Chapter 37

Monday was a totally mundane day. I spread the word that Vance was returning to school Wednesday morning and there was a tone in the air like we were preparing for war. After school, we had our first practice in the new gym with our new coach and it turned out to be the best practice the girls could ever remember. Having nothing to compare it to really, I was just glad it went well.

We all split up after practice and Gina drove me home, earning a speculative look from Lana and another one from Jessie.

That night I made a stir-fry for the three of us, zipping around the kitchen while I tutored Gina in the math work that was giving her problems. She was catching on and I wondered if I was just explaining it different than the teacher or if she was having less of a problem than she had told me. Emma was studying stats tonight, so she was getting a lot of my time too. I nearly burned things a couple of times as I was caught up in explaining something, but managed to complete dinner without a mishap.

When we were done eating, Gina packed up her books and gave me a lengthy and involved hug before pecking me on the cheek and thanking me for helping her.

“She didn’t seem like she needed a lot of help,” Emma commented from the table where she was still working.

“No, probably not. I think it was company she wanted more than anything. I was thinking of inviting her and Tricia to take me to see Carl tomorrow. I think he’d get a kick out of seeing me with different girls.”

She laughed. “You’re probably right.”

I kissed her and went downstairs, making sure the painting was covered before I Skyped to Tricia to ask her.

“Hey, Sweetness!” I grinned when she came onscreen.

“Hey Handsome!” she returned. “What’s up?”

“Not much. You have plans for after school tomorrow?”

“No, but I thought you had your thing at Harvard tomorrow.”

“I do, but I wanted to see if you were interested in coming with me. I’m thinking about inviting Gina too. Carl gets a bit of a charge out of seeing me with different girls.”

She giggled at that. “He’s got you pegged as a ladies man?” she asked playfully.

“Probably,” I admitted. “At this point, anything that makes him laugh is good though.”

“Okay. I’ll go,” she said brightly. We talked for another twenty minutes and then she said she had to hit the books for the night.

I went back to the painting when she was gone and I thought that I was nearly done. An hour or two of adding finishing touches and it would be ready to take for framing. I could finish it tomorrow.

Hanna showed up a little while later, reminding me that she was here to work that stretch as hard as I could take like I’d asked.

We spent the next hour on her punishing me extensively. Between grunts I asked her what equipment I could get for the garage that would help.

“I’ve been thinking of hanging a heavy bag in there for a while,” I mentioned.

“Not a bad idea, but you could get a weight bench and some free-weights too. I wouldn’t worry too much about machines unless there was a specific one you wanted for around the house.”

“Not really, but I figured I’d ask for recommendations.”

“That’s it. The bag and the weights will help with strength. Go low weight, high rep for tone and higher weight with lower reps for strength and size, just like I showed you at the gym.”

I nodded and we ran through the rest of the stretching without any issues. I still felt good and told her so. She looked relieved and patted my chest before helping me up. “So when do we start phase three of this?” I asked with a grin. She looked at me evilly and gave me a swat. I laughed and donned my robe, following her upstairs.

“Is he broken?” Emma asked from the table.

“He’s incredibly limber. I think he might have been serious when he asked when we could push to the next level,” she said and gave us both kisses before she left.

I chuckled and dropped into a chair, asking Emma if I could help. She shook her head and I kissed her deeply before returning to the basement. I figured I’d start on getting the basics for the garage gym on Friday when I had a chance to do some shopping.

I studied the painting and nodded, thinking it was almost ready. I sat down and did a pair of smaller sketches of her mother, figuring that they’d appreciate one they could have in their bedrooms or somewhere else important.

While I was doing that, I pulled out my phone and called a number I hadn’t had much reason to use. I figured it was time for an olive branch.

“Hello?” Tabby answered tentatively.

“Hi, Tabby,” I said pleasantly, sketching with my free hand. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m good, Matt,” she said guardedly. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Things are good here. Abnormal like always, but good overall. How are you two doing with exams coming up?”

“We’re doing okay. Stressing a little bit, but mostly we’re in the books every waking hour.” She was starting to relax at hearing that there was nothing wrong. It was an indication how much things had changed that we both expected conflict when we talked.

“Understandable. I don’t want to keep you too long, but I wanted to ask what you were both planning for Christmas. Are you visiting your brother? Is Collie going to visit family?”

“No, my brother’s going skiing over Christmas. A bunch of his friends are renting a chalet at some resort and throwing a big party. Collie and I were just gonna have a quiet dinner here.”

“Don’t. You should come here instead,” I told her. “I want you to come, both of you.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Things haven’t exactly been smooth between us lately.”

“Is there any better time of year to try to put those things behind us?” I asked softly. “You’re still family, Tabby-cat. I’m sorry we weren’t better at holding on to each other through all this, but you never stopped being family.”

She sniffed and when she spoke, I could tell she was crying. “I’m sorry too,” she said, choked up a little. “We’ll be there and thanks, Matt.”

“You’re ALWAYS welcome,” I said softly. “You don’t need to bring gifts or food or anything, just be here and we’ll take care of everything.”

We hung up and I was about to start on the second sketch when Emma spoke from the doorway. “That was a nice thing you just did,” she said.

I shrugged. “They’ve been on the outside looking in for too long,” I said. “We’ve been extremely bad at finding good footing since this all broke up. Christmas is a good time to mend those fences. I wish I could have you here, but I’ll settle for making sure you know I’m not gonna mope in our room while you’re gone.”

She nodded and kissed me. “Good. I was gonna talk to everyone to make sure they kept you active and out of your own head for the holidays. I’ve also been taking pictures of your artwork to show my parents. My brother won’t care. He’s a jock, but my little sister is going to adore you. I’ll have to figure out a way to keep her from trying to claim all your time next summer.”

