Going Underground Page 22

  My audience.

  And I don’t have my notes.

  I don’t even bother glancing over my shoulder at the door behind me, because people are all I’ll see. All of them probably hate me or disagree with me, or they’re busy making assumptions. Well, not all of them. Cherie’s there with her posse.

  Branson comes up beside me for a second, but he stops to speak with a sharp-looking woman in a dark suit. She’s got dark, angry eyes, and her face kind of reminds me of Fred’s—fixed and hard, yet with a secret smile only a few people will ever learn to notice.

  Seconds later, I’m seated with Branson and Mom and Dad behind me, and Branson’s CD player at my feet. No notes, but there’s music even though I’m not sure I’m allowed to play it. Branson thought it was unusual, but he also thought it was “me,” so he helped me out on that part.

  The clock is moving.

  I’m not talking.

  Get off your ass, Del.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  I focus on the bored, irritated people, pretending nobody else is in the room. “I …”

  All the faces looking at me from the front. From the sides. From the back. I feel them even though I’m trying to ignore them. From somewhere, I smell french fries, of all things. That’s just absurd enough to help me choke out the first sentence.

  “I didn’t want to come here today.”

  The bored, irritated people in front of me, the ones in the suits, the ones with the votes—they wait. I think they’re assuming I’m about to tell them who forced me to come.

  Run, my brain informs me, but I ignore that and try again.

  “I didn’t want to come here today because I’ve never known how to talk about this, and I still don’t. I don’t know how to find the words to tell you what happened to me because of the laws, and how the laws are written, and how they affect people my age.”

  I smile.

  My audience doesn’t.

  Pick out somebody friendly. That was Dr. Mote’s advice.

  Right.

  I’m staring at the zombie legislature from hell. Some of these people look so old they might have died last week and somebody forgot to wheel them out. Two of them are sleeping. One’s scratching his nose. The nine or ten women, most of them pucker like they ate lemons just to get ready for me.

  I pick out the meanest-looking lemon sucker, the one right up front with the flat face and black skirt and jacket, and the black hair pulled back so tight her eyes slant toward the ceiling. She feels enough like Kaison to do the trick.

  “When I was fourteen,” I tell her, only I’m really talking to Kaison—or at least a version of him with his hands cuffed and his mouth gagged, duct taped to his chair so he can’t do anything to stop me or hurt me, “I had a girlfriend a few months younger than me, and we thought about sex and made decisions we thought were responsible. We didn’t take chances with pregnancy or diseases, and we tried to stay within what we thought was right, in our parents’ opinions, and in our God’s opinion, and in the end, in our opinion.”

  Just not in yours, right, lemon sucker?

  I’m sweating, and she’s still got a flat face with absolutely no expression at all. Maybe she’s related to Kaison.

  “We found out later that it wasn’t right in the law’s opinion,” I tell her, determined if nobody else hears me, at least she will. “Because I was over fourteen and my girlfriend wasn’t, everything we did was wrong. Or it got made wrong. That part’s hard to keep up with. It’s never made any sense to me.”

  Lemon sucker goes even more sour, and my heart starts bumping the bottom of my throat. I think about my notes outside. Did I say it better in the thousand sentences I scribbled?

  Probably.

  “What does make sense is this: I was a straight-A student and an athlete, and I had a great girlfriend and a lot of friends. I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a soldier. I never broke any laws, not that I knew about, and I still don’t. Now, I can’t be any of the things I planned to be. Since I’ve gotten older, I started wanting to be an avian vet, and I can’t do that, either.”

  Now I look at my hands, because lemon sucker and all the other sleeping, nose-scratching sour faces are getting to be too much for me. I can’t believe these people have control of my future.

