Chapter 135: Confession is Good for the Soul

Saturday, May 19, 1984

Just after an early lunch, we visited the RV place again, put down a deposit on it, and made reservations.

A&M wouldn’t start classes until August 27th. We planned to move into the house one to two weeks earlier, settling in no later than the weekend of the 18th and 19th. With Nationals running June 21st-24th, that gave us just under two months. We could return the RV before Fish Camp or keep it for a bit of late traveling.

We made two reservations — one June 25th through August 17th, and one for two weeks starting June 2nd through June 18th. If we hated the RV, we could cancel the long reservation with no penalty when we returned it from the first short trip, or change models, or ... whatever.

Between Memorial Day and the second, we would get Cammie settled in College Station, if she decided to move. We might move some of our stuff up there, too. And, of course, we could meet in-person with the contractors and architects.

There was also Angie’s birthday to be considered. We’d have that with Mom and Dad, back in Houston, of course.

That meant we had to get a lot done in a hurry, but we were up to it. The biggest priority would be finalizing the tow car.

After we’d completed things at the RV place, all of us agreed on the next errand, which wasn’t an errand at all. It was time to see what we could find out from Cindy Baird, if we could find out anything.

She was hardly a friend, of course, and not someone we could just drop in on. We’d parted on poor terms, after all.

Instead, I phoned, using the phone at Jasmine’s house. Camille was out, so we had a fair bit of privacy.

I’d been afraid that her parents would ask about a boy calling her, but they just called her to the phone. I took a deep breath while waiting. Here went nothing, perhaps?

“Hello?” Cindy said.

“Hello,” I said. “I’m hoping you’ll talk to me. This is Steve Marshall.”

There was an intake of breath, and then an almost dead silence.

I waited, and after a long pause, she said, in a hushed tone, “What ... why ... why are you calling?”

I’d half-expected her to sound hostile, but she didn’t. It was half confusion, half defensiveness, if I had to judge.

“There was a party held just down the street from your house in February...”

“Stop,” she said, quietly but firmly. Then her voice went down to what was clearly a whisper. “I can’t talk about this on the phone.”

“Okay,” I said, drawing it out slightly. Curiouser and curiouser.

“I ... um ... I could meet you at the park next to the library in ... half an hour?”

“I can do that.”

“J ... just you ... please,” she said.

“I can do that, too.”

She hung up.

I turned to look at three very curious faces.

“What just happened?!” Angie said.

I explained what she’d said.

“Obviously, her parents were listening,” Jas said.

“But they wouldn’t be bothered by her turning Cammie in. They’d love that,” Angie said.

“But ... what if they didn’t know their neighbors had a party for gay kids?” Jas said. “And Cindy ... hypothetically ... didn’t want them to know?”

“That would explain it,” Paige said. “So would her having been abducted by space aliens and having her brain rewired, though.”

That got a chuckle.

“Seriously,” Paige continued, “I mean ... actually ... that came out wrong. It sounds plausible, it’s just ... it’s plausible, but it’s way out of character.”

“The character that we knew,” Jas said. “The last time any of us laid eyes on Cindy, you two were dating boys and I hadn’t flipped out for a summer.”

“That does kinda put how long it’s been into perspective,” Paige said, nodding, with Angie nodding along.

We continued to talk about it, but no one had any ideas. We headed over to the library next to the park a bit early. The girls went into the library, and I headed over to the park, taking a bench away from the kids’ play area but near the street. I wanted to look as non-threatening as possible. Compared to Cindy, I was a fairly big guy (if still only a shadow of my first-life self).

Cindy appeared not long after, riding a bicycle. She stopped and said, “Let’s move back there,” pointing to a bench much further back and facing away from the road.

“Okay,” I said, surprised.

We moved. I sat at one end of the bench, somewhat turned, and she sat at the other. We weren’t at complete pains to give each other space, but it was close.

“So...” she said.

“You knew what I was referring to,” I said.

She hesitated, then said, “I didn’t do it.”

I blinked. “What are you thinking...”

“Cammie. I didn’t do anything to her. With the picture, I mean. I didn’t. Until now I didn’t even know if something had happened, but if you know there was a party, and you’re calling me, you know there was a picture.”

I blinked again. “You could’ve denied it.”

“‘Thou shalt not bear false witness,’” she said, then looked down. “Yeah, fine. I’m not that good of a Christian. It’s just ... I didn’t.”

“But you were involved.”

She sighed, then said, “Yeah. I was involved. I took the stupid picture. That’s totally on me, and I regret it, now.”

