Stay

DECEMBER 14, 1994

      “People versus Eric Niccolò Cipriani. Charges of statutory rape, sexual assault in the first degree, and forcible rape in the first degree.”
      “Ms. Leventen, how does the defendant plead?”
      “Not guilty.”
      “Hilliard?”
      “Remand, your honor. The victim is thirteen.”
      “So ordered.”

The Poor Get Their Ice in the Winter

1: SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

      “You’re a prick, Eric,” the girl—he didn’t remember her name—snarl-slurred as she misbuttoned her blouse.
      “Yeah, you didn’t mind so much when I was fucking you with it, did you? What, did you think I was going to tell you I loved you?”
      “No, but I didn’t expect to get insulted, either.”
      “Whatever. You’re twenty. I’m seventeen. You came to a frat house looking for good college-boy sex and you got better than you expected. What’s the problem?” She curled her lip at him. He shifted to sit more comfortably in the bed, his back against the wall, and gestured at her midsection with the hand that held his bottle. “Didn’t you learn how to dress yourself when you were five?”
      She screeched and threw her shoe at his head. She was too drunk to hit him, though, and he watched it land three feet away. He laughed harder. She opened her mouth to say something else equally scathing when the door burst open, startling them both—badly.
      “What the fuck—”
      “Shut up,” snarled a Chouteau County deputy, who hauled all six feet three inches of naked Eric out of the bed by his hair and shoved him up against the wall, his arms yanked behind his back.
      He was too shocked, too suddenly terrified to make a sound when he heard more than felt his rotator cuff pop out, just drunk enough not to feel the pain of having his dick and face slammed against plaster and woodwork, and not drunk enough to be able to laugh it all off.
      “You’re under arrest for statutory rape and sexual assault...”
      His mind shut down immediately, completely unable to process the combined assaults on his body, his senses, or the college girl’s sudden hoots of delighted laughter, her taunts.
      Statutory rape and sexual assault? Of whom?
      His mind then spun to life, turbocharged in spite of the numbness he sought. How would he get out of this? He already had a juvie record with nothing to offset it but a 4.5 with his Advanced Placement classes, and a job as a manager at a feed store.
      He had no money and he’d never had good luck with the public defenders.
      Statutory rape and sexual assault?! He couldn’t possibly have fucked a girl that young...could he? Whowhowho?
      Still naked except for a ratty blanket, he got stuffed in the back of a squad car. Cold. So cold. The deep freeze of a Missouri December at two a.m. was just another insult. He saw the frat house from which he’d been dragged, alight but still and quiet, all its occupants clustered together on the sidewalk at the foot of the concrete stairs that led up to the house. Sober, clustered together, shivering in various states of undress, they tried to keep warm while they watched Eric hauled away so spectacularly. He blinked. Glanced away, unable to look back at the people he had blithely called “friends” for the night.
      None of them would bail him out. They barely knew him, much less cared. He was just known to be a hard partier and a good fuck.
      He gulped.
      No one to call. His mother, out of the question. She would believe that he had fucked an underage girl and let him rot, not that he could blame her. She’d bailed him out enough.
      Couldn’t call old Jenkins. He’d told Eric that one slip-up would get him the boot straight out of the feed store.
      Statutory rape and sexual assault.
      I didn’t do it!
      Wouldn’t matter. No one would believe him innocent.
      They had no reason to.
      The squad car finally began to move toward the courthouse. He knew the routine; he’d been through it enough, but not for a year and a half now. He’d tangled with almost every one of the prosecutors in that office, Hicks more than most. He closed his eyes and collapsed in on himself. Please, no. Not Hicks.
      The man was vicious and, unlike most of the attorneys in that office, was not on the take. Eric could only hope to get the new prosecutor, that fucker straight out of law school who’d offed the serial killer and skated. That was a man who’d appreciate a bundle of cash to overlook whatever bullshit Eric was said to have done.
      Only...Eric had no money, so it didn’t matter who ended up prosecuting him.
      No money, no payoff.
      And for this, he’d be tried as an adult.

