Breaking Point

by Alex Flinn

  “The great man himself.”

  “But I thought…” Suddenly, my whole stomach felt weak. “You said you were scared of him. That he wasn’t really your dad, and you had to kill yourself to please him.”

  “You believed that?” Charlie laughed. “I was screwing with you, Einstein. Maybe I should stop calling you that, because you aren’t very smart, really. Of course Big Chuck’s my real father.”

  I stared at him, unable to respond. Then, I realized I didn’t need to. He wouldn’t have listened anyway. I stood, walked to the door, opened it, and waited for him to leave. He didn’t argue, just slipped past me and pressed the button for the elevator.

  But there was one thing more I needed to know before he left forever.

  “Who killed the dog, Charlie?”

  “St. John did.” Without blinking.

  I stared. St. John. I guess I’d never know for sure who sent the note. Maybe even St. John himself.

  “Did you … make him?”

  “I just told you, Paul. I can’t make anyone do anything.”

  I nodded, and the elevator door shut.

  I sank to the floor and sat there a long time just staring at the door where Charlie had gone. I wondered who I was. And who I’d become.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I’d been in juvenile detention a week. It felt like longer, though, because I was awake all the time. The nights were loud. The days were louder, banging, screaming, people shouting stuff at you. And sometimes, noises I didn’t recognize. Those were the worst. The first night, the guy in the next bunk, a skinny kid called Hemp, told me he’d been raped when he first got there. “They look for a new piece of ass,” he said. I hoped he was messing with me, but I wasn’t taking any chances. So, after that, I didn’t sleep, ever. I watched my back. Finally, I was glad to be big.

  They’d picked me up after searching Charlie’s computer. They’d found the Internet files encrypted in the hard drive. The next day, an officer was at my door, reading me my rights. Then, I was in detention. When Mom visited, she told me they’d picked Charlie up too, but I hadn’t seen him. I didn’t want to see him.

  “Richmond!” A guard yelled my name when I was on line for breakfast.

  He was short, so I looked down. It was a thin line with guards. Act too respectful, people bust your ass. I’d learned that from experience. But you didn’t want them on your bad side, either. “Yeah?” I strived for the right tone.

  He scowled. “Your lawyer’s here.”

  “I don’t have a lawyer, sir.”

  “You saying I’m seeing things?” he demanded, while, around me, guys imitated my sir.

  “No, sir.” I followed him out.

  He took me to a lounge. Orange plastic furniture with stained foam rubber sticking out everywhere. Mom was there with a man I didn’t recognize. She embraced me. It was a gesture I’d have refused a week before. But now, I held my face stiff to keep from bawling, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She smelled clean, like the soap from our bathroom.

  “Paul, this is Mr. Rossi,” Mom said. “He’ll be representing you.”

  “How can we afford this?”

  “Your father paid,” Mom said. “He’s quite upset about the scandal. It’s in all the papers. But I hired the lawyer. I did everything myself.” She nodded, proud of herself. I gaped. How had she gotten it together enough to do this for me? The answer hit me hard: She loved me.

  Mom had called Dad after my confession. He hadn’t spoken to me, but I’d heard him yelling through the phone. Now, I pictured the headline: LIEUTENANT COLONEL’S SON PLANTS BOMB or whatever. I almost smiled. But I didn’t. Mr. Rossi stared at me. I shuffled my feet, sticking my hand out as an afterthought.

  “We’ll need to work on your eye contact,” he said. And I heard the echo, Big Chuck, yelling at Charlie, Eye contact! “You don’t look at people, they think you’re guilty.”

  “I am guilty,” I said.

  “Want to stay here, then?” he asked.

  Down the hall, someone was getting beat up. I smelled Mom’s Camay soap again and swallowed. “No.”

  “Then, I don’t need to hear that.” He didn’t sit on the plastic sofa, just perched on the arm. Didn’t want to dirty his pants. I sat. The orange medical-scrub-type outfit I wore was nothing I planned to keep.

  “But I confessed,” I said.

  “We’ll talk about that confession.”