  “I’ve applied to twenty-seven colleges, community colleges, and even some night schools. Even though I’m eighth in my class with all As and Bs, I’ve got a steady job, and I scored in the ninety-fifth percentile on my entrance exams, all of my applications have been turned down. I have to register as a sex offender for the rest of my life, in most states. I’m not allowed to play on sports teams or go anywhere kids might hang out—even though I’m not that old. I haven’t used a cell phone or the computer unsupervised in three years. Some parts of normal life—a lot of parts—are closed off to me, maybe forever. All I’ve had for three years is time and uncertainty and music. Music helped me relax and believe. It helped me keep dreaming.”

  I think about my iPod and my music, and now I’m talking to that and maybe to Dr. Mote in my head, and the sour-faced lemon suckers don’t even exist anymore.

  “Music helped me keep dreaming even though I’m a weight on my family and my best friend, and on any girl who might be nice enough to give me a chance. I don’t know how I’m going to stop being a weight. I don’t know how I’m going to make it without food stamps and public assistance, because the only job I’ve been able to get doesn’t pay enough to live in today’s world.”

  Deep breath. Don’t stop now.

  “All of this happened because I was fourteen and did some things with my girlfriend who was a few months younger than me and who wanted to do them, too. Because of that, my personhood got revoked. I got kicked out of society. It felt like getting kicked off the world.”

  The clock’s ticking down, and when I look up, my audience looks bored.

  Are they even listening?

  “When you are lost in space, the world seems bright and vibrant and magical, but too far away to touch.”

  Done. Thank God. I did it. I talked to them even if they didn’t care.

  My knees feel weak as I stand and pick up the CD player Branson brought in for me. I put it on the table beside me, and my finger hovers over the button, and I almost press it. I check the lights to be sure the battery’s working.

  Why am I not pushing the button?

  This was my big plan. Say what I had to say, then screw their question-and-answer session. Just leave them with the music.

  Somebody on the zombie panel clears their throat.

  Push the button.

  It doesn’t feel right.

  I still listen to music. I still want my music. But I’m not sure I want it like this.

  I put the CD player back down. From behind me, I hear Branson shift in his seat, surprised, but I don’t look at him. I make myself face the zombies again.

  “When you are lost in space, it’s like living in an alternative rock song, in the soundtrack of some cheesy artsy movie that makes people wonder about the point of life. I was going to play you a song so you could hear how I’ve felt, and I was going to leave before the question-and-answer, but I don’t think that’s the way to go now. It seems too much like the guy I used to be, not the guy I’m trying to become.”

  Lemon sucker’s looking at the CD player like it’s a bomb, but a few of them seem mildly surprised.

  “I need a chance,” I tell these people who aren’t listening. “I need a future. More than anything, I need the past to be over.”

  I hear Mom make a noise. It’s just a little sniff, but I know it’s her.

  I give my state legislature one last look, and I sit back down and put the CD player on the floor. “If you have questions for me, that’s why I’m here. I want to answer, so maybe you can change the laws and never let the state or a DA or anybody else do this to somebody else’s life.”

  There’s silence. A lot of silence.

  Then lemon face asks, “Y
ou say this girl was only thirteen?”

  I keep my hands folded in my lap and sit up straight, chin out, eyes focused directly on her wrinkly puckered cheeks. “Yes, ma’am, and I was only fourteen.”

  “And you touched her. And she wanted you to touch her.”

  “It was mutual, ma’am. We planned everything we did together.”

  This is about as much fun as a strip-search, but I think about Fred and everything she must have gone through out in the icy cold by herself. I can be as strong as my parrot, right?

  The questions keep coming.

  Did your parents know?

  Did her parents know?

  Tell us what happened with the phone.

  Naked pictures?

  What part of your anatomy did you photograph?

  I answer everything without being sarcastic or asking if any of these people ever really were fourteen, or if they got hatched all ancient and stuck-up from alien eggs or something. Thinking about Livia helps. Her “strong” look. The way she always smiled at me, like We’ll see, whenever I tried to put her off. She could do this. I can do this, too.

  Why did you keep the girl’s picture on your phone?

  Did you look at it often?

  Did you get sexual gratification from looking at the picture?