* * * * *

      He regretted his wish for the newest, youngest prosecutor immediately upon staring into Knox Hilliard’s cold, hard face—the face of a killer with nothing to lose and a raging thirst for justice.
      “Simone Whittaker?!”
      Eric shot to his feet, jolted out of his shocked numbness into his own rage when Hilliard told him his alleged victim.
      “Siddown,” Hilliard snarled, so Eric sat.
      “It can’t be,” Eric said, desperate for him to understand. “She came on to me and I told her to get lost. I don’t do little girls at all ever. Never. Second, even if I did—which I don’t—I wouldn’t have touched her with a ten-foot pole. She’s a disgusting, lying little bitch and who the hell knows what diseases she’s got.”
      That was the wrong thing to say. He knew it by the chill in Hilliard’s ice blue eyes, knew it even before his court-appointed attorney hissed, “Shut up, Eric.”
      “I’m done with this asshole,” Hilliard murmured, calm, cold, staring Eric down until Eric had to look away. Cold. That was the only word Eric could apply to the man who’d murdered another man in cold—well, not so cold—blood, who sat there on the right side of the law like he had a right to be there.
      Eric’s attorney did manage to get him seen for his torn rotator cuff, but no one much cared beyond giving him a sling to wear in jail while he waited for his trial. His life was over, over before it had begun.
      Simone Whittaker.
      He knew at least two dudes in his class who’d fucked her, but Eric? No way. He’d been creeped out enough to look at a girl that young dressing, talking, acting like an oversexed college girl.
      He resigned himself to his fate, although his attorney, a lady Hilliard’s age, also straight out of law school, was actually doing a pretty decent job of defending him. He wouldn’t get off, though, because he could clearly see Hilliard was better—and motivated.
      Thirteen-year-old girls.
      Even ones who looked and acted twenty, who spread her legs for any male who’d have her. No matter Eric was smarter than his cohorts: valid picture ID and condoms. Always, every time, without fail.
      Shit, yeah, Hilliard had made his opinion known loud and clear what he thought of that particular crime. The man had a roar that could be heard all the way to St. Joe. A lion, his attorney had called him; then, after Eric had caught her checking out Hilliard’s ass, he wondered if she was fucking him on the sly.
      “Lord, no,” she breathed, aghast. “Knox doesn’t like blondes and he doesn’t like women my age.”
      “Are you telling me he’s a closet pedophile?” Eric asked slowly.
      “No, Eric,” she said dryly. “He’s not letting loose any self-loathing on you. He likes women older than he is. And no, I wouldn’t sleep with him while I’m defending you anyway. That’s just a little too kinky for my taste. In any case, I doubt any prosecutor anywhere would go any lighter on you. These crimes are—”
      Yes, he knew. Universally despised. “I didn’t do it,” he protested. Weak. It was weak. Nobody ever believed a defendant who said “I didn’t do it” because they all said that.
      She patted his hand. “I know you didn’t. I’ll do the best I can.”
      Apathy: The only emotion Eric could muster.
      Except when put in general population, at which point, he didn’t hesitate to make his opinion known about some other inmate’s assessment of him. For the first time, Eric cursed his looks. The term “hottie,” applied by a male, didn’t seem like such a compliment. It was a relief when he was thrown into solitary confinement for damn near killing the fucker with his bare hands.
      “At this point, all I care about is managing to get myself in solitary for the rest of my life,” he said to his attorney the next time he saw her.
      She pursed her lips in commiseration.
      She knew she was losing. Eric wouldn’t live to see his nineteenth birthday.