  I looked at Mom. To my surprise, she sat calm, not pulling her hairs at all. My stomach felt empty from the breakfast I’d missed. I couldn’t have eaten. My throat was too full. I looked at Mom again. I managed, “Am I getting out of here? Can I go home?”

  Mr. Rossi nodded. “For now, I think so. Later…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Like I said, we’ll discuss your confession.”

  “Tell him what happened.” Mom said.

  “Your friend’s story doesn’t agree with yours,” Rossi said. I think he snorted when he said friend. “Says he first heard of the bomb the day it was found.”

  “What would you expect him to say?” Mom asked. And I was glad she was talking, because I couldn’t.

  Rossi nodded. “Problem is, the police are believing him.”

  I remembered what Charlie had said about the criminal profile. I fit it. Charlie didn’t. Why would the golden child build a bomb? Yet he had. I’d just followed, stupidly followed.

  I found my voice. “But his computer? The stuff was on his computer.”

  “Your friend claims you used his computer while he practiced tennis with his father. He says you were at his house alone a whole afternoon that week.”

  The bastard. He really had thought of everything. “Sure, I did homework on his computer. We were best friends. But that doesn’t mean—”

  “I’m not asking what it means. I’m telling you what Charlie said. He also claims he was home asleep the night you say you planted the bomb. His father agrees you never stayed over.”

  I was speechless again, but not surprised. I’d always known Charlie could do what he wanted, even make lies true. I’d even admired him for it. Mom moved closer to me, her hand on my shoulder. I said, “I was in the main building when the bomb was set to go off. I was right there. I’d have been killed, and Charlie was safe in a portable across campus. How much sense does that make to the police?”

  Rossi looked down. “Yes. The police questioned him on that point as well.”

  “So?”

  He rested his hand on the dirty sofa back, finding the words. “Charlie told them you were suicidal. He said a mutual friend had recently taken his life, and Charlie was trying to prevent your following suit. That he’s sorry he didn’t alert the school. But, of course, he never imagined you’d try to take others with you.”

  I yanked a hair from my own scalp. It hurt good.

  Still, Rossi got me out of juvenile. Charlie was at the arraignment. He wore the same orange uniform I did, but in it, he looked small. He looked appropriately somber, too. Poor little Charlie, haunted by events beyond his control. But once, when no one else saw, I looked at him. And he smiled.

  Rossi nudged me. “Stand straight!” he hissed.

  When I looked again, Charlie had turned away. Big Chuck reached to pat his shoulder.

  But he was in the hallway after. With his parents, glad he’d get to go home. I was going home too, but with a special ankle bracelet, a device that went off if I left our apartment or even stepped onto the balcony. I’d heard comedians joke about those things. Now, I was the joke. When we passed in the hall, Charlie leaned to whisper to his mother. She shrugged, and Charlie said, “Paul?”

  I turned.

  “I want you to know, I forgive you,” Charlie said.

  I didn’t, couldn’t speak.

  Charlie looked at his mother, then made eye contact with me. “Sure. I mean, I don’t know why you’ve chosen to victimize me, why you’re saying these things.” Charlie managed a tortured half-smile. “I thought we were friends, best friends. That’s
why I tried to help you. But the Bible says to forgive, and I do. I want you to get the help you need, Paul. And I want you to know there’s no hard feelings.”

  I looked him in the eye and said the one thing I thought could hurt him:

  “No, Charlie. There are no feelings at all.”

  Behind me, I felt Rossi, pushing me, grabbing my arm. We walked away, me feeling the ankle bracelet thumping on my leg.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  They say I got off easy. My classmates’ parents and even people I’d never met wrote letters to the Miami Herald demanding I be tried as an adult. Let the punishment fit the crime—which sounded like one of Reverend Phelps’s sermons. After all, Kip Kinkel got more than a hundred years for those school murders in Oregon. The boys in Colorado got worse. They’re dead. But no one died at Gate, and in the end, Charlie’s mother’s influence won out. I’m sure somewhere, Charlie’s bragging about it, but I’m not there to hear.