She paused, but then went on, asking, “Cammie’s all right?”

“It was a very close thing in places, but yes, she’s all right,” I said, nodding.

She sighed. “Let me explain, okay?”

“The floor is yours.”

She smiled, slightly. “First ... look. I want to apologize about the whole Student Council thing. I was a bitch. Life’s not black and white, and I ... I was just...”

She paused, then said, “Lizzie and Janet tried to be nice to me. I nearly ripped Lizzie’s throat out from day one, though, but Janet tried. Cammie tried. You tried, you really did. I was way out of line. It’s not the way a Christian should behave.”

“For my part, I forgive you,” I said. “And I mean that.”

She nodded. “Thank you. I believe you. It’s ... the party...”

She hesitated, tapped a toe, then said, “They’ve had a few. At first it was just ... odd. You know, some boys come over, some girls come over, but it’s never couples. Okay, so, girls go to parties together all the time, for safety, right? And guys might not have a date. But ... well, I’m not that naive. Two by two, always boys or girls, never boys with girls. Cammie wasn’t the first one I saw kissing outside. I was ... mostly, I was just curious. It shocked me, with her. I had no idea! She was dating that big linebacker and seemed really serious about it. I had my camera because ... I’d gotten it out for a couple of the parties. Curiosity, that’s all.”

I almost said something, but waited. She gave me a grateful look.

“I made two sets because it’s just a buck more, so I always make two sets. I’d put them away, though. Everything was fine until after Spring Break. Ryan came home, and that was...”

She hesitated a lot longer.

“He’s a creep. Some girls told me that while I was at Memorial, and I thought it was just vicious gossip then, but he’s just ... creepy. I know I don’t even vaguely meet his standards. I want more than being barefoot and pregnant and walking two steps behind — all that stuff.”

I nodded.

“Anyway, two days after he left, I went into my desk drawer and noticed things were moved around. I didn’t see anything missing, so I just figured creepy Ryan had been snooping. Which, he had, but I didn’t figure out how much until weeks later.”

I nodded again.

She took a deep breath, then said, “He took the second copy of the picture of Cammie. And ... Melanie, right?”

“Melissa.”

“Melissa, right. I don’t know her that well. Obviously! She’d kill me now, I’m sure. Anyway... he knew Cammie, and he ... he called me in early April and threatened to rat me out to Mom and Dad, and said that he’d ‘Put her in her place’ and that he was thinking of ‘putting me in my place,’ too. It had to be the damn pictures. That’s when I found out a few were missing.”

I just kept nodding. What else was I going to do?

“I ... well, I called Cammie, and the phone just rang. That made me worried. I got rid of the pictures — they’re gone, destroyed. All of them, even the negatives. Anyway, a few days later, a friend at Memorial told me Cammie had missed a week and then was back, so I felt a bit relieved, except ... she missed a week right when the picture was out there. There had to be a connection.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I didn’t do it. Except, I mean, I caused it. There’s no way that I can make amends, but I’m so sorry. I was just being a snoop, and dumb, and ... I’m so sorry, but ... the way you said it, it was bad, right?”

“It was bad. In a way, it’s still bad, but I’m... I won’t put that on you. Cammie was going to have to tell them sooner or later. It was much worse that it happened before she was eighteen, but ... if you’d sent them in February, it would’ve been much worse.”

She sighed. “I feel so dumb. Ryan pushed me hard to file that protest. He was graduating and didn’t have a vote, and I did, so it made sense ... and our minister was all ‘the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah!’ about it, and ... I did. Plus, you were an easy target to upset me, with all of the girls, but ... I know more about that now. Then I heard your minister and I thought, ‘I like this guy! He sounds way more like what I believe!’ But it was ... just ... too late. I’d burned all of my bridges. We’d talked down Memorial, and my parents thought the School Board had ‘abandoned morality,’ so I went off to a parochial school, where the people are all holier than thou in public and ... well, some of them aren’t two-faced.”

“About all I can say right now is that I can pass on that you’re sorry. Cammie doesn’t know. Some others know...”

“Jasmine and Angie.”

I nodded. “And one more, but she won’t say anything.”

“Not for me to gripe about, I guess.”

“Obviously, we can’t do anything. Not to you, not to Ryan, whatever. He just mailed a picture. You just took a picture. No crime there, and not something we could really, you know, picket your house about, or get your parents mad, or ... whatever. We just wanted to know.”

She nodded. “You’re better people than Ryan. Ryan takes revenge on people. Things would happen. You’d get a free subscription to every magazine in the world just to start, maybe. Especially the embarrassing ones.”