After (14 page)

Devon shrugs.

“You know the deal, right? Clean, sharp uniform, jersey tucked in. Socks pulled up, wrapped with color-coordinated electrical tape to keep those shin guards from sliding around. Clean cleats. Me in a suit? Same thing.”

How does Dom know so much about soccer all of a sudden? Devon shifts on her seat, fiddles with her plastic security band, the one that the frizzy-haired woman had snapped on her wrist during Intake. Last name, first name, birth date. And then another number, her ID number. Eight digits. Like she’s become that number, a breathing debit card.

The room is quiet for a moment.

“So, shall we move on?” Dom says. “How about that list. Got it for me?”

Still examining her wristband, Devon says, “I didn’t . . . I don’t have it with me.”

“Not a problem.” Dom pulls out her yellow legal pad and clicks open a pen. “I take great notes.”

“Um, I didn’t exactly . . . I mean I couldn’t think of . . . I’ve been really tired. . . .” Devon’s voice trails off.

“Okay.” Dom lays the pen on the pad, centers it. “That
is
a problem, Devon. I thought we had an agreement. Remember? You were going to work with me.”

Dom is tapping her fingers on the tabletop. Devon notices that her nails are clear today, no color.

“We have to be in court on Tuesday, Devon. That only gives me”—Dom counts on her fingers—“four full days, and that’s over a weekend, plus what’s left of today, to prepare. Do I need to go over the importance of this hearing with you again? That its outcome will determine whether your case will be tried in adult or juvenile court?” She waits a moment, giving Devon the opportunity to say something. When she doesn’t, Dom continues. “This is huge, Devon. It has nothing to do with your guilt or your innocence. At this hearing, nobody’s dealing with that. But it has
everything
to do with your future.”

“Yeah, I know. You already told me. I understand all that.”

“Well, that’s just great. But you see, Devon, without people who are willing to speak positively about you, to vouch for your character, to show that they care about you and your future, we’ll lose this hearing. Plain and simple. And off you’ll go to slug it out in the adult criminal system where you’ll be looking at a maximum
life
sentence.” Dom pauses. “Versus if you cooperate with me, follow my guidance, the max you’ll see is five years. Where would you like to be five years from now, Devon?”

Devon looks down at her hands in her lap. Her throat aches. Dom doesn’t get it. No one will speak positively about her. Nobody will care what happens to her, not now. Nobody, nobody, nobody.

Dom sighs loudly. “You are part of this process, Devon. A huge, gigantic part. I can only go with what I know about you, and most of that must come
from you
. Once I get this info, I can run with it. But I have to get it first. And, unfortunately, I’m not a mind reader.”

Devon continues to watch her hands.

“Come on, Devon. Give me one name. Just one, and I can go from there.” The silence stretches out between them. “You know,” she finally says, “I should just walk out of this room. I really should.”

Devon glances up at Dom. She’s got her arms crossed. But her face is more thoughtful than angry, and this unnerves Devon. Some plan is forming behind those eyes.

“Okay—” Dom shakes her head. “I’ll work this out, with or without your help. But I’ll tell you this much, Devon: I’m not getting you. Why are you fighting this?”

Devon says nothing.

“I know this isn’t easy. But, as they say, God helps those who help themselves, and right now you’re not helping yourself. In fact, you’re your biggest handicap. It’s like you’ve decided that during one game—no, wait, in a
championship
game—you’re going to go stand in the goal wearing a blindfold and think that you’ll actually be able to stop all those balls from flying into your net. And I’m the coach, watching all this from the sidelines, and I just have to deal with it because you’re the only keeper I have.” Dom hesitates. “I can’t bench you, Devon. You’re it. You go into this blind, and you choose to lose.”

Devon looks down at the floor. She kicks at one of the legs of the bolted-down table. “I don’t want to fight this. I’m not really meaning to. I just . . . can’t . . . I . . .” She looks up at Dom again. Should she tell her? That she can’t remember? No, Dom won’t believe it anyway.

Dom looks back at Devon. Finally, Dom shakes her head again. “Look, I don’t have all day, so let’s move on. The articles I gave you and the photos. Did you look at them, read them, at least?”

Devon can feel her stomach churning now. She swallows. “Yeah.”

