Conviction (14 page)

I let the tears fall, thinking of Charlie’s methods of persuasion.

“Everything is fine. Just leave me alone.”

“What’s wrong? Is someone around here bothering you?”

“No. No, it’s nothing like that.”

“Then what’s it like? Does this have something to do with your kidnapping?”

“No! Okay? Nothing has to do with anything, just mind your own damn business!”

“Geez,” he said, “tell me how you really feel.”

“I’m sorry. I’m just stressed out about finals and this doesn’t help.”

His hand reached out to touch my arm then. And though I knew it was meant to comfort me, I only hated him more. “You can tell me things, Addie. I’m not just a Fed. I’m your friend.”

I stared at the ground, knowing I had to change the subject. If I didn’t, I might say something stupid, and then Charlie would be in even more trouble.

“Y-you can’t tell my Dad about this.”

“Why?”

“You just can’t, the stress will be awful for him.”

He sighed and pinched his nose between his fingers. “I think you should go home, Addie. Given the circumstances, I’m sure your professors will let you take your finals early.”

The thought briefly crossed my mind. I could probably take my finals and go home early; no doubt Dad would be in favor of it. But Charlie and the rest of my life was in California. And there was no way I would leave them behind without some answers.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want any special treatment.” I scratched some bark on the tree. “I don’t deserve it.”

“Your safety is at risk; that’s not special treatment.”

“My safety is not—you know what? You need to leave.” I was cold, stoic, trying to channel my own internal actress.

He shook his head. “I’m not leaving until you talk to me.”

“What about your girlfriend?”

“She’ll understand. Besides, this is important.”

“Fine, then I’ll leave.” I made a move for the sidewalk, hoping he wouldn’t call my bluff.

“I’ll grab your detail then.” He raised his arm to grab someone’s attention, but I stopped him mid-wave.

“What?”

“I
know
you’re in trouble, Addie. You don’t have to tell me what it is but that won’t stop me from trying to keep you safe.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Exactly, and until you tell me what’s going on, what’s
really
going on, security is going to escort you to and from class.”

I hovered on the edge of anxiety. How would I escape to Ben and Elise’s if I was being followed by campus police all day?

“You can’t do that.”

“Yes, I can. And frankly, I need to, out of respect for your father and your own safety.”

“Adam, you
can’t
say anything to my Dad. It could kill him. And I’m not going home before the semester is over just because some delinquent tried to scare me.”

“So someone is trying to scare you?” He tapped his foot impatiently.

“No.”

“Just tell me what’s going on. Whatever it is, I can help. If you’ve done something illegal—”

“Leave me alone”

I stormed back inside, leaving him with the admiring campus police and fawning underclassmen.

I waited until Melinda was in the shower before sneaking off down the hall. I had always been under the impression that college was supposed to be an evolutionary step up from high-school in the sense that people did less gossiping and more minding of their own business. Maybe it was because I had gone to high-school in the safety of my room and kitchen that I was unprepared for the chatter that accompanied the window-smashing incident. Regardless, I was not keen to hear any of it.

Three girls freshly returned from the library tried to flirt with the repair guy and campus security. For them, I imagined it was a great relief from the mundane, not to mention an opportunity to gain favor if they were ever in trouble. Two other girls lingered in the stairway, relating the incidents to people on the other end of their phone.

I made my way into the lobby slowly; it seemed that in addition to shattering the window, some mailboxes had been ripped out of the wall. Though they weren’t used all that much, it seemed clear that this disturbed the officer who took pictures. Another made scribbles into a notebook.

“Hey,” a girl asked me. “Did you see what happened?”

I shrugged. “Some guys were playing baseball in the courtyard.”

Even though the courtyard was too far away for someone to realistically hit a baseball through the window—not to mention that there didn’t appear to be a single hole but instead the entire glass pane had been knocked loose—I hoped people would accept the logical explanation instead of the truth.

One of the cops nudged the other one and whispered something to him, “footprints outside,” I read his lips, then rushed back into the safety of my dorm, with the hope that they would be done soon.

For now, I had to reach Charlie, everything else was a moot point. So I ignored my brain when it tried to come up with explanations for the mailbox destruction, when it implored whether or not anyone had seen Charlie. Instead, I picked up the phone and counted the rings, counted the cracks in the ceiling, the loose hairs that had gotten tangled in my brush. I counted and counted and counted.

But the phone just rang and rang and rang.

“I hear they might put in security cameras,” Melinda said later, while the phone was still to my ear, and she stared in the mirror. “Do you think that’ll bring living rates up next year? It freaking better not. One jerk breaks a window, and the rest of us have to pay for it? Give me a break.”

One jerk indeed, one loveable, wonderful jerk.

But why wasn’t he picking up the phone?

“Is everything okay? You keep dialing the same number and hanging up repeatedly.”

“Yeah,” I faltered. “I—ah, just really wanted to talk to my Dad.”

“I know what you mean. I’m feeling a little spooked, too. What if a serial rapist or something was trying to get in here?”

Eventually, I did try and call Dad, but only because I was afraid he had heard something from Adam and would be worried. Adam had, after all, never made any promises not to tell Dad about any of this; and I could only imagine how worried he would really be when he found out someone had burglarized my dorm. Would he assume, like Adam, that it had been Charlie? Or someone else out to hurt me?

At least
he
picked up the phone.

“Dad?”

“Oh, hey there, missy. I was just thinking about you.”

