Going Underground Read online

  “Fred is a good bird.” I ooch her away from the pages and she scoots down my leg to my ankle and starts picking at my sock. That’s okay. I let her eat my socks. It’s one of her favorite activities.

  The notebook paper just sits in front of me, looking blank. If I called Branson, I might tell him to stuff this whole letter thing in his ear.

  I need to make myself real. Make my situation real.

  Okay, fine. How do I get real?

  I imagine myself in this big bubble of immunity, able to say anything or do anything without being afraid. I imagine myself before all of this happened. I even picture myself talking to a whole bunch of waxy-looking big-shot types at the special legislative session. If I could still be me, the real me way down deep inside, I’d write stuff that didn’t make anybody feel happy or comfortable. I’d write …

  Dear Ms. Johnston:

  My name is Del Hartwick and I have a felony conviction. In the eyes of the law, I am a criminal. I can’t tell you I didn’t do it, because I did. I can’t tell you it was right, but I’m not sure it was wrong.

  I was fourteen years old, and my girlfriend was thirteen, just a few months younger than me. Neither of us understood about age of consent laws, or that sending each other pictures of ourselves wasn’t legal. We both wanted to be together, and we thought we were being responsible. The law says it was wrong, so I have to accept that, but I would like you to know the rest of the truth.

  I’m not what those charges say about me. I’m not anything like that.

  I’m Del.

  I’m seventeen.

  I have a parrot and a best friend and a girlfriend and a job digging graves. I have good grades and I want to be an avian vet, and maybe help my folks with the Humane Society and all their animal rescue operations.

  My life got stolen from me, and I want it back. This application means a lot to me. I’m lost in space and I want to find a way home. Nobody else can get me back to the planet, so I have to do it myself. That’s why I’m writing to you, to ask permission to apply, and to ask your help in getting a fair chance at going to college.

  My name is Cain Delano Hartwick, and I want a future. Let me apply, judge me on what I can do, and give me a chance. Please.

  I sign the letter with a big, scrawled DEL. Then I take off my sock and give it to Fred, get off the bed and go to my desk, fold up the letter, seal it in an envelope, address it, stamp it, and mark Community College off my grid for the second time. Tomorrow, I’ll let Mom mail it because it doesn’t matter, and I’m sure now that Branson knows this.

  Fred makes a fluttering noise. I brace myself. She takes off from the bed and lands easily on my shoulder a second later.

  She says, “Cerote,” then lowers her beak and neck, begging for a scratch.

  I rub one finger across the top of her head. “Turd. Yep. A great big stinky one.”

  Now

  (Now can exist without background music. I think.)

  There’s something eerie and beautiful about a campfire in a graveyard. Harper’s passed out in his house. It’s freezing outside, and it’s already dark way too early in the evening. I’ve finished my one grave, and Livia’s got the blaze built high out in the back section of the graveyard next to the house, burning up some of the wood Harper and I had stacked in big piles. Fred’s travel cage is hanging on a low branch near enough to the fire to keep her warm, but far enough away to keep her safe. She’s staring at the fire and making crazy whistles.

  Livia’s wearing a black sweater and jeans and black gloves. Her hair’s loose around her shoulders to keep her ears warm. She’s eating the last of the hot dogs she brought us, and she’s already pushed the little picnic basket off of our quilt so there’s nothing between us.

  “Isn’t the moon beautiful tonight?” She wipes her gloves on a paper towel, balls up the towel and pitches it into the fire to make a flare, then stares at the star-filled sky again. “It looks like a round piece of ice.”

  Her breath ribbons into the darkness when she talks, joining the fire’s smoke. I could stare at her forever.

  You’re all I’ve ever wanted, but I’m terrified of you.…

  A line from “Dracula’s Wedding,” by Outkast. I make myself quit thinking about it because I’m trying not to hide in my music.