2: LAZY, LOUSY, LIZA JANE

April 1995

      Vanessa squeezed tight into herself, watching from across the street, waiting for him. She sat on the sidewalk, her back against the stone of the café and furniture store, a small book hidden between her upraised knees and her chest.
      There he was, striding purposefully into the courthouse like he owned it: tall, blond, hard, and very cruel. She could see it in his face. She knew what he’d done—the whole county knew. And trembled. She didn’t know which was scarier: approaching the man who’d gotten away with the murder of her mother’s boyfriend or going home to her mother after having done so.
      She could just forget the whole thing and go back to school, but Laura would be disappointed in her if she left now, so Vanessa tried to screw up her courage and go see the man every person in the county feared.
      “He could snap again,” went the whispers. “Who knows what’ll set that crazy bastard off now.”
      He had more than one reputation in town, for sure. Whenever Vanessa and the rest of the sixth graders ate lunch in the narrow quad between the elementary school and high school, she would overhear the older girls talking about him as if he were a rock star. Even a couple of teachers would whisper his name and giggle. She supposed he was kinda sorta good looking, but he was way old—like, twenty-five or something—and terrifying.
      Her heart in her throat, she still couldn’t make herself move.
      What would Laura do?
      Laura would march herself on in there and do the right thing no matter what. “That boy didn’t rape Simone,” she’d say, or so Vanessa imagined she might say. “You’re the only person who knows that besides your mother and sister, so it’s your responsibility, Vanessa.”
      Vanessa knew what would happen to her when LaVon and Simone found out she’d blown up their scheme—and they would find out.
      Dirk, the only protector she had ever had, was gone all the way around the world to New Zealand, to talk to people about his church. She’d had no one to protect her for a year and this would seal her fate. Perhaps it was time she packed her bags and set out on her own, like Hermie and Rudolph.
      The crowd of people going to work had thinned out quite a while ago and then only the intermittent flow of deputies coming and going kept her from entering. She supposed it was now or never if she was going to do this because eventually someone would approach her to find out why she wasn’t at school.
      Reluctantly she stood and shoved the book up her shirt, then hugged it to her tight. With leaden feet she crossed the street and headed up the long walk to the courthouse doors. Once inside, she didn’t know what to do. Everybody looked at her strangely but no one asked her her business.
      She looked up at the building directory and looked for his name. There. Second floor. She stared up the very high, wide staircase and took a deep breath. One step at a time, one step at a time, one step at a time, and then she was in front of the door she sought:

PROSECUTOR’S
OFFICE

      Her hand reached out for the doorknob as if it were on a string and she was a puppet—wait, no, a...She searched for the right word. Marionette. That’s right. A marionette. And while she’d been thinking of the right word, her feet had gone ahead and taken her through the door and into the office.
      Ancient wood and metal desks were crammed into an open area any which way. Men stormed around the obstacles, cursing, yelling, and generally filling the air with much anger and lots of bad words. She swallowed. In front of her was another door:

CLAUDE NOCEK
PROSECUTOR

      A young black man stopped short and looked down at her. She stepped back, her eyes wide, because now she would actually have to talk to one of those men who were cursing and yelling and being angry.
      She bit her lip.
      Tightened her arms over her body, over the book whose vinyl stuck to her skin.
      “Well, uh, hi,” he said after a long few seconds. “My name’s Richard. What can I do for you?”
      She gulped. “I came to see Mr. Hilliard,” she whispered. “I have something for him.”
      A bemused smile swept across his face and she knew then that he was nice and he’d help her. “Really? What would that be?”
      “A book,” she breathed. “I really need to talk to him, please.”
      He turned a bit and gestured that she should step ahead of him. She shrank from the curious glances of the other men as their conversation lowered and stilled in her presence. She felt Richard’s hand lightly on her back but didn’t pull away; she didn’t like for strangers to touch her, but she had come here by herself for a reason. She tucked her head down and let her brown hair fall to cover her face. Finally, she took a step and then another, Richard’s hand guiding her across the floor to a dark corner in the back. Mr. Hilliard sat hunched over his desk, engrossed in his work. She blinked when he jotted a note. He was left-handed, like her. Somehow that made her think that maybe she didn’t have to be so afraid.
      “Knox, this young lady says she has something for you.”
      Mr. Hilliard raised his head and looked first at the man, then at her. She tried to hide how afraid she was but knew she couldn’t. Then the most amazing thing happened.
      He smiled. And it was a nice smile.
      “Hi. What’s your name?”
      “Vanessa,” she whispered. She didn’t want to tell him her last name because his smile might go away and then he might not be nice to her anymore. Her mother badgered him enough as it was and she was sure he was sorry he’d ever heard the Whittaker name.
      “How old are you?”
      “Twelve.”
      “Why aren’t you in school?”
      “I have to give you something. It’s very important.”
      He looked up at Richard and nodded, which she figured meant he was to go away. Mr. Hilliard reached behind him and pulled a wooden chair toward Vanessa, setting it next to his desk. He patted it. “Have a seat, Vanessa. What do you have for me?”
      She approached warily because of what he’d done. It was wrong and bad and horrible. Yet...Vanessa felt safer at home because of what he had done (honestly, she was secretly glad, which Laura would say made her as evil as Mr. Hilliard) so she bit her lip as she sat down on the chair. She slowly drew the book from under her shirt, making sure not to show any skin, and without a word, she handed it to him.
      He took it from her gently, turning it over and over again. She knew that book by heart: Pink plastic with a small lock that didn’t seem to work very well. The key had been lost—she didn’t know when. The book was decorated in pink, red, and white hearts, glitter, and silver flowers. She also knew every word in it, which was why she had come.
      He opened it and looked at the beginning of it, where its owner’s name was written, the “i”s dotted with hearts. Then his mouth tightened and he looked at her out of the corners of his eyes. She didn’t think that was a nice look.
      Thankfully, he began to read. It wouldn’t take him long to get to the important part, so she decided to make herself as small as she could. She curled into herself then, hooking her heels on the edge of the seat. She drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
      Her stomach rumbled loudly, earning her another, longer, glance.
      She knew that look.
      More than a few people had been mean enough to say it.
      When was the last time you ate?
      Then he tipped back his chair and, putting one foot on the edge of his desk, he read page after page with what seemed to Vanessa to be lightning speed.
      Then he was done and he looked at her for a long time. He was chewing on the inside of his mouth. She didn’t know what that meant, either.
      He threw the book on his desk and linked his fingers behind his head. “Why did you bring me that?” he asked. She still couldn’t tell if he was mad or not.
      “Because it’s the truth,” she whispered. “People were burned at the stake because no one told the truth.”
      Mr. Hilliard got a funny look on his face. “What people?”
      “The witches. In Salem. A long time ago. People died because mean girls told a lie. I read about it.”
      “I see,” he said slowly and looked down at the book. He pointed to it. “How do I know this is the truth?”
      She hadn’t thought about that. To her, it was so clear. Her forehead crinkled. “I guess— Well, I don’t know.”
      “Now, you know I’m going to have to ask about this and that I’ll have to say how I got it, right?”