  No one understood why Mrs. Good helped me after what I’d done to Charlie. After all, I could have ruined Charlie’s life or even gotten him kicked off the tennis team. Yet, she used her influence with the prosecutor to work a deal for me. “It was the Christian thing to do,” she told reporters outside the courthouse. “Paul Richmond hasn’t had the advantages my son has. I’ve always taught Charlie to pity those less fortunate. I’ve taught him never to judge. Perhaps that explains their friendship.”

  But I know why she did it.

  She came to see me after the arraignment. I was doing a jigsaw puzzle. Mom had bought me a couple dozen for Christmas. I’d already done them right side up. Now, I was doing them upside down—easy if you have all day. The court had arranged for me to take classes by closed-circuit television each morning, but it was two o’clock, and there was nothing on television but soaps. There was a knock on the door. I opened it.

  “What are you doing here?” I stepped toward her. Her hand stopped me, reminding me of the ankle bracelet on my leg. I backed away before I set the alarm off.

  “You’re alone?” When I nodded, she walked past me into the room.

  I followed, repeating, “Why are you here?”

  “I can help you.” I stared at her. She had blond hair and Charlie’s eyes. “But if you tell anyone I was here, I’ll deny it. And my help will go away.”

  That was like Charlie too. “Why would you help me?”

  “Because you were my son’s friend. Because—”

  “Because you know he’s lying?”

  “What I know doesn’t matter. Just listen to me.”

  I nodded.

  “I have friends, powerful friends. They’ll speak with the prosecutor’s office. They’ll do what I ask. And you…” She stopped to meet my eyes. “You’ll plead guilty and go to juvenile. Out at eighteen. The records can be sealed, and it will be like it never happened.”

  Except I’d lose two years of my life. But I said, “What about Charlie?”

  “My son doesn’t wish to testify against a friend. He’d prefer to forget the incident.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet he would.”

  The building was quiet. No one was there during the day. Everyone was at school, or working. Everyone except the losers with the ankle bracelets, which amounted to me. Had Mrs. Good timed her visit so we’d be alone? Of course she had.

  “What if I don’t plead guilty?” I asked.

  “You’ll be tried as an adult, tried for attempted murder. When convicted, your life will be destroyed. Forever.”

  “And Charlie? You’re just letting Charlie get away with it?” I couldn’t quite believe that.

  “You’re the one who confessed, Paul. A crime has been committed, and someone will pay. That someone will be you.” She glanced at her watch, then stood. “I must go.” She walked past me to the door, holding up her hand to remind me not to cross the line.

  “Mrs. Good?”

  She stopped, hand poised near the elevator button, so like Charlie when he’d stood there weeks before. I remembered what he’d told me about Big Chuck then. The lies, the lies that were somehow true in Charlie’s dark, twisted world. And I knew there was something I had to say—even if she wouldn’t listen.

  “I know what I did was wrong, really wrong. I probably deserve to go to Juvenile for it. I understand that now. But Charlie…” I don’t even know why I bothered to say it. “You have to know Charlie was involved in this. It wasn’t just me.”

  She tilted her head to one side, and I saw a flash of something—pity? No. Knowledge—on her face. She knew all about Charlie. She knew, but she wasn’t going to do a thing. That was why Charlie was the way he was.

  She smiled. “You’ve learned a hard lesson, haven’t you, Paul?”

  She took her hand away from the elevator button, deciding to use the stairs instead. I watched her from inside the apartment, standing there until long after she’d gone.

  EPILOGUE

  Classmates’ Lives Take Very Different Courses

  * * *

  KEY BISCAYNE, FLORIDA—A local boy, Charlie Good Jr., shocked crowds at the Ericsson Open yesterday when he beat reigning Ericsson champion Peter Hofstedt 6–4, 7–6, 4–6, 6–3, in the semifinal round. He will meet John Gable in the finals tomorrow.

  Good, 19, is a recent graduate of Gate-Brickell Christian School. This is the first time an unseeded player has ever reached the finals.

  “It just shows that, with hard work and perseverance, dreams can come true,” said Good’s father, Chuck Good, wiping a tear from his eye.

