Juvie

by Steve Watkins

  Monday she took me to see a lawyer, somebody she knew from back in high school. His name was Vance. He looked more like a biker than a lawyer, with his long hair and handlebar mustache. I wondered what was up with Mom and guys with mustaches. Dad never had a mustache.

  “Lemme cut right to the chase here,” Vance said after I told him about the events leading up to the arrest. I left out the parts about me drinking a beer, and Dreadlocks hitting on me, and Carla hooking up with Scuzzy and initiating the whole thing. I also left out the part about me wondering what Carla knew.

  “You’ve never been in any kind of trouble,” he said, “plus you’re an upstanding girl, play on the basketball team, hold down a job, make good grades, all that kind of stuff. What that likely means is you get probation. Community service. So you spend your Saturdays working at the food bank or whatever. And you have early curfew. That sort of thing.”

  Mom relaxed back in her chair.

  “But I can still play basketball, right?” I asked. “And I can travel with the team to away games?”

  Vance tugged on his mustache. “Depends. We’ll have to wait and see on that. It’s still gonna be a serious charge. That was a lot of pot.”

  He spoke in a growly biker voice that had me looking around his small, cluttered office for a motorcycle helmet or a leather jacket hanging up somewhere or sitting on top of one of his piles of law books. He didn’t have either, though — or any shelves, which seemed odd for a lawyer.

  “There’s another possibility,” he added. “Which is you cooperate with the police and give them the names of the guys. That’s something you have that could help us here.”

  I looked down at the floor. My foot seemed to have started this nervous tapping and I had a hard time making it stop.

  “What?” Mom demanded. “Out with it.”

  I said I didn’t know their names. Mom practically shot up out of her chair.

  “You went off in the car with two men, two older men, two drug dealers, and you didn’t even know their names?”

  I couldn’t look at her. “Yes, ma’am. It was stupid. I know.”

  Mom fumed. “Stupid doesn’t begin to describe it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said again.

  Vance didn’t say anything. I was sure he’d heard this sort of thing before, and probably a lot worse.

  “What about Carla?” Mom asked him.

  He looked at her for a minute, then out the window at the downtown traffic. The building he was in, and his office, were so close to the street that he could practically reach out the window and touch the passing cars.

  “She’s got two strikes on her, right?”

  Mom nodded. “Possession when she was eighteen. And shoplifting last year. She’s on probation.”

  “I hate to say it — and she needs to see her own lawyer, Gretchen, so you can’t take what I tell you as anything but my opinion — but if she’s involved in this in any way, she’s looking at doing time.”

  “What kind of time?”

  He drummed his fingers on the window. Somebody out on the sidewalk waved up to him, and he waved back.

  “Real time. For starters, there’s the time they suspended on her before.”

  “It was a year,” Mom said.

  “A year, then,” Vance said. “Plus at least the minimum mandatory sentence for felony distribution, which is three years last time I checked.”

  Mom’s face was pale. “And when was that?”

  Vance studied the surface of his desk. “I do criminal law, which is mostly drug cases. So that was, like, last week.”

  “So four years?” Mom asked, her whole body sagging.

  “Minimum,” Vance said.

  I stayed home the rest of the day but still didn’t have my cell phone. Kevin could have left me a hundred messages by then, but Mom wouldn’t let me check. She wouldn’t let me go to basketball practice, either, but at least let me use her phone to call Coach and tell him I was sick.

  I was in my room doing homework I was supposed to have done over the weekend when Carla came in. Lulu must have been in the living room with Mom. I knew Carla had gone to court that afternoon for the arraignment, but she hadn’t called to say what happened.

  She collapsed on my bed next to me. When we were younger and she did that, I was supposed to rub her head, brush her hair, braid it, that sort of thing. Play massage parlor and beauty salon.

  She smelled like cigarettes and restaurant grease. She must have gone to work after court. I scooted away.

  “So how did it go?”

