Leslie's Journal (17 page)

I guess that means I’m not going to jail. I don’t feel like chatting, though. I just want to have my soup and be by myself. “You don’t need to babysit me.”

They don’t take the hint. Instead, they make small talk. I guess they figure this is a chance to stay inside and get warm. I decide to tune out. I pretend I’m in physics. We wait forever for Mom and Dad, but when they walk in it feels like no time’s passed at all.

I was afraid they’d be mad. But they aren’t. They’re serious. So serious nobody’d know they actually hate each other’s guts.

Somebody else is with them. This woman in a navy dress suit. Maloney and Brant get up.

Mom doesn’t wait for introductions. She comes over and hugs me. Then she and Dad shake hands with Maloney and Brant, and I get introduced to the new person, Detective Constable Sylvia Kissoon. She tells me to call her Sylvia. I don’t really look at her, not to be rude or anything, but because I’m nervous.

“I’ll take it from here,” Sylvia says to Maloney and Brant. She asks my parents to wait while she talks to me privately in the room next door. I follow her over. We sit opposite each other with a table between us. Time goes so slow it’s almost in reverse. Sylvia turns on a pocket recorder.

“Try to ignore this,” she says.

Right. My palms are sweating. So are my feet. There’s no air. I can’t breathe. Sylvia catches my eye and holds it. She’s smiling, friendly, but firm and controlled, like my old swimming instructor the first time I did the dog paddle across the pool.

Once I’m settled, she asks a few questions. Ordinary questions about how I am and can she get me anything, stuff like that, but I know where things are headed. I mean, she’s not paid to be nice. This is to loosen me up so I’ll let something slip.

I know all this, but even so, when the real questions come, I just answer. What’s the point of hiding now? If she doesn’t want to believe me, fine.

But it’s not like she doesn’t believe me. She keeps nodding, concentrating so hard it’s like she’s pulling the words out of me with her eyes.

I get scared. I say, “It’s not like it’s Mom’s fault or anything. You’re not going to give Dad custody or anything, are you?”

Sylvia shakes her head. “No, of course not.” Then she smiles again and asks another question. I wonder if she’s married. Or has kids. I wonder if she has problems with them, like Mom with me. And now I see she’s staring at me waiting for an answer.

I talk and talk and talk. I talk about earlier, when me and Jason met and how the hitting started. And then she asks about Jason and sex.

I freeze. Sylvia keeps eye contact and waits.

“Look, if you really want to know, just read my journal.”

“Your journal?”

Suddenly the world goes red alert.

Thirty-Eight

“Y
our journal will be evidence—key evidence—if Jason goes to trial,” Sylvia says.

But the cops won’t lay charges unless I cooperate. Court will be tough. Jason’s lawyer will try to make me look like a liar. Even if Jason’s found guilty, he won’t get much time. He’s barely eighteen, comes from a “good family” and hasn’t been in trouble before. So for me to get dragged through crap seems pointless, especially when it could all be for nothing.

Sylvia and I talk about the other girls I saw on the porn files. She shows me photos of missing kids, but I don’t recognize them. If only I hadn’t destroyed the memory card!

“It wouldn’t have changed much,” Sylvia comforts. “The card isn’t proof he took the shots. His lawyer could say he downloaded them when he was underage. What we need are the girls themselves. And the card wouldn’t tell us who they are or how to find them.”

Sylvia says I can wait to decide what to do. In the meantime, she hooks Mom and me up with Victim Services. We get deadbolts for our apartment, call display for the phone, plus I’m given a free cell to use if I’m alone and in trouble.

I also get to “see someone” who specializes in abuse. Her name is Dr. Seymour. She’s written a book, which makes me think she must be smarter than the goof I went to for family counseling.

On the school front, Beachball is unsinkable. The cops ask her what she knew and when she knew it. Guess what? According to her, she had no idea there was a problem. Yes, she’d read my journal, and spoken to me immediately, but I told her it was make-believe. Cover your ass, Ms. Barker, it’s big enough.

Beachball says that my missed exams won’t count against me. My term work’s good enough that I’ll either scrape through or get failures bumped to a fifty. That hardly makes up for the fact that Jason gets to stay at the school; without charges there’s no reason to expel him. Beachball says if I’d feel more comfortable somewhere else, she’ll be happy to arrange a transfer. Nice. He tries to kill me, and I’m the one she wants to move.

