Free North Fork by Wayne M. Johnston Page B

and I won’t go into detail or anything, but I’m including it because it was memorable. They sent a cop with me. Luckily I wasn’t cuffed to him, so he didn’t have to come into the stall, but he hovered just outside like he was afraid I would escape down the toilet. I could see his feet under the door, which made it hard to go even though I really had to, and that was when it hit methat this was the real thing, and whatever it was they thought I’d done last night, it was a bigger deal than smashing mail boxes in Shelter Bay or even having Sascha Miller sneak out at night back when we were in eighth grade to roll around in a sleeping bag with me. After I made the mistake of bragging it up to some guys at school, she said I tricked her into it and tried to rape her, which wasn’t true, but it got all public and I was questioned first by the principal, then by some detective.
    It was Sascha’s idea to sneak out, and she talked like she’d done it before and seemed to have this big crush on me. I didn’t like her all that much, but she wasn’t bad-looking. I mean, who doesn’t fantasize about doing it? I hadn’t done it and it seemed too good to pass up. She even brought a water bottle with some gin in it that she stole from her parents. It tasted awful but we drank it anyway. I probably drank most of it. I stole one of Harold’s condoms from the nightstand drawer in their bedroom, but didn’t use it because it never got that far. It was close but I stopped, because all of a sudden she tensed up like she had changed her mind, so I didn’t go through with it and she was crying and it got real awkward. I’m sure she was lying about having done it, which I understand since it’s the kind of lie I would tell and have told, and my mistake was bragging about it, but I sort of got trapped into that.
    I did brag. I even said more happened than did. I’m not trying to duck out of that part. But it wasn’t the way they tried to make it look, like she was all innocent and I had plotted it out and tricked her. We met in the park and Rebecca Swanson was with her. Rebecca was going out with this guy who has since moved but who met us there too. They went off and left us alone, which at the time I thought was good, but it sure ended up a mess because Rebecca told these two guys who go to our school and who I thought were my friends that Sascha and I had snuck out and were now a couple. They called up all buddy-like andsaid, “We hear you’re going out with Sascha now.” I said no, we weren’t going out or anything, and they said they heard about last night and how we were in the park together. They acted like they envied me, like I was the luckiest guy in the world and said, “You guys did it, didn’t you?”
    I didn’t deny it. I would have felt stupid saying what really happened and, looking back, I don’t think the truth would have helped much anyway because there still would have been a rumor and her parents probably would have heard it and Sascha would likely have made up a similar lie because that’s the way she is, so I should have just said nothing happened, but I wanted to be cool and let those guys think we did it and that’s part of why I’m still stuck in here. There are a few other messes I’ve been in that aren’t helping much either.
    When I got back into that puke-green room with the camera, these two cops came in and made me tell them every little detail about how I spent all the time from when Harold went to Bellingham, leaving me home alone, until the cop spotted me that morning. I’ve already described that time to you, so I won’t bore you by repeating it here. I could tell they knew a lot of it already, at least up until I got dropped off at the Shell a little before midnight. But I didn’t want to tell them about the campsite because for some reason I still had this sense that I