  Carla sighed. “They read the charges. The judge continued the recognizance bond and they assigned me a court-appointed lawyer. That was about it.”

  She started in on the apologies again, and I understood why Mom had told me she didn’t want to hear it, because I didn’t, either. Those “I’m sorry’s” were nails on a chalkboard.

  “Never mind about all that,” I snapped. “Just tell me one thing. Did you know?”

  Carla stiffened. “About the drugs? God, no. Of course not. I was so out of it. I must have had four or five beers, and some bong hits. And you know what a lightweight I am —”

  “Whatever,” I interrupted. “Just tell me what you want from me. I have work to do.”

  Carla got that hurt expression she is so good at. It didn’t work, though. I had a feeling it might never work on me again.

  “OK,” she said. “I deserve that. I know I do.” She pulled a flattened pack of cigarettes out of the back pocket of her jeans. She threw a couple of broken cigarettes in the trash can — which I would have to empty before Mom saw — and tried to straighten and reshape one that was still intact.

  “You mind?” she asked.

  I did mind but didn’t want a fight. “Whatever.”

  She lifted the window and then the screen, leaning outside to light her cigarette and holding it out there when she wasn’t puffing on it. She made sure to blow her smoke outside, too. If I wasn’t suspicious of her before, I sure as hell was now. It wasn’t at all like Carla to be thoughtful like that.

  “So?” I asked.

  “So,” she said. “So I’m going to jail.” She stopped to wipe her eyes, but the tears were already pouring down her cheeks, leaving tracks in her makeup.

  “God damn it, Carla.” I yanked a tissue out of the box beside my bed and handed it to her. “What about Lulu?”

  “Either Mom takes her in or Social Services takes her.” She shook her head, took another long, wet drag on her cigarette, and blew it out.

  “Of course Mom will take her,” I said, my insides going cold at the alternative.

  Carla nodded and flicked ash out the window. “That’s what she said.”

  We were quiet for a long time. I couldn’t believe this was happening — not to us. Not to me.

  Then Carla sniffled. “She’ll be seven when I get out, you know. I won’t be there when she starts kindergarten. I’ll miss all those birthdays and Christmases. And it’s going to kill Mom. How can she handle two jobs and taking care of Lulu all at the same time?” Now she was sobbing. “And it’s not fair to you, either. I know that. I feel terrible.” She couldn’t talk anymore from crying so hard.

  I handed her a fistful of tissues this time. “There’s nothing else they can do? To keep you out of jail, I mean?”

  She shook her head again. Then she stared at the lit end of her cigarette. “Well, the lawyer did say there was one other option.”

  “What?” I asked, wondering why she was being so cagey. “Carla, whatever it is, you have to do it. Lulu needs you.”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “I mean, it’s not something I can do.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette and blew out a stream of words along with her smoke. “Look, I’m not asking you to do this, OK? I’m just telling you what the lawyer said. He’s, like, a court-appointed lawyer, so he probably doesn’t give a shit — about me or my case or anything. But it’s just what he told me.”

  “Which was what?
” I was back to being suspicious.

  “Which was you confess. You say the guys put you up to it, and I didn’t have anything to do with anything. I just happened to be in the car. And since you’re a juvenile, and since you haven’t been in trouble before …”

  I stood up so fast, it made me dizzy. “You want me to what? Are you out of your stupid mind? I’ll have a record! I’ll go to juvie!”

  “Not for a first offense,” she said weakly. “Anyway, I’m not asking it. I’m just telling you what the lawyer said. That’s all.” She flicked her cigarette out the window and fished another from her flattened pack.

  My mind was reeling, trying to make sense of everything, of just what, exactly, Carla was asking me to do. “Carla,” I said, grabbing her sleeve, making her drop the cigarettes. “Did you know what was going on? That they had drugs? That we were their cover or whatever?”

  Carla shook her head. “No. Maybe. I mean, I was drunk! They just said they needed a ride to the 7-Eleven. They wanted to get more beer… .”