Thirty-Nine

T
his morning Mom let me sleep in. Since I’m not back at school yet, I guess she figured there’s no point torturing me. As usual, I stayed inside, deadbolt secured. I’m still too nervous to go out unless I’m with somebody. “Jason won’t come after you while the heat’s on,” Katie says. Probably not, but crazier things have happened.

Anyway, I’m in front of the
TV
having breakfast—a Coke and a slice of leftover pizza—when the phone rings.

It’s Sylvia. “I’ve got something for you to look at. Do you have some free time?”

“Let me check my date book,” I joke. Sylvia doesn’t laugh. Twenty minutes later, she’s at my kitchen table, pulling a surprise out of her briefcase.

At first I don’t get it. Then it clicks. Sylvia may not have a sense of humor, but she sure is smart. I’m staring at a copy of last year’s yearbook from Port Burdock Central High. Port Burdock—Jason’s old stomping grounds. Jason was at the boys’ academy, but there were girls at the town’s public school.

I flip through the yearbook. Freeze. The girls’ faces are magnets. Amber Bentham, 9C. Melanie Brady, 10B. They smile out at me from their class pictures, but their eyes have secrets. Strange. I thought I was done with crying.

I’m hyper all day till Katie runs over after class. We sit in the bathroom giving each other facials. Katie thought this’d be good for calming me down, seeing as it’s a big sin to move your lips while the mask is drying.

I don’t care. I talk like a bad ventriloquist. “I caaan’t jussst sssit heeere waiiiting. I’vvve gooot tooo caaall theeem.”

Katie shakes her head and writes on a piece of paper: “Let the police do it.”

“Nooo waaay. I caaan’t.”

Katie writes: “Look in the mirror.”

I do and burst out laughing. These aren’t normal facials. They’re Fun Facials, sleepover specials courtesy of Katie’s mom. My face is this bright fluorescent orange; Katie looks like a cherry lollipop with hair.

“Yooour mooom isss meeentaaal!”

Katie giggles. Then she holds up her hand and shushes me while she stares at her watch for three minutes. Every time I go to say something, she kicks me.

“Oookaaay,” she says at last. We wash our faces off, hers in the sink, mine in the bathtub. After we’re done, we go back into the living room and I start up again.

“Leslie, get real,” Katie says. “Calling those girls is the stupidest idea you’ve had in ages.”

“Why? Don’t you think they’d like to know they’re not alone? I bet they don’t even know about each other—and they’re in the same school!”

“Leave it alone.”

“And it’ll all go away?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Katie, please. I’ll only do it if you say it’s okay. Puh-leeaasse? For meeeee?? Puh-llleeeeeaaaaassssse???”

Her eyes bug. “How does your mom put up with you?”

I grab her hand and yank her to the computer in the living room. We go online to the directory, my heart doing loop-de-loops. Luckily Port Burdock’s not too big. There’s just five Bradys and two Benthams.

I call the first Bentham and put on the speaker phone so Katie won’t bug me about what’s going on. A boy answers. There’s the sound of a
TV
in the background. “Yeah?”

He sounds little, but just in case, I put on my polite voice. “Hello, this is Leslie Phillips. Could I please speak to Amber?”

The boy yells, “It’s for you,” and I hear this voice yell back, “I’ll take it in my room.” I’ve hit the jackpot, first try. The boy doesn’t say anything else, but I can still hear the
TV
. Finally the other voice comes on the line.

“Hello?”

So this is Amber Bentham, the girl in 9C. She must be in grade ten now. My grade. To think I know her phone number, where she lives, goes to school—what she looks like naked—and she doesn’t even know I exist.

“Hello,” I reply. It’s all I get out.

“You can hang up,” Amber says into the phone to her brother. Pause. I can still hear the
TV
. “I said, you can hang up now, Jeffrey!” Click. “So, hi. Who is it?”

“Leslie Phillips. You don’t know me, but I know you, sort of. At least, I know Jason McCready.”

Her voice gets small. “Who did you say you were?”

“Leslie Phillips. I’m nobody. Just this girl. I went out with him.”

I thought being humble, a kindred spirit or something, would make her friendly. Instead, she acts like me on a bad day. “Well, maybe you went out with him, but I didn’t, and if you’re the one who ratted my name to the cops, I don’t know how you know who I am, but they were just here, and you got me in trouble with my parents, so thank you very much, and don’t ever call me again.” She hangs up.

