Locust Lane(79)
It wasn’t until Saturday that they finally let him speak to him. Since Christopher was being charged as an adult, they were holding him at the county jail. It just so happened that Saturdays were visiting days for inmates whose last name began with M through Z. As Michel left the house, he noticed that the reporters had disappeared. Christopher had been arrested. The waiting game was over. The drama would now be at the courthouse.
The jail was old: bricks, barbed wire, Gothic windows paned with iron bars. The room where they met was oppressive and dank, the only remotely human touch a small area in the corner filled with used toys. Christopher shuffled in with the other inmates. He looked even worse than he had in court. Although contact was not allowed, Michel briefly touched his son’s cheek. It was as if he’d been hiking in winter woods.
“Are you cold?”
“I don’t know what I am.”
They sat across from each other on hard plastic chairs. People had tried to scratch things into the table between them, but they’d been defeated by its impenetrable surface.
“We’re going to get you bail.”
“Guys here say you never get bail for killing a white girl.”
“You didn’t kill her.”
“I don’t think that’s the point, Dad.”
“Cantor’s talking to the prosecutors. You need to keep faith.”
“In what?”
Michel had no idea.
“Are they treating you badly?” he asked.
“Mostly we just watch TV.”
“Have you seen what they’re saying about Jack?”
“There wasn’t anything on the news.”
“They’re saying he molested another girl last year and his family was forced to give her money.”
“Lexi, right?”
“Yes.”
“I wondered about that.”
“Really? Do you know anything that would be useful to us?”
“He never talked about it.”
Michel leaned forward a little and lowered his voice.
“Christopher, what happened at that house?”
“You won’t like it.”
“I know about the drugs. That doesn’t matter now.”
“No, I guess it doesn’t.”
Christopher looked at the scratches on the table. As if he was on the brink of figuring out what they were trying to say.
“We were just hanging out. As usual. The girls had these pills they wanted us to take; they said they were amazing. Jack wouldn’t, he never did drugs. I didn’t want to but Eden would’ve laughed at me if I didn’t so I palmed it and chucked it out in the bathroom later. The girls got totally wasted. It was not good. They got really sleepy but they were both fighting it and that made them into total zombies. Hannah went off somewhere to lie down and Eden passed out eventually on the sofa. I guess at some point I said something to Jack about how I really wished I knew how to be with her. I mean, I loved her, Dad. She was just…”
He lapsed into silence.
“Christopher.”
He snapped out of it.
“And then Jack said you should just go for it, man. And I’m like, what are you even talking about? She’s totally passed out by this point. He started in with all his Jack shit, about how you can’t let them call the shots, how they don’t know they want it until you give it to them.”
“And you listened to this?”
“No! But then he was like, I’ll show you. He walked over to her and I thought he was just messing around. But then he puts his hand between her legs. I mean, she was wearing pajama bottoms, they had little kitten faces on them, and he just puts his hand under them. I tell him to stop and then I grab him and suddenly she’s awake and screaming bloody murder. And then she attacks Jack, I mean, like, tries to physically kill him. He’s holding her off by her wrists and I try to get them apart and so she grabs me by the throat. Her nails are like totally digging into me. Hannah’s there by now, she gets involved. I finally break free and now Eden’s threatening Jack, telling him he’s going to pay. Hanns is totally flipping out and so Jack decides to get the hell out of there. He looks at me and says you better fucking sort this out. And then they leave.”
“What happened then?”
“I wanted to talk to her but she just closed down. She called her mom but she didn’t pick up and that sort of took it out of her. She slept for a while and I just sat there. She finally woke up and looked at me and just said Get out. Real cold, you know? So I left. I walked around a while and then I came home.”
“Christopher. Look at me.”
He did.
“Are you sure you didn’t do anything to that girl?”
He hesitated. It was for just a second. Less than a second. A fraction. But it was there, the slightest catch in the flow of time.
“I swear to God, Dad. You believe me, right?”
“Of course I do,” Michel answered.
They made him leave after that. As he drove home, he thought about his son alone in that big house with a girl he loved but couldn’t have. He remembered the way he’d acted when he arrived home at four in the morning; the look on the detective’s face when she saw the scratches on his neck. That fraction of a second just now, before he swore he’d done nothing wrong. He thought about these things but he could not think beyond them. His mind would not go to the place these thoughts wanted him to go. Because Christopher could not have done this. It was impossible.