  “And?” I pressed.

  “And they had to get something to a guy and it wouldn’t take but a minute. But that was all. They didn’t say anything about drugs, I promise. I’m pretty sure they didn’t. I thought we were just doing them a favor.”

  She stopped to light her second cigarette, but I grabbed her hand, peeled her fingers off the lighter, and threw it out the window.

  “What’d you do that for?” she asked.

  “Just get out, Carla.”

  “But what about —?”

  “Leave,” I said. “Now.”

  She dragged herself off the bed. “Don’t tell Mom.”

  I felt dazed, as if I was drunk, or maybe high. “Don’t tell her what? That you’re a world-class screwup? That I’m such an idiot? She already knows. Believe me.”

  “Any of it,” Carla said. “Don’t tell her any of it. Not yet. She’s so mad at me, she won’t speak to me.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  She shook her head and turned to go, but stopped at the door. “Think about it? Please? I can’t lose Lulu. I’ll promise you anything.”

  “Great,” I said. “Promise me you’ll make all this go away. Promise me you’ll make it so none of it ever happened in the first place.”

  She retreated down the hallway. I slammed the door behind her.

  Kevin came over that night, but Mom wouldn’t let me see him. He drove off but just parked his car down the road and walked back and tapped on my bedroom window. It was a little after ten. I told him to wait in his car and I’d be there as soon as Mom went to bed.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were making out in his backseat on a dark side street a block from my house. We barely even said hello when I got there, just kind of jumped on each other. I hadn’t realized I wanted him that bad. Or maybe I just wanted anything that would take my mind off what Carla wanted me to do.

  Kevin pulled my T-shirt over my head and was tugging at my jeans before I finally stopped him — stopped both of us. The windows were so steamy, we couldn’t see outside, which was no surprise, as hard as we were breathing.

  “Wow,” Kevin said, brushing his blond hair out of his sweaty face. “Where did that come from?”

  I shrugged, pulled my jeans back up, and retrieved my shirt from the backseat floor. “I must have missed you, I guess,” I said.

  He grinned, grabbed the T-shirt away, and pressed himself back on top of me. I was tempted to pull his shirt off as well, but I stopped us again, struggling to sit back up.

  “I have to get back to the house,” I said.

  Kevin pouted. Actually pouted. “How come? You’re already here. I mean look at us.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but Mom could wake up or something. She’d freak out if she saw I was gone.”

  Kevin crossed his arms and kept pouting until I leaned in and kissed him long and hard. “Next time,” I said. “I have to go. I’ll get in trouble.”

  He threw up his hands, the way you would in a game to convince a referee you hadn’t actually fouled somebody you were pretty sure you had — you were just hoping to get away with it. Sometimes it worked. Usually it didn’t.

  “So how come you’ve been so weird, Sadie? You hardly talked to me at the car wash, you didn’t answer my messages, you don’t want to, you know, keep going tonight. It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

  “I got in trouble, OK?” I snapped. “I went with Carla to this party, and Mom busted me. She put me on restrictions and took my phone. It’s like I’m in middle school.” I pulled my shirt on. “There. Are you satisfied?”

  I still couldn’t tell him the rest. I was hoping that maybe there was a way to get out of all this without the whole world finding out. Especially Kevin.

  “Were you doing drugs?” he asked quietly. Kevin hated drugs. He had an uncle who died from an overdose, or a car crash, or something having to do with drugs.

  “No way,” I said. “There were a few people smoking pot and stuff, but I just had beer. And barely any of that. Even when I played beer pong.”

  “Hunh,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘Hunh’?” I said, annoyed again. “It was just stupid beer pong.”

  Kevin got all quiet. “You want me to drive you home?” he asked through his clenched jaw, which was stupid. We were just a block from my house.

