Cages

by Peg Kehret

  “You’ll have a great time, whether I’m there or not,” she said. “It’s a wonderful party idea.”

  “It won’t be the same without you.”

  By the next day, other people had received their invitations. Linda, who was in Kit’s and Tracy’s speech class, swooped in, waving her invitation like a signal flag.

  “I’ll be there,” she told Tracy. “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away. Ever since I saw the movie Around the World in Eighty Days, I’ve ached to go up in a hot air balloon.” She turned to Kit. “What are you going to wear that night?” she asked.

  Kit licked her lips, wondering what to say. “I—don’t know,” she said. If she told Linda that she wasn’t going on the balloon ride, Linda would want to know why. Kit could see that her secret would quickly become an even bigger problem than it already was if people knew she wasn’t going to Tracy’s balloon party. Linda assumed that Kit would be there. Everyone else would assume the same thing. And why not? She and Tracy were best friends. She had never missed one of Tracy’s birthday parties before.

  “Wear something cool,” Tracy said. “We were told it gets warm in the balloon from the gas jets. Bring a jacket, though, because by the time the picnic is over, it will probably be dark, and chilly.”

  “What if it rains?” Linda asked. “Will we still go?”

  “If it rains, or if it’s too windy, we have to postpone the balloon ride. We’ll still have the picnic, but it would be indoors, at my house.”

  Linda pressed the palms of her hands together, looked up, and closed her eyes. “Let us pray for sunshine,” she said.

  “I already am,” Tracy said.

  As Linda babbled about the balloon ride, Kit gave Tracy a grateful look. Tracy could have told Linda that Kit wasn’t going to the party. When she didn’t, Kit knew she wouldn’t tell anyone else, either. They wouldn’t know that Kit wasn’t coming until they were ready to launch the balloons. By then, everyone would be so excited, they might not even miss her. If they did, if anyone asked her the next day why she wasn’t there, she would say she got sick.

  Another lie, Kit thought. I’ll create a new secret to cover up the old one. She didn’t like to pretend she was going when she knew that she wasn’t, but she couldn’t think what else to do.

  As Linda and Tracy discussed how it might feel to go up in a balloon, Kit wondered if she should tell Tracy the truth. Maybe she owed Tracy that much. Tracy was loyal. That’s why Tracy hadn’t told Linda. Tracy realized how awkward it would be for Kit if everyone knew she wasn’t going to the party but wouldn’t say why. Gossip would fly faster than a spaceship.

  She could just imagine the speculation: Tracy and Kit had a terrible fight and Tracy didn’t invite Kit to her party. Or, Kit’s been grounded for a month and her parents aren’t letting her go to Tracy’s party. Then everyone would try to guess WHY Kit was grounded. Failing grades? Stayed out all night? Smoking? It would go on and on. She knew it and Tracy knew it, too. That’s why Tracy didn’t tell Linda.

  Tracy deserves to know why I can’t go, Kit thought. But if I tell her the truth—tell her that I stole a bracelet and have to appear before a court committee—will she still feel the same toward me? Will she still be loyal or will she be so shocked that she backs off from me?

  Once, when they were eight years old, Kit and Tracy had formed a secret club. They called it the TRIK CLUB, using the first two initials of their names, and their motto was: Be brave, be honest, be good. I messed up on all three counts, Kit thought.

  Tracy was the only person in the world who had always believed in Kit. Tracy always took Kit’s side. She still thought Kit was brave, honest, and good. How could Kit risk losing that?

  She said nothing.

  Secretly, she hoped it would rain on April 22. The balloon ride would get rescheduled and she would go and no one would be the wiser. Then she felt guilty for wanting rain to spoil Tracy’s party.

  The scene with Linda repeated itself with variations during the next two weeks because everyone who was going on the balloon ride thought Kit was going, too. It soon required no effort to pretend that she was.

  The more I lie, Kit thought, the easier it gets.