  It goes on and on. They comb through every word, every whisper, every photo and embarrassing detail, even more than the police did. It’s being recorded. It’ll probably be on television or the Internet. Livia might see it. Cory might see it, or Marvin, or any of my old friends, and I hope I’m telling it like they’d want it told. No matter, I’m telling the truth, all of it, because it makes me feel better about myself even if it doesn’t get me anything else.

  An hour later, my brain’s turning to oatmeal and my words are coming out hoarse, but I keep answering every question, no matter how small or stupid or humiliating, until lemon face says, “Thank you, young man. That’ll be all.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” I get up, step away from the table, and head for the aisle.

  Branson makes a move, and I hear the clatter of the CD player as he picks it up and pulls it to him. As I draw even with him, he lifts the player almost like a salute, and he pushes play.

  A quiet Cat Stevens song fills the chamber.

  Trouble

  They probably won’t get it, I think as I walk slowly down the aisle toward the exit, hearing the rustle of my parents moving behind me. A glance to my left tells me Cherie gets it. She gives me a giant, genuine smile and thumbs-up as the song plays:

  I have paid my debt

  Now won’t you leave me in my misery

  I’m sweating and shaking as I shove through the leather- (or vinyl-) covered doors into the hot-cold hallway. If I’d eaten anything in the last three hours, I’d puke it up.

  I can’t believe the questions they asked me. I really can’t believe I answered them in front of God, everybody, and my parents. I can’t believe Branson actually turned on that CD player in our state’s legislature.

  My notes are still sitting on the bench, so I gather them up without turning around. When I do finally manage to face two of my biggest supporters, Dad’s got his arms folded.

  I wait.

  He stares at me.

  Then he says, “I’m hungry. Want to hit the first burger joint we pass?”

  My smile hits fast, because that’s Dad for, I’m fine with you, and it’s the most normal moment I’ve had in months.

  Mom can’t let it go at that. She has to wrap me up in both arms and say, “I’m proud of you. That had to be—I’m just—I’m proud.”

  Great.

  Now, instead of burgers, I have to think about not crying like a little kid, because I don’t think I’ve heard her say that since I was fourteen years old and still playing baseball and kissing Cory Wentworth.

  I hold it together. Barely. And she finally lets me go, but she touches my face like she’s measuring me and noticing, all of a sudden, how much I’ve grown since I was five or six or eight years old. She has tears in her eyes, and I have zero idea what she’s about to say. Please don’t let it be something sappy and sob yanking. Please.

  She opts for nothing, and nothing is fine.

  Dad follows behind, and I swear I can still hear Branson playing my music somewhere in the depths of the statehouse hearing room.

  Chapter One

  If I’d known beating up a dead guy in a pine box, then talking to a bunch of even more dead-looking people from the government would earn me a good recommendation from my probation officer and get me discharged from psychotherapy, I might have tried all that sooner.

  Okay, no. Not really. But it was still weird, saying good-bye to Dr. Mote and to Branson, too. I got my walking papers from probation two weeks after my birthday, about three months after graduation.

  Who am I?

  I’m Del Hartwick, high school graduate, graveyard owner, and guy still looking for a way to keep this little foothold I’ve managed to gain on planet Earth.

  Why am I here?

  Because this is my graveyard and I’ve got a grave to dig, already in progress. All right, all right, and because it’s September thirtieth, and I’m … hoping. Stupid as it sounds, I’m hoping.

  What’s the point?

  I’m starting to think I’ll get the answer to this one when I’m eighty or one hundred. I’ll let you know.

  Fred gives me a fire-alarm screech from her cage on the tree branch just as somebody says, “You’re still really good at that grave-digging thing.”

  Deep voice. Not the voice I wanted to hear.

  “Thanks,” I tell Branson as I put down my shovel. “I think.”

  I’m about to ask him if he wants a piss sample just for old time’s sake, but when I turn around, I realize he’s got somebody with him. A woman. A woman holding a battered piece of paper. She looks familiar and sort of intense, with her dark eyes and the way her face has no expression at all.

