.

Dad had cleaned out our home in Topanga pretty quickly and thoroughly after Mom died. Her style wasn't simpatico with mine, so I let go of a lot of her stuff—Dad encouraged its rapid elimination. But I did keep a bunch of her jewelry, which I housed in a keepsake box at the back of my underwear drawer. I riffled through my meager collection and put on two small gold hoop earrings and remembered what it was like to be close to my mom, who always smelled of a mix of citrus and cinnamon.

*

I'm not a bad person.
I tried to talk myself up as I parked and locked my bike in front of the courthouse. My heart raced.

The phrase got stuck in my head like the chorus of a catchy song.

Even though I wanted to run in the opposite direction, I forced my body forward up the courthouse steps. Mr. Spencer was waiting for me in the shade of a cypress tree, finishing a sandwich. A piece of bologna fell out of the side of his mouth. He wiped his hands on his pants and extended his arm to shake my hand. Now there was a smear of mustard across his pant leg. This was the mess of a guy who was responsible for my future? I reluctantly reached out my hand.

He might have been a disaster, but at least he was willing to help me out.

For a moment, I felt the tears well up in my eyes. I couldn't start crying. Not now. If I started, I didn't know that I would be able to stop. At least when Dad arrived, I could look to him for support if things got rough in there.

“Are you ready?” Mr. Spencer asked.

I shrugged. I didn't think anyone could ever really be ready for something like this.

“One sec,” I said, pulling out my phone. I texted Dad:
Are you almost here?

There was no response. I needed him to show up. Maybe he was already inside.

My lawyer led me up the concrete stairs and held the door open for me. Inside, we placed all metal objects—our keys, change, and cell phones—in a plastic container and walked through the metal detector. I followed him down a long hallway and into the courtroom, where I was about to learn my fate.

Court was already in session when we entered.

The room felt suffocating, the heat oppressive as bodies crammed together on the benches in the back, a combination of kids and their lawyers. The city hadn't invested in air-conditioning. Voices reverberated throughout the room. Mr. Spencer and I took our places on a bench alongside a few other people, and I scanned the room for Dad.

Still not here.

I checked the wall clock. He was officially late for the fake time I had given him, but not yet late for my actual court time.

A long-haired teenager sat next to his lawyer at a table across from the judge, who was surprisingly younger than I imagined she would be and, if not for the whole baggy robe, looked like a relatively nice person. Her hair was so curly, it looked like a wig. She was wearing a lace collar underneath her judge's robe. I wondered if she was considered a fashionista among her peers.

“Scott Haydon, how do you plead?”

The boy looked at his lawyer.

“Not guilty,” the boy said with a slight smirk. The lawyer looked disappointed.

“Let's take a look at your paperwork.” The judge riffled through a file. “Mr. Haydon, you are aware that vandalism is a crime you've committed not once, not twice, but three times.”

“Yes, Your Honor.” Scott Haydon knew how to address her. He'd obviously been through this process before.

“And you do realize that the fine people of Santa Cruz are the ones who have to pay to clean up the messes you've been leaving around town.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh, Your Honor,” she corrected.

I looked over at Mr. Spencer. He was shaking his head.

“What's wrong?” I whispered.

“She's in a bad mood. It doesn't bode well for us.”

I knew there was no real
us
.
I
was the only one she was targeting. Nothing worse than the judge in charge of your fate being cranky.

The judge continued, “What I see here is a boy—even though you probably think you're a man—perhaps with some artistic talent. But all the talent in the world doesn't give you the right to break the law, Mr. Haydon. City walls are not your canvas.” She paused, waiting for his response.

“Yeah, but they don't sell blank walls at the local art store,
Your Honor.
”

A few people in the room laughed.

“Is this some kind of a joke to you?” asked the judge.

His lawyer whispered something in his ear, which made him quickly lean into the microphone in front of him and say, “Sorry, Your Honor.”

The judge continued, “This court has given you multiple chances to get your act together, and yet here you are again in the same place you were four months ago and two months before that. We are tired of spending money on you, Mr. Haydon. Perhaps a little time in juvenile hall will set you straight once and for all. My ruling is twenty-eight days in a detention center, and then we can revisit regarding parole.”

She hit her gavel on the table, announcing the case's conclusion.

The boy's smirk disappeared, and he now looked broken, like this wasn't the result he was expecting. His mother and father made their way toward him. His dad put his hand on his shoulder, and his mom cried and hugged him.

This was his fate even with the “parental support” that was apparently so important. Dad still hadn't arrived. What would my fate be? Would I end up in jail, too? My face flushed, and I urgently needed to go to the bathroom.

“Case Number 4758392,” said the bailiff.

Mr. Spencer tapped me on the shoulder. “That's you.”

My bladder would have to wait.

The bailiff continued: “The State versus Iris Moody.”

I followed my lawyer to the table, had a seat, and awaited my punishment.

The judge spread open my file in front of her. It was visibly slimmer than Scott Haydon's. This had to be a good thing.

“Ms. Moody, how do you plead?”

“Guilty.” It was the first time I'd said the word out loud. Tears welled up again, and my nose started to tingle. If only Dad were here, just maybe I could pull it together.
Act like an adult for once
, a voice inside said.

I scanned the room. All eyes were on me. Dad was nowhere to be seen, and I couldn't hold it in anymore. I started to sob out of control, as though the entire Pacific Ocean swelled from within.

My lawyer looked panicked; he didn't know what to do with me. The bailiff walked over with a big box of tissues and placed it in front of me. I took one and brought it to my face.

“I can see this has deeply affected you,” said the judge. “But dramatic blubbering is not going to change the way I handle things today.”

This shut me up. Not because I had been crying to get sympathy but because now I was terrified of what was about to come out of her mouth.

“Death threats, even in a moment of rage, are not something we take lightly here. But since this is your first offense, and I hope your last, I am sentencing you to one hundred and twenty hours of community service. And to make sure you really get to the root of what's making you so angry, you'll need to see a state-certified therapist until I deem otherwise.” She whacked her gavel on the table.

It was over. Before I knew what was happening, I was following Mr. Spencer out of the room, and another nervous girl and her lawyer were replacing us at the table.

“Well, that went well,” Mr. Spencer said.

“Is one hundred and twenty hours good?” It sounded like a lot, but what did I know? Maybe two thousand was the norm.

“She's a tough judge. Wasn't supposed to be her today, but Judge Chen was out sick. Six weeks isn't so bad…”

Six weeks? I quickly started doing the math in my head: four hours a day, twenty hours a week. Oh my God. It was six weeks.

“But that's my whole summer!”

“Could have been worse.”

I didn't share Mr. Spencer's perspective. Not only had I lost my job, but now the remainder of my summer would be spent dealing with community service, therapists, and summer school. If the judge thought that this whole “plan” would make me less angry, she was sorely mistaken.

“What do we do next?” I asked.

“We can just step into my office, and the city will fax over the community service options. The good news is you'll get a list to choose from, so you can pick what interests you.”

“What kinds of things do they have on there?”

“Well, the cream of the crop is dog rehabilitation, but it's always the first to go, especially over the summer—I'm sorry to say you don't have a chance of getting that assignment.”

I didn't bother to share my severe aversion to dogs with Mr. Spencer.

“There's trash pickup, and things like city beautification, which includes gardening and painting over graffiti.”

I imagined myself scrubbing Scott Haydon's art off the walls and his friends walking by and whispering, like they were out to get revenge on the person who erased his creations. I would not be choosing graffiti cleanup.