“Katie,” I say, “is it a sin to do something bad for a good cause?”

“I think so.”

“Then say a prayer for me.” I phone back. Amber answers. Before she can hang up again, I say, “Amber, I have the sex pix. If you don’t talk to me I’m going to e-mail them to your dad and the town newspaper.”

“Oh god.”

She’s so scared, I’m ashamed of myself. “What happened to you also happened to me,” I say. “I want to charge him, but officially he’s a first-time offender. If you charge him too, maybe we can put him away longer.”

There’s a pause. “Has anyone else seen the pictures?”

“No. They’re on a memory card. Nowhere else.”

“Thank you. Thank you.” She’s practically kissing my feet over the phone line. “Promise me you’ll destroy the card.”

“Not till you agree to help me.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can,” I say firmly.

“It’s different for you.” Her voice cracks. “He doesn’t live here anymore. I’m finally getting some sleep.”

“No, you’re not. He’s in your head. He keeps waking you up.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.” I hear her sob. I wish I could hug her.

“When that detective showed up at the door, I didn’t know what it was all about.” She blows her nose. “She got me alone in the living room and asked me all these questions: if I knew Jason, if he’d hurt me, if he’d raped me. I felt like a criminal. She said if I ever remembered anything to give her a call. After, she told my folks I hadn’t done anything wrong, but they acted like they didn’t believe her. Mom kept saying, ‘We’ve never had trouble with the police.’” Amber whispers: “Look, it was the end of last year. I remember him taking the photos, but not much else. I’d never had more than a glass of wine at Christmas dinner before that. I thought I was going to bleed to death. I tried to break up with him, but he wouldn’t go away. Finally he went on a date with Jenny Maraida to make me jealous.”

I get chills. “Who’s Jenny Maraida?”

“You don’t know? Her dad caught them drunk and naked in the family garage. He called the principal at the academy and Jason got booted out for what they called ‘drunkenness and other grave misdemeanors.’ If it was anybody but Dr. Maraida reporting him, nothing would have happened. I mean, the guys at the academy are rich kids in jackets and ties. They walk through town like they own the place.”

“Back to Jason.”

“No.” Amber stops me cold. “I haven’t seen him since. I never want to again. There must be somebody else who can help you.”

“There is,” I sigh. “A girl from your school named Melanie Brady.”

“Jason went out with Melanie?”

“Once, anyway. I’ll try her instead.”

A terrible pause. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Melanie Brady is dead.”

Forty

M
elanie Brady committed suicide. According to Amber, one morning before the bell, the halls at her school were alive with whispers. The kind that spread faster than flu. Apparently Melanie’d posted porn shots of herself on her Facebook page. She’d also Hotmailed the pix to her entire address book. Someone had taped up a printout in the guys’ washroom, and a couple of her so-called friends were flashing copies hidden in their binders.

Melanie wasn’t at school to defend herself. Kids were saying she should hide her face forever, she’s such a slut. That talk stopped with the morning announcements. The principal said there’d been a tragedy: Melanie Brady was dead.

All morning, guidance counselors dealt with weeping classmates who’d never had time for Melanie when she was alive. (As Amber tells me this, I have a flash of Ashley. If I died, she’d be first in line to get attention. No, I take it back. When a person’s dead, lots changes, and the rest doesn’t matter.)

By lunch, the word was out that Melanie’d swallowed sleeping pills and slit her wrists in the bathtub. Amber says everyone had questions: Was Melanie a secret druggie? Had she posted when she was high, then killed herself when she realized what she’d done? Kids who knew her said she was weird and impulsive. But this went too far to make sense even to them.

“Well, it makes sense to me,” I say. “You too, right? We know Jason. I’ll bet anything Melanie broke up with him. He had her password and went to an Internet café. He logged on to her Facebook page, wiped out her privacy settings and posted her file from his memory card. Then, in case the post got taken down, he sent the stuff through her e-mail account too. Sound about right?”

“So? We can’t prove it.” Amber chokes up. “You know, he threatened to do the same to me when I left him. I changed my password, but twice a week he’d call or text: ‘Today’s the day.’ That’s all he’d say, but I knew what he meant. The messages stopped when he moved away. But I’m still afraid. Please, please destroy my photos!”