      Vanessa nodded. “Yes,” she said, and gulped again. She began to tremble because now that Mr. Hilliard hadn’t shot her in the head like he did Tom Parley, she knew her mother and her sister would make her wish he had.
      He wiped a hand down his face and didn’t talk for a long time. Finally, he handed her a pen and paper. “Write down your grade and teacher’s name, Vanessa.” She did, and then he took a business card, turned it over, and wrote on it. When he handed it to her, he said, “If anything happens to you, if you’re afraid at home for any reason, you call me and I’ll come get you, even if it’s three o’clock in the morning.”
      “Where would you take me?”
      “To my cousin Giselle’s house until social services could come get you.”
      Foster people. That sounded worse than home, if that was possible. She bit her lip in indecision.
      “Well, okay. I can see that might not seem fun. Right now, I’m going to take you to school. Have you had anything to eat this morning?”
      She shook her head again, understanding what he intended and that it would mean a ride in a car with a strange adult man, yet she was too hungry to let the possibility of a free meal pass her by.
      So she went with him and she stood by his pretty dark green car while he unlocked and opened the door for her, then closed it once she had climbed in. She didn’t think much of it until he parked at McDonald’s and murmured, “Stay there.” Now simply curious, she watched him get out of the car, walk around to her side, and open her door for her. He offered her his hand as if she were an adult! A real lady! And then he opened the door of McDonald’s for her!
      He let her pick whatever she wanted and eat at the picnic table (he didn’t say much because he seemed to be busy thinking), bought her more (enough for dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow, and possibly lunch too, if she hid it well enough), then took her to school. The high school girls were out because it was their lunchtime and they could go off campus if they wanted. She was very conscious of them because they thought Mr. Hilliard was handsome and dangerous, and they had stopped to stare when they heard, then saw, his car.
      What would Laura do?
      Laura would hold her head high and ignore the people who stared.
      They parked and she reached for the door handle. “Stay there,” he reminded her, and again she waited, feeling very grown up and sophisticated. The senior girls watched Mr. Hilliard open her door for her and help her out the same way he had at Mickey D’s. A strange, nice feeling went through her, like how the word “dignity” might feel. They watched him walk her across the lawn away from the lunch quad to the entrance of the elementary school. They watched him hold the front door open for her, again, as if she were an adult and a lady.
      The school secretaries gasped when they saw him walk in behind Vanessa and they shrank away from him. He seemed not to notice.
      “Vanessa Whittaker’s been at the courthouse for an interview,” he said to the principal, who came out of his office to see what the commotion was all about. “I’m sure you won’t put her down as tardy for today.”
      “Oh, of course not, Mr. Hilliard. Of course not.”
      Wow. She had never thought Mr. Roberg could be afraid of anything.
      Mr. Hilliard stepped away from her then. He looked down at her and smiled again that really nice smile. “Thank you, Vanessa. You’re probably the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
      Vanessa grinned back at him then, big enough she felt her eyes crinkle at the corners. Now she knew that everything would be okay. Her mother wouldn’t dare do anything to her as long as everyone knew that Knox Hilliard was Vanessa’s friend. He patted her shoulder before he left.
      She was walking down the street toward her mobile home after school when the cop car whizzed by and stopped at her trailer. By the time she got there, her sister was being hauled out in handcuffs.
      “You little bitch!” she screamed when she saw Vanessa. “You lying little bitch!” She lurched toward Vanessa and Vanessa instinctively stepped back, but the deputy hauled her back toward him, then shoved her in the back seat of the squad car, a hand on her head.
      Her mother came out on the deck and looked straight at Vanessa, taking a puff of her cigarette. “So what’d that bastard do to you to get you to lie for that sonofabitch who raped your sister?”
      “I didn’t lie,” she murmured as she climbed the steps, the deputy’s car pulling away from the curb and disappearing down the street. She pulled out Mr. Hilliard’s business card and showed her the back, where he had written the word “home” and his phone number. “Mr. Hilliard is my friend. He thinks I’m brave.”
      Laura was brave.
      Her mother stiffened, and after a long pause, she went back in the house without a word.