I chuckled. “She an artist or just deeply interested in what her sister is up to?”

“A little of both. She’ll really love the fact that you can do such beautiful work, she’ll absolutely DIE when she lays eyes on you and she’s had a little bit of a thing for wanting what I have for years. It’s mostly cute, but I don’t think I’ll be particularly interested in sharing you like giving her half my chocolate bar.” She smirked. “Good thing she hates the cold or she’d want to move back out here with us in September.”

I laughed and kissed her. “So how long am I going to have to do without you keeping me warm at night?” I asked. “I know the Harvard break is a month. You taking most of it to see them?”

“Nah. I leave on the 20th since my exams are done by then. I’ll be back on the 4th. You’ll be okay. Tricia’s hatching a plan to get some time here herself so you won’t be too cold. I may even arrange for someone else to spend a little time decking your halls while I’m away.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I assured her softly and abandoned my drawing, taking her to bed instead. We made slow, gentle love that night, each of us losing ourselves in each other. When I came, she cried out with me, each of us professing our love for each other before we fell asleep.

I was going through my classes Tuesday without much thought to them when the PA called me to the office mid-morning.

I arrived, wondering what I’d done to deserve this and was shown into the conference room. Mr. Peterson was there, so was DA Forbes. That told me everything I needed to know.

“Let me guess, I’m being asked to attend the Governor’s Ball on New Years Eve?” I asked, sitting down.

“Not exactly,” DA Forbes said. “We wanted to talk to you about the Waterman brothers.”

“In what regard?” I asked guardedly. I took out my phone and started recording, setting it on the table in front of me. “What happened at Halloween happened. If Patrick and Vance Waterman decide to keep their heads down and behave, I have no reason to revisit that incident.”

“It’s ... not that incident that I was concerned about,” he said. “David told me that you’d confided in him that those boys did something far worse.”

I looked between the two of them, furious. “And what ELSE has David told you that I confided in him?” I asked, my voice cold as I stared at the principal.

“Nothing, Matt,” Mr. Peterson assured me. “I only told him because of the circumstances and because I trust him. Joshua doesn’t fish,” he told me significantly.

I nodded slowly in understanding. I was still furious with him, but saw how he felt he could trust him.

“Very well,” I said. “What would you like to know?”

“The names of the girls involved.”

“No.”

“Please,” he urged me. “We want to help. We don’t want this to go unpunished.”

“Then you shouldn’t have offered them a plea deal when you had them dead to rights,” I said impassively.

“It’s not that simple. At the time we weren’t aware of the other wrongdoing.”

“Neither was I. You’re putting me in the position where I have to choose between protecting my girls and helping you score a meaningless conviction.”

“It’s not meaningless,” he argued.

“For 3000 rapes, 60 instances of unlawful confinement, up to 400 cases of administering a drug to an unwilling participant for the purposes of subduing them, trafficking those girls for three days, robbing several of those girls of their virginity, trafficking drugs in large enough quantities to keep sixty girls high over the course of three days? How much jail time do you think they’ll serve? They’ll have their records expunged and be set free when they turn 18, right? Isn’t that normally what happens unless they cut a deal to tell you where THOSE drugs came from?”

“I understand that you’re angry,” he said. “We want to prosecute this.”

“Then leave my girls alone and follow the forensics. The party took place at Marlene Garrett’s house while her parents were out of town. Go in there and chase down the evidence. I’ll pass along your request to speak to them, but I’m going to recommend that they don’t. I don’t want them victimized by a trial.”

“It wouldn’t be like that,” he assured me. “They’re minors so their identity would be protected.”

“Would they be protected from hearing the defense painting them as whores for the jury just to generate reasonable doubt where none exists? It wouldn’t matter that they had the drugs forced on them. It would only matter that they were high at this party. That creates doubt about the integrity of their testimony. With sixty witnesses, that argument starts to fall apart, but this is your case to make. I won’t ask my girls to go through that for you.”

“You keep calling them your girls,” he said. “Are you involved with them?”

“I am, in so far as I’m protecting them. I took them to get tested for infections and for pregnancies. I paid for them to receive their HIV Antibody screening when the ninety days are up and they can do the test. I’m helping them find strength in each other and I’m helping them see that they did nothing wrong. No one else has lifted a finger to help them.”

“We would if we knew who they were,” Mr. Peterson said helplessly.

“That shouldn’t matter. There’s things you can do to help without identifying them.”

“Like what?” he asked helplessly.

“You’re aware of the problem. Organize an assembly and a rape prevention seminar. Teach the girls about how to avoid dangerous situations. Show them how to fight back, how to get help afterwards, what to do. Most of those girls didn’t know how to get tested without telling their parents what happened. All of the girls who weren’t on birth control should have had access to the ‘morning after’ pill. There should AT LEAST be information in the school for how to get checked. They didn’t know how to get help and they didn’t know who they could turn to. Get them the information, give them someone they can trust.”

“It seems to me that they do know who they could turn to,” DA Forbes said.

I shook my head. “I sought them out. Some people I’m close to were victims at that party and after opening up to me, they told me other girls needed help coping. I just brought them all together to give them each other and help them as much as I could.”

“Would you be willing to take on duties formally?” Mr. Peterson asked. “We can get you the title of peer counselor, get you a meeting room you can use to talk to the girls or anyone else who has a problem and make you the contact point for getting information like that.”

“I’m taking 20 university courses per semester, training for a charity event in April, organizing and funding a cheerleading club to replace the after school program that students felt uncomfortable participating in and balancing my own home life, weekly neurological tests, appointments with my psychiatrist and my own social life. Where do you think I’m gonna get the time to devote to that?”