I froze, backed away from the hall, and further into my phone. If Dad knew something was up, he might try and visit, or worse yet, insist I come back home.

“Y-yeah?” My voice was shaky, but I couldn’t help it. “Why’s t-that?”

“I just saw a re-run on the Travel channel. That, ah—” I heard something click in the background, the lever for the recliner go down. “—those islands off of Asia.”

“Say, Dad?”

“Say, Daughter?”

I made myself laugh, at least Dad’s lame humor was a decent indication that nothing was wrong—on his end of the line, anyway—but still, I had to make sure.

“Anything, um, interesting going on?”

It was probably my tone that set him off, the skepticism in my own voice that swayed him into knowing that something wasn’t quite right.

“Interesting? What is it, Addie? Did you hear something about Robbie?”

“No, Dad. No. Everything is fine. I just, had a bad feeling is all.”

This seemed to relieve him considerably. Dad was never a big believer in female intuition and I couldn’t expect that to change overnight.

“Oh yeah?” He chuckled and that sound made me miss home more in those few seconds than I had since I had arrived at school. “Remember when your Mom used to get those?”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “It usually just meant she forgot something.”

“Turning off the oven.”

“Her headlights.”

“Your birthday.”

“Her purse.”

We went back and forth until I stopped laughing and heard the beeping of the phone begging for a charge.

“So what is it that you’ve forgotten?”

The police were finally gone and the window was boarded up an hour later. It’s my understanding that some of the girls were questioned as to whether or not they saw anything, but being a weekday and late afternoon, most of the dorms were empty and the sidewalks desolate. One girl who was returning from class said she saw someone speed away on a motorcycle, but that was it.

I lingered in the lobby and paced the halls, trying to pick up what gossip I could without being obvious. Whenever someone asked me what I thought, I repeated my story about guys playing baseball. I said it so many times that it almost felt real.

None of that explains the mailboxes, Addie.

I kept picturing how it might have happened: Charlie storming through the window, uncaring about the consequences or even just waiting until someone else came in the front door and then casually walking in after them. I imagined him tearing out the metal boxes from their slots, probably with his switchblade, until the knife was dull. I could feel his rage after he broke into my room and found e-mails, not proving anything, but suggesting untrustworthiness anyway. Charlie had probably been looking through the mail for some indicators of my imaginary infidelity…maybe smashing the window later…Yet what was really scary was that if he really thought I could cheat on him, what else did he think?

I tried again to call Yuri and Elise, but Yuri’s number was disconnected and Elise’s just kept ringing. It wasn’t until after I made my way outside that I saw the remnants of a pre-paid phone in the parking lot. Smashed to bits in a fury.

I picked up the pieces of the phone I could find and brought them back to my dorm. Since Melinda had gone out again, I was alone and had some time to consider my options.

I could have gone to Healdsburg right then and there, but of course there was the problem of being noticed by campus police as I left. And then I wasn’t sure what the bus schedule for Mondays were, if they didn’t have an evening drop-off, how would I even get there?

Still, I was pretty confident I could slip campus security. If Adam wasn’t bluffing and if they had the manpower to escort me to classes, I could probably slip out the fire exit of a classroom, or even a bathroom window if I really had to. But would that only draw more attention? If I was truly desperate I could leave right now, hitchhike as close as possible, see Charlie, and be back before I had to miss class in the morning. As it was, I figured missing class would only make Adam worry more about me and maybe even call Dad, another exposure I didn’t want to risk.

I texted Elise again.

I called again.

No answer.

By the time evening finally came around, I was ready to go. I even practiced my hitchhiking thumb and everything, ignoring the Charlie voice in my head when he told me I was being too stubborn, reckless.

Yet the feeling I had told Dad about wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t even a half-truth. I did feel the inexplicable dread of something creeping up on me, and though the window incident was quickly replaced by chatter of who had done what, I couldn’t deter the feeling that something worse was already taking place.

I figured it would be best to wait until Melinda went to bed. I knew she had class early on Tuesday morning and would shut off her light at a reasonable hour. If I left now or waited until morning, I’d only have that many more questions to answer since I never missed class or stayed out on a weeknight.

Tapping my foot to the music someone played in the next room, I counted beats until I was certain Melinda was asleep and I could safely sneak out without being noticed. It gave me some time to rationalize the dangers of hitchhiking and opt instead for a not-so-local cab company. I scribbled down the name of the cab company and cleared my computer history. This was also a practice I had become accustomed to over the last few months, though now for some reason it didn’t seem as natural as it had before; now it seemed dirty, felt wrong, like I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to, and I literally looked over my shoulder, as though someone would be there to stop me at any second.

The hours that slugged in between my intended time of departure were agonizingly slow. I attempted to work on my linguistics paper, look over my notes for International Relations, but most of it was in vain. I must have read the same sentence in my Anatomy textbook nine times before I realized that none of it was processing.

Instead of studying, I attempted to reassure myself with other thoughts. I
knew
that Dad was all right, and until I knew otherwise, I had to assume Robbie wasn’t trying to be a hero and had all his limbs intact. Still, I was ashamed at how little comfort I found in those ideas.

I slammed my head against my desk telling myself that this was all part of Charlie’s idea of keeping me safe, that the lack of information I had here was for my own good somehow. Yet as hard as I tried, I couldn’t
make
myself believe it. I couldn’t understand how
not
knowing why he would do something like this, and why Elise or even Yuri wouldn’t respond to my calls would be a good course of action.