3: BLACKSTONE’S FORMULATION

      Eric heard Hilliard’s voice in his head now, in his dreams—and he had nothing better to do but sleep—accusing him of things he hadn’t done, presenting evidence so clearly, so indubitably that now even Eric believed he’d done it. The clang of jail cell doors, ever present, didn’t disturb his sleep until he awoke in a panic, Hilliard standing over him in his cot...
      Looking at him completely differently.
      “What,” Eric snapped, deeply offended that the asshole had invaded his meager space.
      “You’re free to go.”
      “Uh—” He looked at his attorney, standing behind Hilliard, a pleased smile on her face. “Eric, we couldn’t have asked for better.”
      He sat up slowly, looking back up at Hilliard suspiciously, certain this was a trick, some cruel thing Hilliard would do because Hilliard was cruel.
      Perhaps he was just dreaming. There was nothing of the rage, the hatred in Hilliard’s face now. A smile that bordered on—relieved?—threatened to ruin Eric’s image of him, then he turned.
      “Bring him to my office when he’s ready to go,” he finally said over his shoulder. “Make everything official. He doesn’t belong here.”
      “Thanks, Knox.”
      “Don’t thank me,” he said as he maneuvered his way around Eric’s attorney to leave the cell. “Thank one brave little girl.”
      Eric waited until Hilliard left, then looked up at his attorney. He knew his confusion showed and he didn’t care. He was broken. At seventeen.
      “Simone confessed?”
      She smiled and shook her head, but would say nothing until Eric was attired in the suit she’d provided for him to wear for the trial. They were the only clothes he had that didn’t come in neon orange.
      “Don’t worry about your hair now.”
      Eric knew he was vain. Vain enough to want to keep his hair long, vain enough to risk tucking it down his shirt collar for his trial so as not to give off the stink of half-breed-bastard-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks, vain enough to fight for it.
      When he was ushered into the Chouteau County prosecutor’s private office, he was shocked to see its six other occupants. He stopped and looked around, obeying his hard-won instincts for suspicion. Nocek, the head prosecutor, had disappeared, though. That really shook him up. Nocek ran the office and the county with an iron—albeit crooked—fist and without ever leaving his office. Was it possible Nocek himself was afraid of Hilliard?
      His mother, tears in her eyes. Eric hadn’t seen her since before he was arrested four months ago.
      Jenkins, his boss, the owner of Chouteau County Feed and Tack. He hadn’t bothered to show up at the courthouse, even to tell Eric he was fired.
      Rayburn, the principal of Chouteau County High School.
      Two of his advanced placement teachers, science and English.
      Hilliard, leaning back against Nocek’s desk relaxed, as if it were his and he were totally at ease in his boss’s office, his ankles crossed, his hands in his pockets. He had that same strange expression on his face that Eric didn’t trust for a minute.
      “I thought you said I was free to go,” Eric finally muttered when no one seemed inclined to stop staring at him or to speak.
      Hilliard inclined his head. “You are. But. I have a proposition for you.”
      Eric cast a wary glance at his attorney whose mouth crooked in a relieved smile, then back at Hilliard. “I’m not fucking you.”
      Hilliard laughed then—roared—his laugh no less deafening than his most enraged bellow. He finally wound down to a chuckle and wiped his mouth. “Ah, no. That’s not what I had in mind. I want to send you to college.”
      Eric’s mouth dropped open. College!
      A vague hope before his arrest, one he had worked toward in spite of his unwillingness to let the hope gel into a dream or, even worse, a goal. The one he hadn’t dared think about while he was in jail, on trial.
      But Hilliard kept talking. “I’ve been watching you, looking through your record, wondering how a smart kid like you managed to fuck up so badly when what you want is crystal clear.”
      “Why am I here?” Eric demanded. “What happened? Something happened and I want to know what it was.”
      Hilliard’s mouth pressed a bit, but not, apparently, in anger. In thought. As if he didn’t know whether to say or not.
      “We found proof of your innocence,” he finally said. “Someone who knew something came forward.”
      Thank one brave little girl.
      For the life of him, Eric couldn’t figure out who could do that other than Simone, and his attorney had already said she hadn’t done so.
      “College,” Hilliard said, jerking Eric’s attention back. “Mr. Rayburn and your teachers have vouched for your willingness to work, to improve your station in life. Mr. Jenkins has told me how you’ve managed his store for the last year, part-time, taking a heavy course load and getting straight As. So. I’m willing to pay for your education provided you work as hard during your senior year as you have in the past and provided you go where I send you and obey their rules.”
