The bell rang before we made it out of the building, which meant that plenty of my peers got to see me led out of the school and into the waiting car.
No good could come from telling my story to the trooper while we were in transit. He wasn’t going to say, “Wait, you’re telling me that Gerald Martin planted this on you? Oh my goodness! Well, let me send you right back to class so I can capture the real criminal!”
I was taken into the station, fingerprinted, and placed in a holding cell. At least I got a cell of my own, though there was plenty of snickering from the adjacent cell, probably because of my constant sniffling as I desperately tried not to cry.
Mom and Dad showed up a while later. I thought they were there to take me home to be grounded for the rest of my life, but instead they just stood outside the cell.
“Why would you do this?” Mom asked. “How would it ever even occur to you to sell drugs?”
“The bag wasn’t mine,” I insisted. “Somebody stuck it in there.”
“Who?”
I hesitated. This was going to sound crazy. “Gerald Martin.”
“You’re saying that Gerald Martin put a bag of weed in your backpack?”
“Yes.”
“And then he called the police, pretending to be a concerned parent of a student who was one of your customers?”
“Yes!”
“How would he get it in there?”
“I don’t know! He has a friend. I think his friend broke into…” I realized that this theory was not being well received and just trailed off. “I confronted Mr. Martin about Todd’s disappearance, and now he’s trying to get back at me.”
“You did what?” Dad asked.
“I went over there. He admitted what he did. And then I went over again on Halloween night because I thought he was responsible for Dominick going missing. I’m not selling pot. He or his friend put that in my backpack. Where would I even get that much pot? How could I afford it?”
“You stole money out of my safe,” said Dad.
My stomach plummeted.
“Or did Gerald Martin’s friend break into our house and steal that, too?”
My mind raced. Should I accept that I was screwed and stop talking? Yes, Father, I stole the money, but only so I could buy an illegal gun with which to force a confession out of Mr. Martin. Was that more credible than the idea that I stole money to buy marijuana to sell to kids at school?
For now, I needed to just shut the hell up.
“We’re going to have to hire a lawyer,” Mom told me. “Your father and I think it will do you good to spend the night here.”
“What? You’re going to leave me in jail?”
“Just for one night.”
“No!”
“Talking to a psychiatrist didn’t work,” said Mom, a tear trickling down her cheek. “What we’re doing clearly isn’t working. We know how devastated you are by what happened to your friend, but that’s no excuse. If we found a stash of cigarettes in your room, that would be different. They found a lot of marijuana in your backpack. That’s intention to sell.”
“It wasn’t mine.”
“We’ll come back for you in the morning.”
I wanted to start screaming and begging for her not to leave me, but something else was more important. “Be careful,” I said. “It’s not enough to lock the doors. Sleep in shifts. Have a gun by the bed. He might come for you.”
“Curtis—”
“Promise me you’ll be careful. Maybe stay at a hotel or something. If you’re going to leave me to rot in jail, you at least have to swear that you’ll protect yourselves tonight.”
“We’re not leaving you to rot,” said Dad.
“Just promise me.”
“We’ll be safe. Worry about yourself for now.”
“No!” I shouted. “I’m fucking worried about you!”
This was the first time I’d cursed in front of my parents. I’d known the day was coming, but hadn’t expected it to be while I was behind bars.
They left.
I plopped down on the bench.
“Whoooo-eeeeee, that’s rough,” said a guy in the next cell. He had greasy hair, a terrible complexion, and bad teeth. “We’ll take care of you, don’t worry.”
I began to cry.
When it turned into an all-out sobbing fit, the guy apparently took pity on me and walked to the other side of his cell to give me some privacy.
A couple of hours later, they moved me from the holding cell to a cell with a toilet and something close to a bed.
I prayed that my parents would take my warning seriously.
They served lunch and dinner. I assumed that both of them tasted disgusting from the look and smell, but I couldn’t have eaten even if I’d been presented with Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.
After they shut out the lights, I lay on the bed, frightened about pretty much everything.
17
Mom took pity on me, picking me up at six in the morning. I’d been crying much of the night, stopping only when the greasy guy told me to shut the fuck up, and the tears started again when I saw her.
I didn’t have a court date yet. I had a meeting with a lawyer set for Wednesday afternoon.
The stolen money was a very big problem. My dad was not going to lie to the court on my behalf. And the dude I bought the gun from sure as hell wasn’t going to show up to act as a character witness.
“I just don’t understand why you would do this,” Mom said as we drove home.
“If you’re waiting for me to change my story, it’s not going to happen,” I told her. “I’m not selling pot. I don’t have any friends to sell it to. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“I spoke with your principal.”
“And? Am I suspended?”
Mom let out a sudden incredulous laugh that made me flinch. “Suspended? You actually think you’re only suspended? You’ve been expelled, Curtis.”
“Expelled? For real?”
“Yes, for real. What did you think they were going to do?”
“So…so what happens next?”
“I don’t know. I guess I have to
