Full Ride (41 page)

“Don't expect him to be there for your high school graduation,” the federal prosecutor told me. “But your college graduation? I think maybe that could be arranged.”

Daddy just wants to make sure that nothing he does now would endanger Mom or me. The prosecutor assured us that, with a
real
investigation under Rule 35, that wouldn't happen.

And the real investigation will happen quickly.

Mom and I believed way too many of Mr. Trumbull's lies.

I'm taking too long, thinking about all this. Oscar steps up and answers the question for me.

“You really want to know the future?” he asks. All the reporters lean close. “In the future . . . a minute from now . . . Becca and I are going out for ice cream with our friends.”

I was actually thinking about saying, “I'm going to have the best rest of a senior year anybody ever had at DHS, while also filling out college apps and scholarship apps and keeping my grades up.” But Oscar's answer works as well.

None of the bad times in my past can be erased. They'll always be there: scars in my memories, shame buried deep. There'll always be someone new finding out about Daddy, and judging me because of him. I wish my father had always stayed on the straight and narrow. I wish I could have finished my eighth-grade year without a single jolt or evil surprise, right up through that sweet, innocent eighth-grade dance. But I can't bring myself to wish I'd never moved to Deskins. That would mean giving up Oscar and Rosa and my other friends; that would have left Jala to deal with bigoted Mr. Vickers all by herself freshman year; maybe it would have left Stuart to be a disgraced cheater this year. Three years ago all I could see were the bad things piling up around me. Now I can see how good things and kindnesses piled up and multiplied even more: Mom wanting to keep me safe; Jala coming to find me at the drinking fountain; Stuart
challenging me to get good grades; Oscar always taking my side; the Courts building on their daughter's problems to help other kids; all of old Deskins refusing to gossip about Whitney; Mrs. Collins loaning me her cell phone; Mr. Trumbull's receptionist giving me Daddy's letter; Gloria the prison guard letting me in to see Daddy; Rosa's sister loaning me this dress . . .

A lot of the people trying to do good things were misguided or made mistakes, so sometimes it was a little hard to see. But I made mistakes too: I was totally wrong about what I needed to protect me.

For a moment I am so overcome with happiness at being me, right in this moment, standing beside Oscar, holding his hand—even in front of all the cameras and reporters—that I want to rise up on my tiptoes and kiss him for the very first time.

But I know Oscar too well and I like him too much for that. There is no way I'm embarrassing him by forcing him into a first-kiss situation in front of the whole world. That will be something else to look forward to in the future.

Everyone is still watching, waiting for me to speak.

“Oh, ice cream?” I say, and I pretend to treat this like a profound question. “Now that would be a good start to exactly the kind of future I want.”

Several people were extremely helpful to me in planning and writing this book.

First, I am grateful to kids I met at the Central Ohio Youth Center in Marysville, Ohio. I was invited to speak to them about one of my earlier books,
Among the Hidden,
and at the end of our conversation, they begged me to write about a topic that was very much on their minds: imprisonment.

I don't know that this is quite the book they were thinking of, but it is what I felt called to write.

I had a great deal of help in my efforts to make the legal information in this book as accurate as possible. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Douglas W. Squires, a federal prosecutor and adjunct professor of law at the Ohio State University Moritz School of Law. When I was plotting the book, he gave me lots of advice about what would and would not be plausible, and several times when he told me an idea wouldn't work, he offered very useful alternate suggestions. He also volunteered to read the book when it was finished, and caught some legal inaccuracies that I didn't even know enough to ask about. (Of course, as with any of my books, any mistakes that might remain are entirely my fault, not anyone else's.)

My friend Jodi Andes, who has worked as a newspaper reporter and an analyst and investigator with the Ohio Attorney General's office, gave me good advice about resources to turn to and told me stories that made me even more interested in writing about a criminal and his family. Jonathan Blanton,
who is principal attorney in the Economic Crimes Division of the Ohio Attorney General's office, gave me information about how criminals carry out and get caught doing various scams, including the “grandparent scams” Becca's father perpetrates in this book. Craig Gillen, an attorney in the Atlanta area, was kind enough to give me detailed descriptions of the federal courtrooms in Atlanta and the visiting procedure and visiting room at the Atlanta Penitentiary.

For other aspects of the book, my husband, Doug Haddix, provided information about in-depth computer searches. And for help with the most obscure question I had for this book, I have to thank Lyle Lankford, senior officer in University History and Protocol at the public affairs office at Vanderbilt University. He was able to give me names of Vanderbilt dormitories that a freshman male could have lived in twenty-five to thirty years ago, that are still in use today.

I should probably thank my kids, Meredith and Connor, for giving me experience with the college search over the course of three years straight (since my daughter began looking seriously during her junior year of high school). Appropriately enough, I went on a campus visit with my son the day before I wrote about Becca and her friends visiting Emory. My daughter also served as an early reader of the book and did some research for it for me. My friends Linda Gerber, Erin MacLellan, Jenny Patton, Nancy Roe Pimm, Amjed Qamar, and Linda Stanek also read early versions of certain sections and had helpful advice.

And, as always, I am grateful to my agent, Tracey Adams, and to my editor, David Gale, and everyone else at Simon & Schuster for their help.

Also by Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Missing Series

Found

Sent

Sabotaged

Torn

Caught

Risked

The Shadow Children Series

Among the Hidden

Among the Impostors

Among the Betrayed

Among the Barons

Among the Brave

Among the Enemy

Among the Free

The Girl with 500 Middle Names

Because of Anya

Say What?

Dexter the Tough

Running Out of Time

Game Changer

The Always War

Claim to Fame

Palace of Mirrors

Uprising

Double Identity

The House on the Gulf

Escape from Memory

Takeoffs and Landings

Turnabout

Just Ella

Leaving Fishers

Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

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www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real
people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and
events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual
events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Margaret Peterson Haddix

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part
in any form.

is
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Book design by Krista Vossen

Jacket photograph © 2013 by Henry Steadman/Photolibrary/Getty Images

Jacket design by Krista Vossen

The text for this book is set in Apollo.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haddix, Margaret Peterson.

Full ride / Margaret Peterson Haddix. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: After her father is convicted of embezzlement, Becca Jones,
fourteen, and her mother flee Georgia for small-town Ohio but three years later she
learns that his misdeeds may have jeopardized not just her future but also her life.

ISBN 978-1-4424-4278-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4424-4280-1 (eBook)

[1. Secrets—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3.
Schools—Fiction. 4. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 5.
Criminals—Fiction. 6. Ohio—Fiction.]  I. Title.

PZ7.H1164Ful 2013

[Fic]—dc23

2012038146