      “Anything,” Eric breathed, willing to go to all the way across the other side of the northland to William Jewell in Liberty, at least twenty-five miles.
      “Don’t you want to know what the rules are?”
      “I don’t care.”
      “Mmmm, you might. No drinking, no smoking, no drugs. No fucking around. At all. You’ll have to get rid of the earrings, cut your hair. Short. Your course load will include religion classes.” Eric blinked. “Those are their rules. You need an attitude adjustment and you need to learn some propriety. I don’t have time to kick your ass constantly, so the deal is, you spend this year working on getting into Brigham Young University.”
      Eric had no idea what or where that was, and apparently his face showed it.
      “Mormons. Utah. You go there, you do a good job, you follow their rules. You stay there until you graduate—and I don’t give a shit what you study—then you stay another three years for grad school, because I think you can do it. That’s the deal and I’ll give you a free ride all the way through. Any scholarship money you come up with is fine, but your job is school and don’t even think about working during the school year. I’ll give you what you need.”
      Though Eric knew where Utah was on a map, he didn’t know much more than that about Mormons, but he sure as hell was not going to pass up this opportunity.
      “Yes, sir,” he breathed, wondering how his nemesis had turned into his mentor in the blink of an eye.
      “We’ll help you, Eric,” said his science teacher. Eric turned to the man who’d spent the last year torturing him with physics and who’d spend next year torturing him with chemistry. “BYU is a prestigious university and difficult to get into, especially for a non-Mormon who’s not an athlete.”
      “But,” Hilliard murmured, “you’re half American Indian and that trumps everything else in that admissions office. With your grades and ACT score, there won’t be a question.”
      “You’ll need an ecclesiastical endorsement,” added his English teacher, who was also his guidance counselor, “but I don’t think we’ll have a problem rounding up a preacher somewhere. Do you have a church?”
      “He is Osage,” his mother said, her tone sharp, “as Mr. Hilliard just said. He doesn’t go to any white man’s church.”
      “He won’t have to,” Jenkins said gruffly, the way he said everything. “My pastor owes me a favor. He’ll do it.”
      Hilliard nodded then, satisfied. “Thank you, everyone,” he said, and Eric knew it was settled. Had settled. All around him. Like the snow in a snow globe. Eric felt as if he’d been inside it and gotten his head rattled around. “Eric, you stay.”
      Everyone took this as their cue to file out. The door closed quietly after them.
      Eric swallowed, not sure how to treat this man, only barely able to look at him, wondering what obeisance would be required, willing to walk away from the deal if Hilliard wanted...
      “The Whittakers,” he said, low, and Eric snapped to attention, looking Hilliard square in the face. “You know the family?”
      “I told you everything I know,” Eric replied, still wary, still suspicious of a trap. “Simone dresses up older than her age and puts out to anybody who’ll have her. I’ve seen her sister. Seen their mother here and there, shootin’ her mouth off, slappin’ the little girl around.” That woman was plain evil.
      Hilliard nodded slowly, looking at the floor, his tongue stuck in his cheek. Eric knew that look by now. Thinking. Eric waited long moments before Hilliard decided to speak again; even so, it startled him.
      “Simone had planned it to the last detail and was stupid enough to write it down. I don’t know if her mother was in on it, but I suspect so. Simone seems to get vindictive when she doesn’t get what she wants and what she wanted was you.”
      Eric swallowed. For once in his life, he’d done the right thing, and it had nearly destroyed him.
      “Vanessa. The little girl. Simone’s sister. She brought me Simone’s diary. It was all there. Not only did Simone not get you, she lost the rest of her playmates, too. She named names. I’m rounding them up right now.”
      Eric’s breath stuck in his throat.
      “Tell me something. Would you want to go back home to LaVon Whittaker, knowing you’d gone against her? Go back to school knowing that half a dozen male juniors and seniors, a teacher, and a couple other grown men with their own families are going to prison because you coughed up the evidence?”
      “Fuck no,” he whispered, horrified. LaVon Whittaker, all Eric’s burly classmates and their fathers, the families of the other men who’d done Simone Whittaker—versus one twelve-year-old girl.
      “Yeah, me neither. So you think about that. Think about what a twelve-year-old girl did for you just because it was the right thing to do. Don’t let her down, Eric. Don’t let what she did for you be in vain.”

