“I’ll personally go through the raw video and see what’s pertinent. It’s probably safe to send Sheriff Cochran the exterior car video and the drone material right away to keep him happy,” Fritz reasoned.
“You can also send him the video of Paul’s bodycam from the time he got out of the car up until we loaded him back in.”
“I’ll run through that quickly and check out the conversation between you and Paul about the drugs. If there’s nothing there the Sheriff needs, I don’t plan to send it to him. If he gets persistent, we may have to loop in Ms. Dixon,” Fritz suggested.
I hated to get lawyers involved if I didn’t need to. I crossed my fingers that what Fritz would send the sheriff would be enough.
◊◊◊
What with all the excitement, I’d gotten home late, so I made the executive decision not to wake my parents up. When I came into the kitchen for breakfast, my mom and dad were waiting for me.
“Show me your chest,” Mom ordered.
“It looks worse than it is,” I tried.
“Show me!”
I winced as I pulled up my shirt. Mom gasped when she saw the ginormous bruise that ran from just below my neck to right above my navel and out to my armpits. It really did look awful, and I admitted to being a little tender.
“I’ll call one of the trainers and have them give me some treatment today,” I said in an attempt to deflect my mom’s coming tirade.
“I’m calling Devin and thanking him,” Dad said. “When Devin first told us about this stuff, I only thought in terms of baseball. I never imagined it would save your life when you were shot.”
Mom got a haunted look and ran upstairs. That wasn’t good. I hoped we weren’t about to experience ‘Irrational Mom,’ the one who would ground me until I left to make my movies.
“Don’t worry, I’ll go talk to her,” Dad said, leaving me alone.
I guess that meant I was making breakfast.
◊◊◊
Tami waltzed in the back door as I tried to figure out what to make. It reminded me of when we were kids and just walked into each other’s houses.
“You’re skipping church and coming with me,” she announced.
“Okay?”
“We’re picking up Tracy and going to the original Granny’s for breakfast.”
I sent my dad a text, and we left.
◊◊◊
When we arrived at Granny’s, I soon discovered that the morning paper had run a story about yesterday’s events. I really am a ‘stupid boy’ at times. I made the mistake of showing two middle-school-aged brothers my bruises because they wanted to see where I’d been shot.
Tami finally rescued me from our worried community. If I hadn’t realized it yet, this would have made clear that our small town looked out for their own.
“Way to make it all about you,” Tracy teased.
I was glad she was able to joke about yesterday.
“I admit I’m not sorry that Bill didn’t survive the crash,” I said. “More than once, I’ve fantasized about meeting up with him in a dark alley and making him pay for everything he ever did to you.”
Tami looked surprised, like I’d spoken in Farsi.
“I’m not always the nice guy,” I said to defend myself.
“It’s just … I don’t know,” she admitted. “You get mad, and then you almost always let it go.”
“Some things, you just can’t let go,” I said without thinking.
Tami’s expression clouded over, and I knew she was thinking about me finding her with Alan.
“I’m not sure how I feel about it,” Tracy acknowledged. “On the one hand, I’m glad he’s gone forever. On the other … I can’t explain it. I still feel vulnerable, for some reason.”
She looked up at me.
“It helps to know you care that much about me. When I pushed the panic button, I was sure Bill was going to get me. But when I saw you in the woods, I knew everything was going to be okay. You have no idea how relieved I was that you’d come for me,” Tracy said as she teared up.
Tami looked around.
“We should go. We don’t want to have this conversation here,” she said to remind us we were in the middle of Granny’s.
“You still have to help me get the house ready,” Tracy reminded me. “And you have to get my phone.”
We’d left it under a bush in the woods. I’d stolen that ploy from Fritz and put my own twist on it. If the thug Paul had shot hadn’t just been winged, and Tracy hadn’t had to shoot him, we would have gotten away clean. I would use the GoFindMe app to track her phone down for her.
◊◊◊
On the way to the lake house, Tami passed on some disturbing news.
“Alan got expelled.”
“What did he do this time?” I asked.
“Cyberbullying. There’s a group of girls we call the ‘princesses’ who think they’re above it all.”
“Sort of like Tracy,” I said, nodding.
“I’m still a princess in my dad’s eyes,” Tracy said.
“Anyway,” Tami said while rolling her eyes, “Alan made the mistake of doing it from a school computer. He didn’t realize the school uses software that tracks keystrokes. He said some hateful stuff.”
“I wonder if he’ll ever learn,” I mused.
“His parents worked out a deal with Wesleyan where if he got treatment, they wouldn’t show the expulsion on his record so he could still go to college,” Tami said.
“Will they let him graduate?” I asked.
“He was doing well enough grade-wise, so they’ll let him finish out remotely. I have my doubts about how well the treatment will work, though. I talked to him when his parents came to pick him up, and he wasn’t remorseful in the least.”
“So, he’s still the same Alan. As far as I can tell, the only thing he’s ever regretted is getting caught,” I observed.
Tami thought about it for a moment and nodded her agreement.
No treatment Alan underwent would work unless he wanted to change. I couldn’t see him letting go of his resentment or ever admitting a mistake. That wasn’t Alan’s style. He always blamed everyone else for whatever went wrong.
I’d learned the hard way that I am responsible for my own happiness and for how I choose to respond to the world around me. My uncle had shown me the way during the summer I’d stayed with him. Until he’d helped me see that I didn’t like who I’d become, did I try to do anything about it? That would be a big no.
Given what I’d just gone through, I wasn’t ready to judge Alan that harshly, but I still needed to keep protecting myself and my friends from him.
Alan was too pigheaded to realize he was destroying everything around him, and I predicted his treatment was doomed to failure. For most people, getting kicked out of Wesleyan would have been a wake-up call, an indication that they’d hit rock bottom. If I knew Alan, that day remained a long way off.
◊◊◊
While I left to search for Tracy’s phone, the girls headed into the house to get it ready for our Senior Skip Day. Tami had horned in on our class outing by inviting her friends from Wesleyan. The deal I’d made with her was they were welcome if she would help get it organized.
Part of my agenda was to spend time with Tami. She was one of the people I planned to keep in touch with after graduation. We’d been friends all our lives, but with her going to Wesleyan, my eyes had been opened. We could still be close, but I was my own man now, regardless of what my mom or Tami thought or wanted.
It didn’t take me long to find Tracy’s phone. When I got back to the house, the girls put me in charge of yard work. Fortunately, the hospital had given me some pain meds. If they hadn’t, this would’ve been entirely beyond me.
The downside of having woods surround your lake house was that the trees dropped a ton of leaves. It looked like no one had taken care of raking last fall. Well, at least I didn’t have to bag them. In the country, they allowed you to burn yard waste. Soon the air became filled with the acrid aroma of burning leaves. I loved that smell.