Pretty Crooked (28 page)

My mom and the lawyer she’d found for me were waiting on plastic bucket seats in the hallway. The lawyer was here to talk to me about my case. I wanted desperately to be alone with my mom but there was no time for that now.

Christopher Siegel, Esq., stood up, introduced himself, and gave me an abbreviated smile, teeth contrasting with his tanned face, silver hair combed neatly from a part to his ears. He pumped my hand in his giant, Italian-suit-sleeved one, and then got down to business right away. He explained how the hearing would go down and he gave me instructions on what to say and how to act. All I had to do was be very quiet and polite, he said. I had to call the judge “sir” or “Your Honor.” I shouldn’t speak at all unless I was asked a question. He asked me whether I had confessed to the crime, and I told him what I had told Daniels.

He nodded diplomatically. “Not too good.”

Siegel said there were a few options: They could hold me in detention—anywhere for a few months to a couple of years, depending on how seriously they decided to treat the crime. They could also send me to a boot camp, like the one Tre had been to, or they could send me to counseling and put me on house arrest with one of those ankle bracelets celebrities got when they were arrested for DUI.

I chewed on the inside of my mouth, feeling the weight of what he was telling me sink in. I didn’t know which option to hope for. They all sounded pretty awful, but after my one night in juvie I was certain I didn’t want to be staying there for any length of time.

“Is there any way I can just go home while they figure this out? Pay a fine or something?” I asked, my voice
cracking a bit. I wanted to sleep in my own bed. I wanted to talk to Tre. I wanted to talk to Cherise. And most of all, I wanted to talk to Aidan.

“No, you have to wait here for the time being,” Siegel said. “We really don’t know what they’ll do. Every case is different. Sometimes they want to make an example out of you. And this has been very high-profile. You’ve made the cops look stupid. So you should be prepared for the worst.”

My mom was dressed in her nicest suit with panty hose and pumps, even, but with her patchy skin and red eyes, she looked even more haggard and worn down than she’d been looking lately, if that was possible. She’d just been sitting there silently the whole time I talked to Siegel—it looked like she was staring into space—but when she turned her head I could see the flash of tears in her eyes. I wanted to hug her but Siegel was sitting between us. Besides, just then I wasn’t sure if she’d let me.

After a half hour, the visiting time was up and they had to leave. The counselor came to take me back to my cell. I stood, watching them go, my mom looking smaller as she disappeared down the hallway.

“C’mon,” the counselor said gruffly, leading me away.

Inside my cell, I went back to staring at the walls and tried to sleep, but there was a loud buzzing sound from the fluorescent lights overhead. I was exhausted, I realized.

The tears came then, shaking my body with sobs. I
curled up in a ball and cried. My life was pretty much over. There was no going back now. I’d ruined everything.

I thought back to my first day riding my bike to school, taking in the stark beauty of the landscape. In here I could only see the sky in twenty-minute intervals, as I learned when they let me out for a walk in the afternoon. There were about ten kids altogether and we walked around the building in circles while a counselor watched us. I didn’t talk to anyone else—I was too scared. At the same time, I felt hollowed out by my crying jag. A darker, more despairing sensation took over. Was this going to be the way I experienced fresh air from now on? How would I survive it?

When our time was up, a bell rang and we were lined up and ordered back inside. Sometime in the evening I was brought my dinner, a dry chicken leg and some canned peas.

And then it was another long, long, long night. Alone. Waiting. For what, I had no idea. I was too scared to hope for anything. My luck had clearly run out.

In the morning, we sat in the corridor outside the courtroom for three hours, though in the last two days my whole concept of time had shifted. It could have been ten minutes or a month. Siegel, in a different suit, with a shiny green tie, went over a few more things with me and then we waited and waited.

Finally, the double doors opened and we went inside. My mom, Siegel, and I sat down behind a small table in the front of the room. The judge, cloaked in a black robe with a matching black beard and bushy graying eyebrows, was seated behind a wooden bench. Behind him were the American and Arizona flags. He was holding a stack of papers and the sign on his desk said
THE HONORABLE FLOYD L. PRENDERGAST
.