4: YOUNG MR. WILDER

May 1996

      And there he was again. Tall, dark, and very dangerous.
      The senior girls had always flocked around him because he was “hot.” They said he knew things—things about girls and how to make them feel good.
      Well, Vanessa felt good every time she looked at him.
      She had watched him for a year after she had gone to see Mr. Hilliard, silent, invisible, wondering when or even if he would see her and acknowledge her. Eric Cipriani would graduate in a month. After that, she would probably see him around town and in the feed store he managed, but she wouldn’t see him all the time, like she did now. Every day, she woke up wondering if, no, hoping that today would be the day he approached her to say:
      “Thank you, Vanessa. You’re probably the bravest person I know.” And then maybe he would kiss her. Maybe on the lips, even.
      The thought made her catch her breath and get a funny little sensation in the pit of her belly, which always happened when she thought that maybe, just maybe he would like her a little bit more than just as a brave person. Maybe he would come to like her, you know, that way.
      Because once he graduated, unless he had that reason to seek her out, she would have no such easy access to him as she did now, no reason to go to the feed store, no reason to cross his path at all. Vanessa was running out of time.
      She stood behind a tree, peeking around it, to watch him. He and his friends sat on the picnic tables just off campus, drinking beer out of longneck bottles and smoking cigarettes while they watched the senior girls, and pointed at a few of them here and there, laughing. Although she didn’t know what was funny about the senior girls, she loved his laugh. His smile made her want to smile, too, so she did.
      At that moment, his gaze met hers, and he stopped laughing. Stopped smiling. Hurt began to blossom somewhere deep inside her chest and she bit her lip, hoping his expression didn’t mean what she thought it meant.
      He turned away from her then and his beautiful long black hair floated on the breeze. He didn’t respond to the talk going on around him anymore and he took a long drink from his bottle. He threw his cigarette down on the ground and stubbed it out with his silver-tipped cowboy boots the high school girls said had retractable knives in the toes.
      He walked away from his friends—away from Vanessa—without a word. Her attention caught on the way his tight ripped jeans moved over his butt with every step, and there was that funny little feeling in the pit of her belly again.
      No “thank you” for Vanessa today. No kiss. She whirled and, her back to the tree, she slid down its trunk to curl in on herself, tamping down the sharp pain in her chest. She managed not to cry about it for two whole months, until cheer camp that summer.
      “Vanessa,” drawled Annie Franklin, captain of the squad. “Did you invite Knox to our camp closing exhibition?”
      “Yes,” she lied. She hadn’t dared, though she knew very good and well that her access to “that hot prosecutor Knox Hilliard” was the only reason the cheerleaders, prodded by their mothers, had reluctantly recruited her for the varsity squad. Considering Vanessa wasn’t eligible to cheer varsity for two more years, their mothers had lobbied the Alumni Association for an exemption.
      “Well? Is he coming?”
      “He has a family thing.”
      “Did you give him that note?”
      “Yes,” she answered truthfully. That was why she hadn’t dared ask him anything else.
      “What did he say?”
      Is she out of her fucking mind?! “He was in a hurry. He just put it in his pocket.”
      Annie looked through Vanessa, her mouth pursed. “Maybe he’s gay.”
      Uh, no. “I don’t know.”
      “Hey, Annie!” called the vice captain. “What happened to your Italian stallion?”
      Annie’s face darkened and Vanessa’s heart beat a lot faster; she hadn’t seen him in almost two months. Anywhere.
      “He left,” Annie snapped back.
      “Left? Left where?”
      “Left town.”
      “Where’d he go?”
      “Don’t know.”
      “Ask his mom.”
      “She’s gone, too. It’s like they disappeared off the face of the planet.”