  In an ironic twist, one of Charlie’s former classmates will be free to join in the rejoicing. Paul Richmond, nicknamed the “Brickell Bomber” for his unsuccessful attempt to blow up the exclusive school two years ago, was released from juvenile detention yesterday. It was his eighteenth birthday.

  Followers of the case will recall rumors, spread by Richmond’s defense counsel, that Good was involved in the bombing attempt. These rumors were vigorously denied by the Good family.

  When asked to comment on his former classmate’s athletic success, Richmond said he bore Good no ill will and was planning for his own future. “I realize now that I was responsible for my own actions. I hope that, in time, Charlie will learn the same. But I can’t worry about him anymore.”

  Good had no comment on Richmond’s release.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For a talkative person like me, novel writing can never be a solitary pursuit. I would like to thank the people who listened to me babble about this book for the past year:

  Joyce Sweeney, who read this manuscript twice, did an incredible amount of hand holding, and generally let me know I was on the right track;

  My readers, Joan Mazza, Felizon Vidad, and Laurie Friedman, as well as the members of Joyce Sweeney’s Thursday class;

  Casey Burchby helped with so many details, and my agent, George Nicholson, found this novel the right home with the perfect editor.

  A good editor suggests the change you’ve been trying to avoid and makes you glad to make them. Antonia Markiet is such an editor, and I feel lucky to know her. This book would never have happened but for Toni’s recognition of this story’s potential and her excellent suggestions to make this book fulfill that potential.

  EXCERPT FROM BEWITCHING

  1

  My mother, in her sweet way, always reminded me that Daddy wasn’t my real father. “Be on your best behavior, Emma,” she’d said since I was old enough to remember. “He could ditch us anytime.” Sooo comforting. I don’t know why she said those things. Maybe she was jealous. True, Daddy and I looked nothing alike. He was tall and slim, blond and hazel-eyed, while I was short and clumsy with frizzy hair the color of rats. Yet on days like this one, as we sat across from each other at Swenson’s Ice Cream, it seemed impossible that I wasn’t Daddy’s and Daddy wasn’t mine. We had been together since I was three, after all; ten years since he and Mother had married. If I’d known my other father, the father that had left, I didn’t remember him. This
was the only dad I had.

  It had been his idea to spend the day together, “Daddy-Emma time,” without even Mother. I’d found out just the night before. He’d come home from work and told me he’d gotten tickets to the national tour of Wicked. It had been sold out except for nosebleed top balcony seats. At least, that’s what Mother had said when I’d begged to go. But Daddy told me one of his clients had given him second-row seats and he was taking me as a special surprise.

  I’d breathed a secret sigh of relief. He and Mother had been arguing all week behind closed doors, alternately whispering and yelling, the sound muffled by television shows I knew neither of them watched. I’d sat in the family room, worrying in front of endless Full House reruns. Maybe Mother was right and they were getting a divorce. Maybe I’d end up like Kathleen, this girl in my class who’d had to be a flower girl in her own mother’s wedding. Maybe I’d lose Daddy. Occasionally, I’d hear my own name. Mother would say something like, “What about Emma?” and Daddy would reply, “What about Emma? I’m thinking of Emma.” Thursday night, Daddy had said, “I won’t discuss this anymore, Andrea!” and the house had gone silent.

  But now, I understood. The whispered conversations had been about this. Mother was obviously angry because she’d wanted to go to the play herself, but Daddy was taking me. Me!

  Our seats had been so close I could see the actors spit when they sang, and the play had been perfect, perfect for me because the ugly girl, the weird girl, the girl no one understood was the heroine. I identified with Elphaba, the outcast, except for the part about magic powers. Perfect, also, because Daddy had taken me, which meant he got it. He understood me as my mother never could.

  After the matinee, we went for dinner, and even though I’d ordered an adult cheeseburger instead of the kids’ meal Mother would have pressured me to get in the name of “portion control,” Daddy let me get a Gold Rush Sundae too. “Not much of a meal without ice cream,” he’d said, and I agreed. I tried to eat slowly, like a lady, and also to make the day last longer. Plus, I had on a new dress, BCBG, and I didn’t want to stain it. Dad said, “What do you want to do now?”