Chapter 7: I'd Like To Think If I Was, I Would Pass

"Why did I have to come along?" Ahmo asked from the passenger seat of our dad's SUV. Because if it had only been Catherine and me, I could have sat in the passenger seat. God forbid! I might have actually started a conversation with 'mommy'.

Catherine pressed her lips together and threw Ahmo a hard look.

"Road," I said loudly. She gave me the same hard look. The SUV swerved into the wrong lane. I decided to shut the fuck up.

We were on our way to visit the boarding school Catherine planned to dump me off on for my senior year. I didn't get a vote on that one and neither did anyone else since Catherine threw a stellar screaming fit any time the subject came up.

I expected the shit to hit the fan over Robert Chain and the rapes, which turned out to be a slight understatement. A more accurate description might have been a tornado touching down on a compost farm. The calls for my dad's resignation threw me for a loop. Candice talked me out of coming forward.

Candice apologized, naked, when the media got hold of the story. One of the major papers printed the relevant details of Stephen's confession. No names of course, just details. If Candice had not become my lover again, I would have done something stupid. The judge (everyone was calling it the Honus City Gang Rape Trial) flipped out when Stephen's confession got into print. The FBI received permission to do whatever they needed to quash further leaks.

Lars and Billy's families went into full legal denial mode, not that anybody believed them.

The girls at the school went into shock. Morgan spent her time either crying on Elis' shoulder or staring at me wide-eyed. Ahmo was the worst. Robert Chain's M.O. was to build up to an orgy of rape and death. Comparing the victims in previous cities and matching them to the Honus City rapes, Ahmo would have been the last. Robert planned to kill her and his accomplices before moving on to a new city. My adopted sister's behavior resembled the duality of Morgan's: she sat in corners as if afraid to move or her eyes tracked me with the same look after she almost recognized me at the pool and her date with Billy.

Dad spent two months at the station, only coming home when Agent LaDon delivered him at the front door for some much needed sleep. He wasn't doing it to save his job; he took it as failure that the rapes happened under his nose. One of the bastards had gone on a date with his little girl!

Stephen, Lars, and Billy having verifiable alibis for Robert Chain's murder set off a second media frenzy. The reporters making themselves a nuisance at school, city hall, and with the girls' fathers caused a nearly sleepless week for my dad. The reporters' attention on the fathers identified the girls to anyone who wanted to put it together.

I kept waiting for Diana LaDon to come to our door with agents in tow. At least, I hoped it would be her and not my dad. Candice ripped apart my so-called plan and tried to persuade me to leave Honus. I couldn't! If I ran they would definitely come down on my dad, believing me to be another rapist or making me for Robert Chain's death.

Nobody talked to me though, not even the grief counselors the school hired. Considering most of the school had held me responsible for Celia's suicide, Candice and I were surprised neither Agent LaDon nor the prosecutors approached me.

The cops going in and out of our house during my dad's brief stays were of the 'who gives a shit?' opinion on Robert Chain's killer. The FBI and police departments involved focused exclusively on the murders and rapes he committed. Having lived with a police officer all my life, I knew every day they didn't look made it tougher for them to find me. Because of their behavior, Candice argued me into letting her be in charge of the package I decided to deliver to the authorities after I touched Chain.

Everyone figured Candice was handling whatever emotional problems I might be having, so they ignored our weekend jaunts. Having walked in his shoes only during the crimes, I could not pinpoint every rape or burial site on a map. I had to piece the locations together until I could follow his footprints. Candice wrote up my descriptions of the crimes and printed the sketches I put together of the women and girls. (More of Elis' toys helping with that.) I smiled reading Agent LaDon explanation--a significant break in the case helped them find Robert Chain's past rape victims along with the bodies of the people he murdered.

The package effectively closed the book on the case. I figured with so many brothers, husbands, boyfriends, and fathers as potential suspects the trail of Robert Chain's killer had gone ice-cold.

By the time our junior year ended, things settled. Morgan and Elis were the school's unanimous choice for cutest couple. Three of the in-crowd's being psychopaths put the rest of them on the out. Elis' reaction to what I had assumed inevitable was another surprise. Morgan's idea of talking to Elis included a graphic description of she and I getting it on. Elis took the best friend thing way too far by suggesting Morgan and I should continue getting our freak on if we felt the need. I did not buy into Morgan's explanation, 'Elis and I make love. You and me ... we just fuck!' Like her boyfriend, she took it to a whole new level by vocalizing her increasing frustration at my lack of cooperation towards bringing her new vision of how the Loser Tribunal should serve her sexual and emotional needs to the fullest. Bitch did it in front of Ahmo! Like shit with my sister had not taken a weird enough turn. Said turn plus Ahmo's acceleration through the turn put me in the SUV heading towards exile, a boys boarding school.

Ahmo decided what she thought she knew, she actually knew. After that, the dominoes tumbled. She quickly discovered I wasn't fat or even big boned. Morgan let slip the 'build up a tolerance' crap that Candice had come up with.

Touch here! Touch there! Does it hurt less, Tavi? No, Ahmo. Now, I ache. Lower! Lower!

The morning show I was so fond of entered the genre of saucy burlesque. Being a teenage male, I did not think beyond how much more of Ahmo's skin I was privy to. Ass! Thighs! Tummy! A hint of nipple! And then Morgan dropped the dime about she and I having sex and wanting to do it again, a lot.

Enter Catherine, while Ahmo, perfectly framed by her bedroom door, ignored the fact the towel, wrapped around her still wet and very nude body, had dropped to the floor. I did not make things any better by staring at my sister with lust and an obvious hard-on or trying to look around Catherine when she blocked my view.