  “Don’t be that way,” I said, hating how quickly things had blown up. One minute we were practically doing it in the backseat of his car, now this. “I’m just saying I don’t need you to give me a hard time, too. I’m getting enough of that from my mom.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Whatever.” He was back to pouting. I hated it when he did that. It made me angry, but it also made me feel guilty for disappointing him, for speaking harshly, for hurting his feelings. I wished I could just explain about everything: the 7-Eleven, getting arrested, how none of it was my fault, how I didn’t even know what was going on until it was too late. How now Carla wanted me to confess to everything so she wouldn’t have to go to jail and risk losing Lulu.

  But I couldn’t tell him. As much as I loved him, and as much as I was pretty sure he loved me, I wasn’t entirely sure he’d believe me. I wasn’t sure anybody would.

  I just wanted to keep my life the way it was.

  So I slid back down on the seat, pulling Kevin down with me.

  “You’re not mad at me, are you?” I whispered in his ear.

  He shook his head, which I knew was a lie.

  I asked if he had a condom, and he nodded.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, which was just like him — pouting and selfish one minute, sweet and caring the next.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I whispered, though that was a lie, too.

  Here’s how we walk down the hall to classes my second day in Unit Three: the Jelly Sisters in front next to the guard, C. Miller, followed by the Hispanic girl and the middle-school girl, whose names I still don’t know. Chantrelle and Good Gina come next, and then Bad Gina and a large girl who seems to be her friend. I’m behind the large friend and can’t see past her, not that I’m supposed to, anyway. We all have our hands behind our backs, heads bowed, mouths shut.

  Forty feet down the long, gray hall, C. Miller says, “Halt.” I don’t stop fast enough, though — the way we’re marching, I think we’ll be going a lot farther — and so stumble into Bad Gina’s large friend. She keeps her arms behind her but shoves me back so hard with her hip that I actually fall down.

  Next thing I know, Officer Killduff, who’s been trailing the line, is standing over me.

  “Off the floor,” he snarls.

  I scramble to my feet. Several of the girls in line laugh, or that’s what it looks like from behind: their shoulders shaking but no noise.

  “Eyes down,” he barks at me before muttering into his radio. A door opens and we enter the classroom.

  A heavy, bright-faced man, his seriously receding hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, stands behind a teach
er’s desk, fanning himself with the front of his sweat-stained polo shirt, though it feels cold to me here, like everywhere else in juvie.

  We sit around four long tables that have been shoved together to form a big one in the center of the room, surrounded by bookcases with stacks of musty textbooks and workbooks and old maps and boxes of who knows what. A whiteboard that doesn’t appear to have been properly cleaned since it was installed is mounted to the wall. There’s so much up there written on top of so much else that you can’t read a word.

  Officer Killduff leaves. C. Miller stands next to the whiteboard, crosses her arms, and stares straight ahead. The teacher, a Mr. Pettigrew according to his ID badge, doesn’t say anything. He just hands out workbooks and big fat black markers. The girls bend over their workbooks, though Bad Gina’s large friend, who sits on one side of me, draws pictures of horses in hers. The Hispanic girl, two chairs away on the other side, just makes dots all over hers, giving each page a bad case of chicken pox.

  Mr. Pettigrew plops down in the empty chair between me and the Hispanic girl and drums his fingers on a manila folder. Bad Gina’s large friend flips the horse page in her workbook and pretends to work on something else, though he doesn’t even glance over her way.

  “Hello,” he says to me.

  “Hi,” I say back.

  “You’re Sadie.”

  I nod. “I’m Sadie.”

  “Junior? Mountain View High School?”

  I nod again. “Junior. Mountain View.”

  It’s his turn to nod. “Very good. Well. The older girls are working on GED prep. The younger girls are just doing lessons. We’ll get you started on GED prep.”

  That catches me by surprise. “I was still planning on getting a regular diploma,” I say. I just assumed I would continue some version of my junior year while I was in juvie, and then start next fall back at my high school as a senior, sort of pretend nothing ever happened, as if I’d just transferred away for a while and then transferred back.