Breaking Point (23 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?”

“Now?” A bit of fudge dribbled onto my lip, and I caught it quick with my napkin. Mother would have said it was piggish, but Daddy didn't wince.

“Sure. I told your mom we'd be late. Gameworks, maybe?”

Most people I knew would rather go there than anywhere, but the sounds of
Wicked
still filled my head, and I didn't want to drown it out with pulsing game music. So I said, “Oh, I don't know. Maybe the bookstore instead?” I loved going to the big bookstore, selecting a pile of novels, then spending an hour or more examining them over tea. “Would you be bored?”

Daddy grinned. “No, I can read. They prob'ly even have some of them there magazines with pitures in.”

“I didn't mean that.” The kids at school all thought I was a nerd too.

“I know you didn't, Pumpkin.” He glanced to the side. “Hey, don't look now, but you've got yourself an admirer.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Right. Nine o'clock. Redhead's been looking at you since dessert arrived.”

“Guys don't look at me.”

“See for yourself.”

I shook my head. Parents lived in some happy place where everyone my age dated or had guys in love with them when, in truth, only popular girls like Courtney and Midori did. I looked around. To one side was a crowd of stick-thin girls in Greek letter shirts, pigging out on Earthquake Sundaes. But when I got to Daddy's “nine o'clock,” I was surprised to see he was right. Someone
was
looking at me. It was Warner Glassman, a boy from school, a smart boy who'd won a playwriting contest. As soon as I saw him, I wondered if my face was clean, if I had whipped cream on my lips. It wasn't like I could lick them now, though, not in front of Warner. I'd look like a perv. I fumbled with my napkin. Warner looked away.

“He's a boy from school, Daddy. He's looking at me because he knows me, that's all. He's probably trying to figure out where he's seen me before.”

Daddy took a sip of his coffee. “You are a beautiful girl, Emma.”

“Mother says I'd be pretty—pretty, not beautiful—if I lost ten pounds and did something about my hair.”