  Was she at the legislative hearings? Did I see her there—and was it before or after I had to talk about exactly how my penis looked in the photo I took?

  Heat creeps up my neck, threatening to turn my cheeks an even deeper shade of red than the digging already accomplished. I get out of the grave I’m hollowing out in Harper’s Dogwood Section, too far from the main drive to hear cars. Behind Branson and the woman he brought to Rock Hill, I see funeral home staff taking up chair drapes from the service this morning. I’ll need to finish filling in Mrs. Ammonson’s grave, making it perfectly even and flat, so I can lay the turf back down with no ripples. Some of the ferns and other stuff Mr. Ammonson left at the plot, I’ll plant around the headstone after Mom tells me which ones will survive in our climate. The ones that won’t survive, I’ll send over to Duke’s Ridge Nursing Home, because a lot of the patients there love having plants to tend in their rooms. The flowers I’ll move on top of the grave and leave them until they die, then clean them up and mail Mr. Ammonson any angels or doves or permanent parts of the arrangements.

  There’s nobody else around. Nobody at all, even though it’s September thirtieth. I can’t help the sadness growing way down deep, but I can put it off a while to be polite. I hope.

  I dust off my hands, expecting Branson to introduce me to his friend, but he opens with, “It passed, Del.”

  Dust forms a thin brown cloud in the sunlight between us. I stop moving my hands. I think I heard him correctly, but I’m not letting myself believe it or even trying to understand what it means.

  “Romeo and Juliet passed—and it’s retroactive.” Branson’s words come out fast and happy, and then he does something I’ve rarely seen him do.

  He smiles.

  And just like that, half the nightmare of Good-bye Night finally comes to an end. What happened between me and Cory—not illegal, since we were more or less the same age and both of us wanted to do what we did.

  It’s real but it doesn’t feel real. Not yet.

  “I’m not a rapist any
more?” I know the question sounds stupid, but I ask Branson, anyway, because my heart’s speeding up and my breath’s coming fast, and I just need to hear it directly, and from him.

  His smile never fades as he reaches out and claps one big, strong hand on my shoulder. “You never were a rapist, Del. Now the law agrees with me.”

  I look at the woman with him, the woman I don’t even know, and I tell her, “I’m not a rapist.”

  My head feels like a balloon, detaching from my neck and lifting toward the blue sky on a string.

  “The sexting’s still a problem,” Branson says, letting go of my shoulder. “There’s another law pending to turn that into a misdemeanor instead of a felony, but right now it’s on hold because it conflicts with federal child porn laws, and nobody knows how that’s going to work out.”

  I’m still Mr. Happy Balloon, way above the graveyard looking down. “So I still have to register as a sex offender for the pornography convictions.”

  Should be a downer, but it’s not because I’m high on I am not a rapist.

  “Yes. I’m sorry.” Branson’s smile falters. “Until you’re forty-five years old in this state, and some other states, forever—but give it a year, maybe two, and maybe that’ll change.”

  “You’re an optimist.” I’m not a rapist. I’m not a rapist!

  “Somebody has to be.” Branson finally notices how I keep looking at his lady friend, and he does the gentleman thing with, “Del Hartwick, I’d like you to meet Danita Johnston. Ms. Johnston, Del Hartwick.”

  Ms. Johnston grips her piece of paper in her left hand and shakes with her right. Firm grip. Very direct stare. “Congratulations on the law passing, Mr. Hartwick. That does make things easier.”

  I’m giddy, but I’m with it enough to wonder, Easier for who? How? “I think I saw you at the hearings.” Remembering now. I thought she had a secret parrot smile. “You were there, weren’t you?”

  “I was.” And she does have a secret parrot smile. It’s so small nobody but a parrot nut would even notice it on her otherwise hard, immobile face. “I’m with Community College, Mr. Hartwick. I’m director of Admissions, and I went to those hearings to see if this boy was for real.”