  Tracy had play rehearsal after school every day so they had less time together than usual. Kit thought it was just as well. She would be glad when April 22nd was over, for more reasons than one.

  The day finally arrived: sunny, clear, and still. A perfect day for a hot air balloon trip.

  After school, Tracy made a point of getting Kit alone for a moment. “If your plans change, even at the last minute,” she said, “you can still come. I didn’t invite anyone else to take your place, so there’s an extra space in one balloon.”

  “I won’t be there,” Kit said.

  Tracy said nothing.

  “I hope you have a great time tonight,” Kit said.

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  Not much chance of that, Kit thought. She was far more nervous about going before the court committee than she had ever been about anything in her life. The night before, she had dreamed about it—a weird, scary dream where a whole group of people pointed at her, shouting, “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!”

  When Kit got home from school, Dorothy had on her good suit. “You should wear a dress, too,” she told Kit. “First impressions are important.”

  Kit agreed.

  “I told your dad that we’re going to a meeting at school tonight. If he says anything to you, you’d better have the same story.”

  “All right.” It was a good excuse; Wayne never attended any of the school functions, even those where the parents were specifically invited. Still, Kit hated making up another story. All she’d done for the last two weeks was pretend. Her whole life was becoming one big lie.

  Well, she thought, it will soon be over. I’ve kept my secret and once I’ve faced the committee and paid my fine or whatever they tell me to do, that will be the end of it. No one I know will ever find out what happened.

  They had an early dinner but Kit had no appetite.

  Neither of them spoke during the drive to City Hall. They parked and walked past a bed of purple crocuses and yellow daffodils, up the steps to City Hall. Two flags flew at the top of a tall metal pole, causing a chain to clink rhythmically. It seemed to match the pounding of Kit’s heart.

  What would the committee do? Lecture her? Assess a big fine? Would she be put on probation and have to report weekly to a probation officer?

  They were early. Dorothy perched on one of the benches in the lobby but Kit was too nervous to sit. She looked at the framed pictures of the Mayor and the City Council members. She stood before the bulletin board and read all the notices: public hearings, where to donate blood, the Lion’s Club pancake breakfast. She saw a rack of bus schedules and a table with forms to fill out, to report an automobile accident.

  Dorothy took the letter from her purse and looked at it. “Upstairs,” she said. “We’re supposed to go to the second floor.”

  They climbed the stairs. A door at the top had a sign on it: Juvenile Court Diversion Committee.

  “What time is it?” Kit asked.

  “Seven twenty.”

  Ten more minutes. Kit felt perspiration under her arms. She hoped she wouldn’t ruin her good dress.

  There was a candy machine in the hall, plus a table and a few chairs. They sat down.

  Kit heard loud voices and a clatter of footsteps. Two boys, both about seventeen, ran up the stairs.

  “This is it,” the tall one said, as he pointed to the door. “The committee for rowdy delinquents.” Both boys laughed loudly.

  They went to the candy machine, inserted quarters, and bought candy bars. The tall boy threw his candy wrapper on the floor.

  “You coming in with me?” the short one asked.

  “They won’t let me. But there’s nothing to it. They’ll ask you to be a good little boy and you promise that you will and that’s it. When my brother got arrested, they . . .”
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br />   “Keith got arrested? What did he get arrested for?”

  “Murder.”

  “Murder?” The short boy looked dubious. “No way.”

  The tall boy laughed. “No kidding,” he said. “He was driving Dad’s boat and he ran over a girl who was swimming in the lake. Never saw her. Didn’t even know he hit her. That night, the cops came to our house. Somebody had reported the boat and Keith was accused of murder.”

  Both boys guffawed again. Kit knew they were acting smart partly because of her. She ignored them.

  “Only my brother could murder someone and not even know he did it!” The boys hooted louder.

  Beside her, Kit felt Dorothy cringe in disgust.

  Kit remembered Sergeant Adams saying, “We have to take you people somewhere.” If these two creeps were typical of the kids Sergeant Adams dealt with, Kit could understand why he hadn’t believed her that night.