“Willa Fox, you’re here because of an arrest on Saturday, correct?”

I nodded, gulping down a rising lump in my throat.

“I’m looking over your records here. It says you were taken in because of a breaking-and-entering incident, and that you are suspected of as many as six other robberies and thefts over the past several months.”

“Yes,” I said, steadying myself, trying to be strong. My mind was flashing over the separate incidents—my visits to the pawnshop; my trips to the mall. Even as I was owning up to them, it was like watching a montage from a movie—it all seemed so distant now.

“It also said that you confessed to these crimes,” he said, squinting over his wire-framed oval glasses.

“I did,” I said.

I felt Siegel nudging me.

“Your Honor,” I added.

“Do you have anything to say about it?”

“Just that I’m really, really, really sorry for what I’ve done.” I closed my eyes and tried to summon my
composure, but a sob was just lingering beneath the surface—I could feel it.

“And why did you do these things?”

I squeezed my hands together and took a deep breath. “Your Honor, when I came here, to Paradise Valley, I was so excited to have this luxurious life,” I said, my voice quaking a little. “I looked around and I could see so much beauty surrounding me. For the first time I was part of the other half and I thought this was the way everyone should be able to live.”

I paused, remembering how I’d felt those early days, riding my bike around town, walking through the school campus, sleeping in my cushy bed. Like I was safe—but more than that. Like the future was wide open to me. I looked up and saw that he was listening intently.

“And then I noticed that there were kids who had nothing, or next to nothing, and they were just trying to have their shot, too. But some of the rich kids wouldn’t give the poorer ones a chance. They ignored them, or excluded them, or tortured them with online bullying.”

The judge nodded, urging me on.

I took another deep breath and continued. “So I had this idea, to make things more equal. I would spread the wealth around and level the playing field for the less fortunate kids. And maybe show everyone how arbitrary it was. That we’re just born into a situation, but that it didn’t have to define them. In short, Your Honor, I just thought I was helping people.”

His expression was a blank, lost in the craggy lines of his face. I couldn’t tell if he was hearing what I was saying, but just the force of his presence looming over me made my words sound ridiculous, my voice small and squeaky. I wanted to run away.

“But I realize now that it was a stupid idea, and that I wasn’t really helping anyone. I was actually doing the opposite.”

Prendergast leaned over his folded arms. “As we like to say here in the halls of justice, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.’”

“No, sir,” I said mournfully.

Judge Prendergast turned to my lawyer. “Do you have anything to say on your client’s behalf?”

“Just that we request you take into account that Willa has no prior record, Your Honor. We feel that she is a smart, capable person who is simply guilty of poor judgment in this instance.”

“I would say six robberies is a bit more than poor judgment,” the judge countered.

“With all due respect, Your Honor, my client did have good motivations, however misguided her decisions were.”

Prendergast waved a hand, as if dismissing what Siegel was saying. “Actions are the bottom line, aren’t they? I mean, we don’t prosecute thoughts or ideas in the courtroom, do we?”

“No, Your Honor.”

He cleared his throat and pointed to the papers. “In cases like this, Willa, where the defendant has no record, is generally well behaved, and gets higher marks on the screening at the justice center, we like to treat the incident as an aberration. We don’t charge them with a crime but we put them on probation, and ask them to perform some community service.”

I looked at my mom and then at Siegel to read their reactions, but neither was giving anything away. Both were just listening attentively to Judge Prendergast. I turned back to do the same, feeling a tiny bit of optimism blooming inside of me. At the same time, I wanted to keep those thoughts in check. Prendergast could say anything next.

He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Now, look. This case has received a lot of media attention. My office has been fielding calls from the press all morning. If I let you off without serving time, there are going to be people who will be after me, asking why I wasn’t helping protect their community, why I was letting an admitted criminal free. So I need you to promise me, Willa, that if we let you go home today, you’ll be a model citizen from here on out.”