  Still, here in front of all the crackling flames and smoke, under the ice moon, those words seem perfect, and Livia’s perfect, but I have to stop it all, stop everything tonight, even though I’m not sure why—just instinct that I’ve let it go on long enough. I’m feeling numb from all the digging and the cold, even though I’m sitting a few feet from the fire and right next to the smartest, prettiest, nicest girl in history. Maybe I’m just getting ready for what it’s going to feel like when she’s done with me, when I have to watch her walk away, get in her car, and drive down the dark road.

  “I have to keep track of the time.” She glances at her watch. “Dad’s coming home from work early because of a staff meeting. I want to get to the house before he does.”

  She reaches out one gloved hand. I take it, feeling the warm leather against my cold skin. “Okay. This probably won’t take long, anyway.”

  Her smile fixes on her face, then it slides away, and I know she knows I’m going to try, and that tonight, she has to listen.

  Terrified of you …

  My insides try to lock up, but I make myself keep breathing. No panicking. No backing out. It’s only words. I need to say them and be done with it.

  “What happened when I was fourteen, it wasn’t ugly, but it sounds ugly.” I look away from Livia and into the fire. Fred whistles at the flames, then she whistles at me, and I can feel her getting nervous because I’m so nervous. “People made it ugly, anyway.”

  Livia squeezes my fingers. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I do. You know I do. It’s way past time.”

  She stops talking. Closes her eyes and breathes. Then she leans toward me and kisses me just once, fast, and for a second, her face is an inch from mine and she’s the only thing in the universe. I can’t believe I ever got to have her, even for this long minute in my life.

  Fred fire-alarm shrills, and we both jump.

  When my pulse slows back down to normal, or as normal as it’s going to get talking about all this mess, I try to get started. “I had a girlfriend named Cory, and she was younger than me. Just a few months.”

  Livia counts out loud. “You told me your birthday. I’m four weeks and two days younger. September thirtieth for me.”

  “Cory’s birthday was October eighteenth.”

  “Virgo and Libra.” Livia’s face seems to glow in the orange firelight. She has to be nervous because she never talks about stuff like zodiac signs. “Are we a lot different, Cory and me?”

  “Well, yeah, in lots of ways.” Why didn’t it occur to me that Livia would want to know about Cory? Stupid. I should have thought more about this. “She was pretty. You … you’re beautiful.” I don’t like the comparing, but Livia seems to need to know, so I keep trying. “She was into sports and singing, and you’re into art and writing. I liked her, but we were, you know, really young and stuff. I like you in different ways. With you and me, everything’s deeper.”

  I think I love you.

  That’s probably a line from a song, or a lot of songs, but tonight, it’s all mine. I just wrote it in my own head, and I mean it. I told Cory that, but I didn’t know, not then. I didn’t know about feeling like this.

  Livia stands up in one fast, fluid motion, like a dancer about to run across the stage and leap into the air.

  I get up, too, ignoring Fred’s alarm screech.

  The change makes my brain spin for a second, and I have to take a few seconds to get a grip. Fred and the fire on my left, Livia on my right, and not far away, Harper’s house, dark in all the windows. The graveyard stretches in all directions from our quilt. The moon’s still one big round piece of ice over our heads.

  Livia clenches her hands tog
ether, but when I move toward her, she steps back. “No. Go on. Tell me and get it over with so we can both stop worrying about it, okay?”

  I spend a little time fishing around for phrases and descriptions, since I don’t have any of this rehearsed. I should have rehearsed a thousand times, but I couldn’t, so I’m just standing here being a giant jackass about it all again.

  Get. Over. It.

  “Cory and I were getting serious with each other, and we—you know, we did some stuff together.”

  “How much stuff?” Livia’s frown mixes in with the shadows from the night and the fire.

  “She texted me a picture of herself naked, and I sent her one of me.” Shit, this is embarrassing, and right this second I hate all the coaches from Good-bye Night and all the detectives at the police station and every lawyer and especially William Kaison for making me have to tell anybody this. Ever. Stuff like this should be private for always, unless a person wants to share it.

  Share, Del. Share it all.