“And . . . when you did, you felt . . . you thought . . . what?”

Devon closes her eyes. She’s so tired. “I don’t know. I didn’t really feel . . . anything.”

Dom presses her lips together. “You’re lying to me.”

Devon checks back to Dom; when she speaks she hears her own voice shaking.
“I am not a liar.”

“Oh, no? Well, you are if you’re saying that you looked at the photos of your apartment and the trash bag and felt nothing, Devon. That you read those articles about yourself and felt nothing? The pictures are pretty shocking, Devon. The
story
is shocking.” Dom pulls her brown accordion file out of her briefcase and picks through it. “Okay, let’s look at them together. Shall we?” She lays some sheets of paper on the table. Devon recognizes what they are—more copies of the articles and photos. She turns her eyes away.

“Okay, Devon. You saw the photo of the trash bag that the baby was found in. Let’s start there. Talk to me. About what you can remember. There’s a lot of evidence there, items I’ll need specific information about. And the other police photos, too. We’ll need to go over them, one by one. . . .”

Devon looks behind herself at the door. The walls of this small room are pressing in around her again. “I don’t!”

“What do you mean, ‘I don’t’?”

“I mean”—she takes a breath—“I don’t really remember anything.”

“You don’t remember anything about what?”

Devon doesn’t answer.

“About the stuff in the pictures? About what you felt when you read the articles? The baby? What?”

Devon says nothing, just keeps watching the door behind her.

“You know, Devon, this little game you’re playing? It’s getting very old, very fast. And please turn around and look at me while we’re talking. It’s extremely rude what you’re doing.”

Devon slowly brings her head back to a general position where she could look at Dom if she wanted to. But she doesn’t; she looks at the white cinder block wall behind Dom. “I’m not playing games, Dom. I just can’t remember. I mean, I can remember some things, but then it . . . just . . . kind of, like, stops.”

“Stops.” Dom’s tone is dubious.

“Yeah. It just kind of . . . shuts off.” Devon meets Dom’s eyes directly now. “I’m totally serious. It’s like there’s . . . nothing there.”

Dom crosses her arms and shifts on her stool, squinting at Devon. She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Devon can hear the pulsing music from the common room behind them. The thick walls muffle most of it.

“Did you mention this to Dr. Bacon? This ‘not remembering’ problem?”

“Um, who?”

“Dr. Bacon. The doctor who you spoke with at Intake? The one who asked you if you’d hurt yourself?”

“Oh.”
The lady with the long gray braid.
But it wasn’t at Intake; it was in her cell later that night. Devon frowns, shakes her head. “She didn’t ask.”

Dom presses her lips together, nods. Makes a note on her legal pad. Then, “Okay, then tell me what you
do
remember.”

“About what? About that . . . That Night? Or . . . something else?” Devon brings a hand to her mouth, starts gnawing on her thumbnail. “Something before? Or after?”

“Just start talking, Devon. Start at the beginning, and I’ll listen.”

Devon takes in a big breath. She lets it out slowly. She hadn’t come up with a list of names for Dom last night, but those hours of staring at the ceiling had provided a blank screen for her mind to fill, too tired to fight it.

She’d stared up at that ceiling. And she remembered.

“Okay,” Devon says finally, her voice a whisper. “This is something I can remember.”

The feeling is what wakes her.

It isn’t like most other mornings, waking to the alarm screaming at her from the dresser. It’s that feeling, that wave of nausea—that awful rising up from the bottom of her stomach to the back of her throat—that forces her out of her bed and propels her down the dim hall toward the bathroom. Had she remained curled under her sheets a second longer, she’d be sponging puke from her mattress and hauling her bedding to the laundry room for most of the morning.

Devon drops to the linoleum just in time, flings up the toilet lid, and grips the sides of the cold bowl. She doesn’t think to pull her hair away from her mouth before she retches and retches, spewing orange vomit into the water, the splashlets spattering her black hair, her chin, even her cheeks and forehead, and the front of her oversized GIRLS HAVE MORE KICKS T-shirt she’d slept in. And the retching continues, the heaving continues, the gagging, even after she has nothing left inside herself, only the gut-rotting nausea, and a long strand of thick slobber swinging like a pendulum from her foul-tasting mouth.