  She wondered why the short boy had to appear before the committee. What had he done? His smartmouth friend obviously had been here before but the short one, despite his bravado, seemed apprehensive. He kept rubbing his fingers together and he didn’t finish his candy bar. Kit wondered where his parents were. Why did he have to bring his show-off friend with him, instead of his dad or mom?

  Kit knew how hard it was for Dorothy, who always denied that any problem existed, to admit that Kit had shoplifted. Yet Dorothy was there, by Kit’s side. “Thanks for coming with me,” she whispered.

  Just then the door opened. A man in dark coveralls and a girl in jeans came out. As they went down the stairs, Kit heard the man say, “I didn’t need this, you know. My boss asked me to stay late tonight. My first chance this month for overtime pay and I have to turn it down so I can go with my daughter, the thief, and get insulted by a bunch of . . .”

  A woman came out of the room. “Kit Hathaway?” she said.

  Kit stood.

  She and Dorothy entered the committee room. It was not a formal arrangement, like a courtroom. Instead, there were chairs in a circle, with two empty chairs for Kit and Dorothy.

  Kit started to follow Dorothy to their places. Then she saw the members of the committee.

  She stopped. In her worst fears of what would happen at this meeting, she never imagined anything this bad. Even her dream, with the crowd shouting, “Guilty!” was better than this.

  There, in the chair nearest the door, sat Miss Fenton.

  KIT wanted to run.

  Miss Fenton was on the committee. Kit’s favorite teacher would hear the whole story of how Kit tried to steal a bracelet in Pierre’s. How bright and talented would she think Kit was now?

  She couldn’t run. Sergeant Adams had said if she didn’t appear as scheduled, she would be arrested again. All she could do was go in and sit down. She would live through this. Somehow.

  She sat beside her mother, carefully avoiding Miss Fenton’s eyes.

  The other people introduced themselves as Mr. Cramer and Mrs. Phillips.

  Mrs. Phillips was the spokesperson for the group. First she read a long statement that explained how the committee works. It said Kit could have a lawyer if she wanted one and if she chose not to participate in this meeting, her case would go to court.

  Kit and Dorothy signed the paper, agreeing that they understood it.

  “Kit?” It was Miss Fenton. “Do you want me to excuse myself from your case? This hearing is confidential, of course. No committee member will discuss a case outside of this room, but since we know each other, you may ask to have someone else sit in my place. We can set a new time for you to appear.”

  “You know each other?” Dorothy said.

  “Miss Fenton is my speech teacher,” Kit said. She felt miserable. She didn’t want Miss Fenton on the committee because she didn’t want Miss Fenton to know about this. But since Miss Fenton obviously did know, there wasn’t much point in asking her to be replaced and postponing the whole mess any longer.

  “Let’s just go ahead,” Kit said.

  “We want you to understand that this is not a trial,” Mrs. Phillips said. “The question of guilt or innocence has already been settled. What we are concerned about here is why this happened and what we can do to keep it from happening again. We will be speaking with each of you privately. You first, Mrs. Gillette. Kit, you may wait outside.”

  Kit went back to the waiting area. Relieved that the rowdy boys were gone, she sank into a chair. I’ll never get to college, she thought. Miss Fenton wouldn’t tell anyone what Kit had done but she wouldn’t want Kit to win the scholarship now, either. Of all the people who might be on a court committee, why did it have to be her?

  Ten minutes later, Dorothy came out and said, “They want to talk to you now and I’m supposed to wait out here.”

  Kit returned to the committee.

  Miss Fenton spoke first. “Whatever you tell us here will not be repeated to anyone,” she said. “Not to your mother, not to anyone else.”

  “According to the police report,” Mr. Cramer said, “you were not on drugs and you have no previous record. You have never been in trouble at school, either. Is that right, Kit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you take the bracelet?”

  “I don’t know,” Kit said. “It was stupid.”

  “Suppose you tell us what else happened that day, before you got to Pierre’s.”

