Where It Began

“No!”

“Because if we need to send you to another school, I’ve got one up my sleeve, and we can slip you right in. Fresh start and all that.”

“I don’t want a fresh start!” I say. “The only thing I could be notorious for is this, and it’s not something I do a lot of.”

“No drunk and disorderlies are going to pop up in Orange County with some Jane Doe-linsky ID? And by the way, if you have a Jane Doe-linsky ID, I need you to melt it down. Today.”

“I don’t. But if I did, I would. I get it. I can be completely perfect for as long as you want, but I really have to go back to Winston.”

Mr. Healy looks suspicious. You could tell that he’d heard protestations of teenage perfection before.

“All righty,” he says, sounding completely unconvinced. “Best-case scenario, you’ll get some favorable probation recommendations, the DA buys it, you’ll live at home, you’ll get some treatment, you will not so much as sit behind the wheel of a car until your license is restored, you’ll act like your conditions of probation are the Ten Commandments, and twelve, eighteen months from today, you won’t have a record.”

“No record?”

I feel as if I’ve stumbled into the Magic Kingdom of making things go away. I want to kiss Billy Nash. I mean, I always want to kiss Billy Nash, but now I really want to kiss Billy Nash just after ripping off this awful suit. Except that how I can get myself physically close enough to Billy Nash to plant my kiss is a Mystery of Life because even in the Disneyland of best-case scenarios, I still can’t drive.

Mr. Healy looks very pleased with himself. “Expunged,” he says. “You’ll need to follow the rules of probation punctiliously. Because worst-case scenario, you’re spending some time in that residential facility.”

Okay, out of the Magic Kingdom and into a black-and-white girls’ prison movie with catfights and sadistic butch matrons with cattle prods.

“Well, young lady, this is what’s going to happen,” he says in a jovial tone that seems spectacularly inappropriate under the circumstances but I really don’t want to piss off the guy standing between me and total doom by pointing this out. “We’re going to get you arraigned. You won’t have to say anything except to verify your name and address. And we’re going to make sure this citation isn’t screwed up in a way that could bite you. And from what you’re telling me, you can honestly say you don’t remember a thing no matter what they ask, so no sweat there. By the time they get around to finishing up your probation report, we’ll have you squared away.”

I don’t even want to know what it means to be squared away in Mr. Healy’s world. All it brings to mind is a perfectly square cell or maybe a cube-shaped cage with bars all the way around.

“All righty, then,” he says. “Let’s get your mother back in here. Let’s get you into Twelve Step and coordinate the psycho-babble. Let’s talk to the police. Let’s get the show on the road.”

XXIX

YOU WOULD THINK THAT AFTER WEEKS OF LYING around petrified and chanting I want a lawyer over and over, I would have been a happy little camper now that my show was on the road.

You would think that now that I didn’t have to man up to put weight on both feet without flinching, and my left hand—although it would have been pretty much a straight-up catastrophe if it had been my right hand, but it wasn’t—was semi-functional and filled with prickly sensations that were actually quite the relief compared to feeling pain or nothing, I would have been striding toward the potentially swell future.

You would think that the possibility I was going to get to shrug off my life as a juvenile delinquent and walk away smiling and arrest record–free, that I could just hang around and obsess about Billy Nash pretty much all the time while my so-called legal problems kind of went poof, like a bu

Which could have happened if I had any idea how I was supposed to pull off any of this.

gabs123: r u there nash or is ur computer just on?

pologuy: whatcha doing?

gabs123: filling out forms for my lawyer. huge lawyer.

pologuy: ag only knows famous guys

gabs123: no, literally huge. fattest guy not in the circus.

pologuy: at least he sounds amusing. my guy is frightening. makes people capitulate with dirty looks. u don’t do what he says, he looks at u, ur done for

gabs123: well ur guy must b pretty amazing because how come u can drive but I can’t?

pologuy: wtf. that sucks

gabs123: so how come?

pologuy: scary lawyer fixed it. changed charge to disturbing peace or some kind of bad mischief with no drinking in it

gabs123: how????????????

pologuy: vaporized from the record? large contribution to the mayor? don’t know. u have smashed car and the blood alcohol level of a keg

gabs123: lawyer might be able to keep my blood alcohol level out of it. how would u know my blood alcohol lvl anyway?

pologuy: agnes knows all sees all screws up all

gabs123: consider the possibility that i’m the one who screwed up.

This was so not what I meant to say to him. And I go, Gabriella, if you don’t want him to think you suck, maybe it would be better if you didn’t freaking tell him that you suck.

pologuy: don’t say that. hey. miss u gabs

gabs123: me too. castle?

pologuy: can’t. agnes is doing her prison warden thing.

gabs123: xx anyway. i just don’t know how i’m going to pull this off. how do i even do this so that people buy it?

Which turns out to be so the completely right thing to say.

pologuy: i’m going to walk u through it. u can do this. u have to stay strong

gabs123: as in don’t cry and b girlie?

pologuy: as in don’t start feeling like u deserve to have something bad happen to u. or something bad will happen to u

gabs123: that is so not what i’m doing. couldn’t this just b like the take responsibility thing everyone is so hot and bothered about?

pologuy: no. taking responsibility is like ok i’m sorry and i’ll never do it again. but u can’t let yourself get into that what if i killed a baby i deserve to b locked up frame of mind

gabs123: what if i did WHAT?

pologuy: point is, u didn’t. stay with that. u have to go hey, i’m the luckiest guy on planet earth. i’m a lucky duck in a magic pond. don’t go spitting in the magic pond ok?

gabs123: ur scaring me.

pologuy: listen to me g. the universe is tossing u a free pass. don’t u want a free pass? take it. it’s not like someone died

At which point, I completely lose it.

gabs123: shit, i could have crashed into a freaking baby and i don’t even remember it!!!

pologuy: but u didn’t. u need to stop thinking about it. jackman has this technique where u put a rubber band on ur wrist and every time you think bad thoughts, u snap it

gabs123: u wore a rubber band on ur wrist? this is hard to picture.

pologuy: didn’t need to—i don’t have bad thoughts. i take what the universe gives me. like i said i’m lucky and things work out

gabs123: what if i’m not lucky?

pologuy: it’s just killer bad thoughts g. u have to stop it. predators smell fear. they get one whiff of what a big bad baby-killing girl u think u r, ur screwed

Raising the fascinating question of what I was supposed to do with what a big bad baby-killing girl it felt like I was. How the fact I was a lucky duck in a magic pond with no smashed baby and the universe raining down Get Out of Jail Free cards on my head didn’t feel as good as it was supposed to. How I had to go convince the police and the probation office and a platoon of therapists that, even though I didn’t remember a single minute of what happened, I was pretty damned sure it was never going to happen again because I was a model girl.