Where It Began

“There,” she says, picking at some oatmeal-colored fuzz balls because God knows how long this puppy has been languishing on a remote shelf. “Demure.” She looks me up and down. “Agnes says you can’t miss with demure.”

The Barneys trip, it turns out, is just part of her agenda. She has a calendar; she has a list; she has a telephone voice so obsequious and kiss-ass that you’d think she was trying to get me off death row. My life is now dominated by the Agnes Nash Get Out of Jail Free flowchart that Vivian has fastened to the refrigerator door with retro magnetic pineapples.

And first on the agenda for the upscale delinquent youth of today is a visit with the lawyer. All I can think is: Okay, Gabriella, you can stop being freaked out now.

But it doesn’t work.

The faint but persistent hope that now the whole thing can maybe start to be over is completely overwhelmed by the less-than-faint fear that getting too optimistic might not be such a great idea. So I get dressed for the occasion, trying not to flip out, getting dizzy when I look down to pull on my sandals.

Unfortunately, Vivian’s idea of looking demure for this lawyer is not exactly what you’d think Agnes Nash had in mind. She comes back from Sunset Plaza holding out a little burnt-orange suit with the kind of boring jacket I’m not pla

His office is in one of the towers with the thirty-eight-dollar valet parking, and Vivian doesn’t even try to get around this by parking for cheap under the shopping center next door and walking over.

His suite is so big that the elevator opens into his reception area, acres of massive Persian rugs and soft lighting, and two receptionists who either have to be earning mega-bucks for answering the phone or some lawyer’s hot mistress based on the size of the giant diamond studs in their earlobes.

It’s hard to believe that springing teenage thugs could be such a ritzy profession, but according to Billy, all the best law firms keep someone on hand who can spring their top clients’ little thug kids and someone else who can hide their money and scare the shit out of their old wives when they want to get new wives.

Vivian heads to the shiny mahogany counter and says, “We’re here for Ted Healy. Agnes Nash sent us.”

This perks the receptionist right up. She comes out from behind the counter, possibly just so we can see that she’s wearing Manolos and we aren’t, walks us over to leather chairs big enough to swallow and digest us in a single gulp, and sends the assistant receptionist to get us cappuccinos.

To add to the surreal experience, when Mr. Healy finally ushers us into his gymnasium-sized office, he looks like an extremely well-dressed, ginormous teddy bear. This is probably why he got stuck doing juvie, where it doesn’t matter if your flaky little clients sit there marveling that you can even find pants that big and wondering just how much you have to eat to fill out those large pants. Probably the DA takes his plea bargains because he’s afraid that Mr. Healy will sit on him and squash him like a Swedish pancake. Although, thanks to Agnes, we are probably going to get our own personal, cooperative DA.

“Well,” Vivian says, leaning into the giant, shiny lawyer desk, fluttering her eyelashes as if being really, really charming will help make my little legal problema go away, “Now what, Mr. Healy?”

“Well, Vivian,” he says, disgustingly charming right back at ya, tilting his head to one side and pursing his lips. “That depends on Gabriella here.”

“Gabby,” I say, in what comes out in too much of a sullen teen voice under the circumstances. Pissed off as I am to be walking around in tiny little mincing steps for fear the tiny little pleated skirt will fan out and show off my panties, I am not so brainless as to miss the part where this guy has to more than like me.

Why else would Vivian have stuck me in the six-inch pleated skirt in the first place?

But Mr. Healy, presumably familiar with the sullen disposition of teen thugs in strange outfits, doesn’t seem to mind. “Gabby it is,” he says. He is quite enthusiastic about this, actually, as if having a nickname is an asset for the youthful offender.

Then he gives us this big, dopey spiel about how he’s my lawyer blabitty-blah until Vivian figures out he is tossing her out of the room and she wriggles out the double mahogany doors as if her dress itched. It is extremely embarrassing, but Mr. Healy seems to be enjoying it.

So then he can give me his even bigger dopey spiel about how for him to be able to work with me effectively, I have to level with him when he asks me a question.

“But I don’t remember anything.”

He looks mystified.

“Gabby,” he says carefully. “I’m not sure I’m clear on what you’re trying to tell me here.”

“It probably doesn’t matter anyway,” I say. “It’s just that I don’t remember anything to level with you about.”

“Really?” he says. Only it’s more like REALLLLLLY!?!?!?!?!?!?

“Yeah, like if I said I remembered what I did, I’d be making it up.”

“Oh, I see.” Mr. Healy leans back in his big leather chair, which creaks pathetically, as if it were hoping that someone would put it out of its misery. “Then you really will be comfortable telling the police and probation that you don’t, in fact, remember?”

Like I’m going to be comfortable telling anyone anything.

“I guess,” I say. “I mean, I’m definitely not going to be comfortable having a big courtroom scene where I have to take an oath and have to . . . you know . . .”

By now, the guy is gri

Drunk blabitty-blah car wrapped around a tree blah-blah car keys in my hand blah-blah-blah.

This is the part where Mr. Healy tips all the way back in his immense leather chair and explains in detail how if not for the vehicular pyrotechnics, maybe I could get away with being a penitent-yet-dopey teen led astray by peer pressure and a low, low tolerance for ca

As a result of the State of California’s unfortunate opinion of me, the helpful helping professionals Agnes Nash has picked out for me have to love and adore my perfect self. Because: If I’m not really really convincing, I’ll be singing my sad, alcoholic ballad of teenage depravity in a locked juvenile rehab jail in Arizona.

He has the brochure.

I’ll be taking wilderness walks in a one-hundred-and-ten-degree desert wonderland. And I’ll be doing it sober. Which would pretty much work for me since I only drink at parties north of Sunset and gated ones in the Valley on streets like Songbird Lane, and all right, also at picnic lunches in the Class of 1920 Garden, which involves white wine in tiny Dixie cups and shouldn’t even count, or just something relaxing with Billy and company after school, which seems a lot more like a bonding activity the Brady Bunch would go for after turning off the cameras than a hard-core criminal activity. But even so, I sort of doubt they have anything like that in locked rehab facilities no matter how many zillions of dollars your parents have to pay to get you in there and, more importantly, to keep you out of California Youth Authority where they have actual gang members and where Mr. Healy seems pretty convinced that someone like me could actually get killed.