  “Everything went wrong. I decided to go to the mall and when I got there, I saw a girl I know from school. She’s always bragging and acting like a queen and she was there with her father and he was buying her anything she wanted. She asked me to help her choose which piece of jewelry she should get.”

  “Go on,” Mrs. Phillips said.

  “I looked at the trays of jewelry and I thought the one bracelet was really pretty.”

  “And that’s why you took it? Because you liked it?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I mean, it isn’t quite that simple. It was partly because I liked it but mostly it was because Marcia was the one who got the part I wanted in the school play, and then her father was there, smiling and buying her an expensive present and it made me lonesome for my own dad.”

  “Do you usually go to the mall alone?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you go that night?”

  “I just wanted to.”

  “Was there a problem at home?”

  Kit thought about Wayne. Should she tell these people about Wayne’s binges? What would it accomplish, except to make her mother miserable.

  “No,” Kit said. “There was no problem at home.”

  “You said earlier that everything had gone wrong that day. Can you be more specific? Exactly what went wrong?”

  Kit looked at Miss Fenton. She wished now that she had asked Miss Fenton to be replaced by someone she didn’t know. “I guess it started at school. I tried out for the spring play and I thought I had a good chance of getting the lead role. Instead, I didn’t get a part at all.”

  “What else went wrong?” Mr. Cramer said.

  “That’s all.”

  “According to our report, your mother asked you if you were trying to get back at your stepfather because of something to do with a glass,” Mr. Cramer said. “Tell us what happened with the glass.”

  Kit looked at the three adults. She knew she could easily win their sympathy if she told them that Wayne went on drunken binges and that he had thrown a glass against the refrigerator and ordered her to clean up the mess. If she also told them how he yelled at her, they’d really feel sorry for her.

  But she couldn’t do it. Don’t hang your dirty laundry in public. That’s what Grandma Hathaway always said. Kit knew these people were trying to help her, but she decided to protect Dorothy from prying eyes. Dorothy was here tonight; Kit had not had to come alone. Since Dorothy had kept Kit’s secret, the least Kit could do was return the favor.

  “There isn’t anything to tell,” she said. “Wayne accidentally broke a glass, that’s all.”

 
“That’s the whole story?” Mrs. Phillips said.

  “Yes.”

  The three committee members exchanged glances.

  “All right,” Mrs. Phillips said. “Let’s proceed.”

  “When the court committee is convinced that someone will not commit another crime,” Miss Fenton said, “we sometimes offer that person a contract.”

  “What kind of contract?”

  “A contract to work off your debt to society. For example, if we believe that you will not shoplift again, we might let you make amends in a way that will allow you to have your criminal record erased.”

  “How?” Kit said. “What would I have to do?”

  “You would agree to do community service for a nonprofit organization,” Mrs. Phillips said. “If you fulfill the agreement and if you have no other charges filed against you for two years, the charges of shoplifting would be dropped.”

  “Dropped?”

  “It would be dismissed entirely,” Mr. Cramer said. “The court would destroy all record of this offense.”

  “It would be as if you had never been caught shoplifting,” Mrs. Phillips said.

  It was almost too good to be true. All she had to do was work for some group and her record would be clean.

  “May I do that?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Yes.”

  “You may wait in the hall with your mother now,” Miss Fenton said. “We’ll call you both back in as soon as we decide how to proceed with your case.”

  Kit and Dorothy waited silently for the committee’s decision. From inside the room came the rapid clacking of a typewriter. Kit crossed her fingers.

  In a few minutes, Miss Fenton came to the door and asked them to come back in.

  Mrs. Phillips shuffled some papers on her desk. “We are prepared to offer you a contract, Kit,” she said. “You will do twenty hours of volunteer work for The Humane Society. Your work must be verified by a staff member. When you’ve completed that amount of time, the staff member will notify us. Two years from now, if you stay out of trouble, this charge will be dropped. Do you want to accept the contract?”