Chapter 7: Arrested

IT WAS A short ride to the station. It’s not a big town. I was led to a small room. Somehow, I had my wits enough around me to realize I needed help.

“I want a lawyer. I want to call my parents.”

The cops led me to a hall phone and I called. The next thing I heard was my mother screaming and crying over the phone. Then Dad came on the line.

“Dad, I need help! I didn’t do it!” He listened and told me to sit tight.

A couple of hours later Dad and our attorney showed up. It was the longest two hours of my life. The cops weren’t friendly, but they weren’t hostile, either. I knew a couple of them. One had been our soccer coach in grade school. The other was the father of a classmate. They let me have water, and they’d taken the cuffs off as soon as I was put in a cell. I was alone, but the drunk tank at the end of the hall seemed to have plenty of occupants.

I was taken to another room alone with our attorney.

“OK, Christopher, relax and tell me what happened.”

I looked around. “Are you sure they aren’t listening?”

“They’d better not be. Anything they hear they can’t use in court, if it comes to that.”

“Will it, Mr. Robinson? Go to court, I mean?”

The attorney shrugged.

“I don’t know, Christopher. It depends on what Ellie’s exam shows, for one thing.” He stopped. “Christopher, I’ve known you since you were a kid, and I’ve known your parents for a long time before that.”

I sensed the “I can’t believe you would do this” comment coming, but Mr. Robinson surprised me by not saying it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Like, wasn’t he on my side? Where was the support? I was confused. I looked at him. He wasn’t angry and his expression looked inviting, if not warm.

“Tell me what happened, Christopher.”

I knew his job was to defend me, but the question of whether he believed me was up in the air.

“Do you believe me, Mr. Robinson?”

He sat there without speaking for a whole minute. It was one of the longest minutes of my life.

“Christopher, I’m confident you will tell me the truth as you understand it.”

His words cut to the bone. “As you understand it.” That was the problem. I think I knew what happened, but there was doubt. There’s always doubt.

“I didn’t do it, Mr. Robinson.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything.

“You have to believe me. I didn’t do it.”

He nodded. “Tell me what happened in your own words.”

“It was a party. Well, duh, of course you know it was a party.”

Mr. Robinson held his hand up.

“Christopher, I don’t know anything. Assume I don’t know a thing about what happened. Start at the beginning.”

He laughed.

“At the beginning of the evening, Christopher. Tell me about Ellie.”

“We’ve been going together for about six years now, Mr. Robinson. Ever since middle school. We were friends even before that in grade school.” All of a sudden, I choked. My heart faced and my stomach cramped. “We’re best friends, Mr. Robinson. I love her but she’s my best friend.” I couldn’t stop my tears.

“We’ve been, you know, making out. We’re not rushing. We haven’t gone all the way. I mean, I’m totally hot for her, but she wants to go at her own pace.”

“Did you ever force her to do anything, Christopher?”

“Never! I mean, she’s interested, it’s not that she doesn’t care. She likes to do stuff, a lot of stuff. She’s not ready for, you know, the whole thing. Intercourse, I mean, Mr. Robinson.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

“So, we were at the party at Dale’s house. Everyone was pretty loose, there was booze. We drank, I’m not hiding that, but we weren’t, you know, drunk.”

Another nod.

“So, I mean, everyone was happy, we’d graduated, we were all set. No one was uptight, and when people started taking off their clothes and jumping in the pool, we got in the act.” I stopped and looked at Mr. Robinson. His face was impassive. “So, people were doing more than swimming, you know. Ellie was getting a little hot and we fooled around in the pool a little.”

“What does that mean, Christopher?

Crap, I thought. I need to tell it again?

“Do you really need to know everything, Mr. Robinson?”

He nodded.

“Well, I held her and played with her a bit. I know what she likes and where to touch her. She liked it. After she came she held on to the side of the pool and let me rub against her from behind. So I did, and I came on her back. I wasn’t inside her, no way.” I decided I’d skip telling him how close we’d come a couple of minutes before that. “So then we got out and got something to eat. Ellie was still worked up. So was I. She wanted to go somewhere a little more private.”

“So, Ellie invited you, is that right, Christopher?”

“Yeah. I mean, ‘invited’ is I guess the word but she didn’t have to twist my arm, you know.”

“Go on.”

“Right as we started to walk away from the pool and the food, it wasn’t so cold we needed to get dressed, Dale came up with a couple of bottles of beer and offered them to us. He said it was to celebrate and let bygones be bygones.”

“What did he mean?”

“We weren’t friends. He’d tried a couple of things with Ellie, he’s always been interested in her, but she isn’t interested in him. Mateo and I asked her once if she wanted our help with Dale, but she said she didn’t. Maybe that was a mistake.”

Mr. Robinson was making notes.

“So Dale might have had a grudge against you, against Ellie? Is that right?”

“I guess so. I don’t really know.”

“So did you drink the beer?”

“Yeah. We all clinked bottles and drank.”

Mr. Robinson made another note. “And then?”

“We walked down the garden a little ways, far enough so we were a little more private. We each had another swallow or two of the beer, but we were more interested in, well, you know.”

I stopped again to organize my thoughts.

“Look, how much detail do you really need, Mr. Robinson.”

His answer was a grimace more than anything else.

“Only as much as you wish to share, Christopher. Tell me the outlines.”

“We were nude, you know that. It was still kind of warm. Neither of us was cold. We lay down in the grass and I remember how prickly it was against my skin. Good prickly, you know?” I think Ellie felt the same way. We kissed and held each other. I could feel her against me and I think she could feel me against her, too.”

I stopped to collect my thoughts. How much to tell this guy, anyway?

“We were kissing, I kissed her all over and, well, you know, I went down on her.”