Finally, Devon struggles to her feet. She stumbles to the sink, wipes her lips and chin with the back of one trembling hand while leaning on the counter for support with the other. She feels empty and weak. The sour stench of puke is everywhere, clinging to her skin, to her hair, to her T-shirt. As she reaches for the faucet, her reflection in the mirror stops her momentarily. Her face is so pale it seems to glow, the dark eyes staring back at her, large in their sockets, and she wonders for that second if the girl in that mirror could really be her. Because right now she feels like she should be dead.

She rinses out her mouth with water, swishing it around before spitting into the sink. Then she slowly brushes her teeth, the minty-flavored Crest with its pasty consistency causing another wave to rise in her throat. She closes her eyes with the effort to keep it down.

“Dev!”

Devon jumps, drops the toothbrush into the sink.

Her mom. Standing in the doorway, watching Devon, brows furrowed and worried. “You look
horrible
, hon.”

Her mom is still dressed for work, that navy blue Safeway apron over her white blouse and blue bow tie. She glances at the toilet, then crinkles her nose as she moves around behind Devon to flush down what Devon hadn’t.

Why is her mom home so early?

“Sheez, I
thought
I heard you in here. Gr
-oss
!
”
She quickly retreats back to the doorway, covering her nose with the palm of her hand. “Sorry, hon; you know the hard time I have with puke. . . .” She starts dry heaving then, takes another step backward, embarrassed. “I could
never
be a nurse. It’s bad enough bartending. Are you sure you want to keep your appointment today?”

That’s why she’s home early. The appointment.
Devon feels her pulse spike suddenly. She leans against the counter with both hands.

“I know I got off early to take you and all. But still, if you’re sick, we could cancel it, no big deal—”

“No, Mom,” Devon says quickly. “I’m fine.” Devon tries to smile then, an attempt to give her statement credibility, because “fine” is not at all how she is feeling. In fact, besides feeling sick and weak, she’s scared. Terrified, actually. Terrified of going to the doctor this morning, terrified of what he might find. But she must go to the doctor, she must get that physical, because she wants to play soccer. “Really. I had some tuna fish last night; I think it was bad or something. Or maybe the lettuce. Both had been in the fridge for a while.” Devon feels dizzy suddenly. She takes a quick steadying breath before speaking again. “Plus, I’ve
got
to get that sports physical done. Our first game’s tomorrow. Coach Mark said if I fail to bring the form back this afternoon, signed by a doctor, there’s no way I can play—”

“What? You’re his starting keeper. He wouldn’t bench you for that. No way. He loves you! He wouldn’t—”

Devon shakes her head no. She’s bending over the sink, now, taking deep breaths. The effort it took for her to knock out that speech had nearly made her pass out. She hooks her hair behind her ears and picks up the red plastic container that holds her Neutrogena soap, lathers her hands. “Stop, Mom. Yeah, he would, even if it costs us a game. A rule is a rule. I’m lucky that he let me practice so long without it.”

From her spot in the doorway, Devon’s mom watches Devon wash her face. “Well, listen, Dev. I really hope you told him that it wasn’t
my
fault your form’s late. You told him that at least, didn’t you? Because I know for a fact that I said I’d make you an appointment at least a zillion times. But you just kept putting it off and putting it off. And even on registration day, the school nurse had those slots to sign up to get the physical done with her, and you refused. That’s how we did it last year, remember? And it would’ve only been twenty bucks. More convenient, too. I wouldn’t have had to miss work—”

“Yeah, I told him, Mom.”

“Oh.” Devon’s mom looks a little confused for a second, like she can’t believe she’d just won an argument with Devon without actually arguing. “Okay. Well, don’t go around eating rotten tuna anymore, okay? ’Cause I think I’ve got enough stuff going on right now without worrying about what you’re eating. I mean, I don’t want to have to quit my bartending job. Working Friday and Saturday nights at Katie Downs really brings in the bucks. And no way do I want to switch shifts at Safeway; the money’s better on graveyard, and the work’s way easier, and there are tons of people gunning for my slot. Plus, pretty soon I’ll be taking those cosmetology classes in the afternoons. I’m going to register next week. I mean, I’ve got to think about
my
future, too, Devon. You know that. I can’t be worrying about you all the time, hoping you’re taking care of yourself, eating right. . . .”