I nodded fiercely. “Yes, sir. I will show you—and everyone else—that I deserve a second chance. And that I’m ready to make a new start and make it right.”

“And I’m going to need you to repay everyone you stole from. Every cent of it. My understanding is that the
damages are in the thousands. That will be one of your probation requirements.”

“I can do that, Your Honor.” How, I really had no idea. But I would find a way. Anything but spend another night here.

“Okay, then. I’m sentencing you to one hundred hours of community service and one year of probation. Your probation officer will tell you how you can fulfill your service requirement and how to proceed with your meetings,” he said as he signed a piece of paper.

I looked at my mom, and her eyes, softening in tears, met mine. She grabbed my arm and squeezed it. I felt, for an instant, at least, like we were on the same team again, that maybe I hadn’t lost her after all.

Prendergast straightened his stack of papers. “You’re free to go now. But remember what I said. Stay out of trouble.”

Siegel had arranged for a car to drive us home. On the way out of the building, he told us we were lucky, that this was the best possible scenario we could have asked for. That Prendergast was more than fair. Now I just had to scrounge up the money for restitution and follow the rules of probation, which meant staying away from drugs and alcohol, staying away from known criminals, and not leaving the state without my probation officer’s permission. After a year, my record would be clear.

He walked us to the car and then headed back into
the building, where he had another case to see to.

In the backseat of the car, my mom seemed relieved—I gleaned this from her body language, but not from her words because she still wasn’t saying anything.

That is, until we were halfway down Morning Glory and we saw the throng of people trailing down the driveway, jostling for position. Their cars, painted with the names of various news channels, clogged up the street, double- and triple-parked in rows—some were mounted with satellite dishes. A few of the neighbors had come out of their houses to watch.

“No no no,” my mom said, shaking her head and looking like she was going to cry. “No way. This isn’t happening.”

She paid the driver and instructed him to stop several yards away, in front of a neighbor’s house. “You can leave us off here.”

She gestured for me to go in through the back but even as we headed in that direction, some of the media people spotted us and started running toward us in a wild herd.

A TV reporter I recognized from one of the local stations was in front, shoving a microphone in my face.

“Channel Five News. So what happened in court today, Willa?”

Then the questions and the people asking them came thick and fast from all sides, like popcorn rattling around in a microwave bag.

“Did you confess to the crimes?”

“
The Arizona Daily
Star
is calling you the Sly Fox, do you have any comment on that?”

“Why’d you do it?”

“What was the sentence?”

“What’d the judge say today?”

“Are you sorry, Sly Fox? This is your chance to address the public!”

My mom pulled my hood over my face. She put her arm around me, pulling me tightly to her, and guided me toward the front door.

I peeked out from underneath my sweatshirt so I didn’t trip and I caught another glimpse of the scene. There were at least six cameras, some hoisted on shoulders and others mounted on tripods. Raised hands holding digital recorders. Microphones dangling off long poles. People wearing badges, carrying shoulder bags.

Flashes went off. The crowd rippled as we passed through, shouting more questions that were overlapping in one loud, manic web of sound.

I didn’t know what to think, and there wasn’t much time to. Off to the side I could see a few people holding signs in support.
FREE WILLA! THE SLY FOX LIVES. And others, not so supportive: JUSTICE FOR PARADISE VALLEY NOW. ADULT CRIMES = ADULT PUNISHMENT. HEY, MAINSTREAM MEDIA—STOP GLORIFYING CRIME.

They were all here for me? Weren’t there any murders in this town? Any corrupt politicians to cover? I
was strangely flattered. Somehow, without even trying, I’d become a celebrity.

But before I could revel in the attention, my mom had pulled me into the house. She slammed the door behind us. Inside, she began closing blinds and locking doors.

“Don’t just stand there, Willa,” she snapped. “Help me, for chrissakes!”

I tried to help, dashing around from room to room, making sure no one could see or get in. By then, some of them had set up their cameras in the back by the pool. They had the house under surveillance from every angle.