  My shrug muscle’s trying to fire but I’m holding it back for now. “We kissed and made out a few times.”

  Livia’s waiting for the bad stuff, and I’m trying to figure out how to explain that she just heard the bad stuff, as far as Kaison and the law were concerned.

  Before I get hold of what to say next, a quiet voice behind me says, “Why her, Del? Is it because she’s older?”

  I spin so fast I get goofy in the head again, and suddenly I’m face-to-face with Cherie, only that’s disorienting, too, because she’s got on jeans and a white sweater and no weird makeup, and she looks … normal.

  “She’s definitely prettier.” Cherie looks past me at Livia. “Livia, right? I asked around until I figured out your name. Too bad about your sister and all that. That must have been total hell.”

  I hear Livia’s quick breath, but I can’t see her, and I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. “Cherie—”

  “Del’s a convicted rapist.” Cherie’s too-black hair looks like night shadows clinging to her head. “Did you know that, Livia?”

  The words fall out of Cherie’s mouth like a body dumped from a casket, thumping on the ground, still and cold and too horrible to look at.

  I manage to turn until I can see Livia, too, but she’s gone frozen. She can’t talk or say anything or do anything but blink. I can’t say anything, either. I feel like my heart’s getting staked and I’ll be a dead body, too, and maybe that’s better than trying to stay alive through the rest of this, because Cherie’s not finished.

  “You’re not from here, so you probably don’t know, but Del went to jail for three counts of rape of a child, and for making and receiving child pornography.”

  Cherie glances at me, and I think I’m expecting all this rage, but she looks scared. Sort of confused. I wish I could be mad. I know I should be furious; I know I should want to punch her right in the face, but really, I just want to find my jacket, wrap it around her, and send her home.

  “I see.” Livia’s voice has turned to stone. Her face has turned into a marble monument of the fairy girl she used to be. Her words come out steady, but her hands are shaking, and she’s not looking at me.

  Does she want to scrub me off her, to shower and run water in her ears until even the memory of talking to me is gone? This is my fault for not just wearing a damned sign around my neck to get the labeling over with. Rapist. Pornographer. Worse than any graveyard or dead body. I feel numb and cold, and I know for sure now, I’m the biggest chickenshit in the entire universe.

  “It’s not like it sounds,” I say to Cherie. “You know it’s not.”

  “It is what it is,” Cherie shoots back. “You should have told Livia what she was getting into. She didn’t know. I did, and I liked you, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry I don’t have feelings for you.” Am I really saying this in front of Livia? Shit. “I’m sorry I hurt you and got you in trouble with your parents. This isn’t the way to handle it.”

  Cherie just glares. “Piss off.”

  “May I speak to you?” Livia’s question cuts through everything, each word a silent silver blade flashing through the darkness. “Inside?”

  Before I can answer her, she says to Cherie, “Thanks for doing what you thought was right, if that’s what you just did.”

  Cherie tries to give her the same piss-off look she gave me, but the expression dies halfway formed. Something in Livia’s steady gaze killed it, just like it’s killing Cherie’s temper and her mouth and whatever part of my heart’s still left alive.

  “Whatever!” Cherie storms away from us into the graveyard, kicking divots of grass with each thumping step.

  I think about telling her that the road’s back the other way, but she knows her way around this place well enough, and Livia’s walking toward Harper’s dark house.

  I follow her.

  It’s not locked, and a few seconds later, we’re in Harper’s living room with a single lamp making the only light between us. Harper’s probably out cold in the bedroom. I don’t know because the door’s shut, and for now, Livia and I are alone and she’s looking at me.

  Not yelling.

  Not crying.

  Not reaching out for me or touching me or giving me any hint this is going to be okay, but she’s … here. In front of me.

  She’s giving me a chance.

  I’m melting.

  Maybe numb and cold were better, because melting makes me start to shake. It makes hot dogs flood back up my throat, bitter in my mouth as I fumble around, getting back to where I left off before this chance goes poof and Livia goes poof, too.

  “Cory and I made out three times and sent each other naked pictures of ourselves—just one each, I mean. It was right before high school started.”

  Livia keeps very still, like she’s waiting for the really bad thing, how I lost it, how I held down my girlfriend and forced her to have sex against her will and beat her. Or maybe how I got it on with her little sister or some other baby or kid—I mean, rape of a child, right? It’s horrible. It’s got to be horrible.

  “In this state, the official age of consent is sixteen, but it’s not that simple. If teenagers have sex, they both have to be at least fourteen.” I keep my eyes on hers, watching for any change or flicker. “So when Cory and I made out and I touched her in a sexual way, by law, I committed rape of a child. Three times. The law doesn’t care that I was only a few months older than her, or that she wanted me to touch her.”

  Nothing from Livia.

  Nothing at all.

  She’s still waiting, then she latches onto everything I just said. Her eyebrows lift, breaking that awful stone expression. “You … never had actual sex?”

  I shake my head.

  “Oral?” Livia’s arms have loosened up despite the question she just asked.

  “No. Just touching. Fingers. That’s it.” God, I can’t believe we’re having this discussion, but thanks to Kaison, this is my life now. All about sex one way or another, even if it’s something I’ve never gotten to enjoy.

  Livia’s fallen into Kaison’s sex mud-puddle with me, because she’s still asking questions. “And she wanted it? Cory. She wanted what you did?”

  My face turns red-hot, but I manage to nod. “It was her idea. So were the pictures. We thought they were okay because they weren’t really sex—we thought they were better. But because we were under eighteen when we took the pictures, the law says we made child pornography. When we sent them to each other, we distributed child pornography. Because I kept the picture she sent, I was in possession of child pornography. She didn’t get charged, since she wasn’t old enough to agree to anything. I’m kind of glad about that.”

  Now she remembers the news stories. Now she knows. I can tell by the fast switch on her face, the jaw loosening, the way she’s looking at me now. I’ve seen that look before, a lot of times. “The Duke’s Ridge Eight. You had some friends—”

  “Yeah. They took some pictures, too.” I fold my arms and
shiver. Harper’s house is cold, probably because he gets drunk and forgets to turn on the heat. “We got caught with them at a city league sleepover, and the coaches turned them in to the police. Nobody else admitted to having sex or doing sexual stuff, so they’re just stuck with the porn charges.”

  Livia seems to be winding down as I crank to the extreme, wanting to crawl out of my own skin and bones and just … leave. Jump up and down. Yell and bang my head on the wall.

  “Did you really go to jail, Del?” Like she’s ticking down a list of what’s real and what’s Cherie’s bullshit. The sad thing is, it’s all real, and it’s all bullshit, too.

  “The lawyer my parents hired advised us to sign the confession to keep it in Juvenile and cut my sentence.” I keep staring at Livia, but her face doesn’t change. For a wild second or two, I feel like I’m writing to the colleges, putting mechanical words on paper that nobody will bother reading, not once they see what kind of convictions I have.

  “You didn’t know about the rest. About what would come later.” Livia says this with sympathy shining in her face like the ice moon glowing in the dark sky outside.

  “With all the craziness, my parents and I didn’t realize that even though my record will get sealed when I turn eighteen, I’ll still have to register as a sex offender forever, at least in this state. In most states. So it won’t be over.” Now I have to look away from her at the stack of beer cans taking up the far right corner of Harper’s little living room. “It’ll never really be over.”

  “You—” Livia starts. Stops. Her voice snatches my attention right back from the beer cans. “Forever.” She shakes her head. “For making out with your girlfriend and getting a sext from her?”

  “And sexting her once.” Yes, Del, by all means, let’s get every detail correct.

  This time, the silence goes on for a while. Livia’s throat works without making any words, and her dark eyes just keep studying me like she’s about to find some major clue or answer that’ll make everything I told her make sense.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” She’s smiling as she says this, and I can’t tell if she’s serious, or seriously pissed. “I can’t believe it’s true.”