Exposure (10 page)

“Just pictures.”

“Of?”

When Amelia didn’t answer immediately, her father set her computer on the table and opened it. “Go ahead, honey, show ’em.”

Amelia shook her head.

“All right, I’ll do it,” her father said, as the blond officer came into the room. Amelia gripped the table as she watched her father type in her password, then she turned her head away, dreading what they were about to see. Poor Anthony! What her father had done was already a terrible invasion of her privacy—and Anthony’s. But
this
, oh, she hated this for Anthony even more than for herself, and hated her father for forcing the issue, for exposing Anthony this way, and hated herself for leaving the laptop behind this morning. Stupid. Stupid, careless,
stupid
thing to do.

She waited, eyes averted, mind spinning now, in search of a trapdoor out of this bizarre scene. For a moment, no one spoke. Then her father cleared his throat and said, “You see what I mean.” She heard the soft click of the computer being closed again.

“Miss,” the officer said, “can you identify the person in those photos?” He was as businesslike as before, but whereas he’d sounded bored prior to seeing the photos, now his tone was purposeful. Almost eager. A cat who’d caught a mouse’s scent.

“No, sorry,” she said, wanting to save Anthony the indignity, knowing it was hopeless.

She could feel her father’s frustrated glare, hear the edge in his voice as he answered for her. “Anthony Winter’s his name. He goes to her school, Ravenswood, and his mom’s a teacher there. Kim Winter, I think it is.”

“Thank you. Is that information correct, miss?”

Amelia ignored the question and instead told him, “I have no idea who sent them. It could have been anyone.”

Her father pulled out the chair beside her and sat facing her, challenge plain on his face. “Amelia. You said—”

“No.
You
said. You assumed. But, well, I never knew
for sure
who sent them.” She avoided his eyes. “I think it was some random email address.”

“Do you have the original email?” the officer asked.

Careful to sound sincere, she said, “No, sorry, I deleted it.”

“I’m sure these came from him directly,” her father said, sounding as if he wasn’t sure whether to be angry or perplexed at this alteration to her story. “I know the guy, he’s been trying to get at my daughter since the minute he started at her school.”

The blond officer said, “Don’t worry, there’s ways to backtrack it. We have forensic technicians that can recover pretty much anything, even things that were deleted. People don’t realize that everything they do on their computers lives forever, deep in the hard drive. Kiddie porn, poison, bombs, guns, whatever people spend their time on, it stays in there somewhere.”

Amelia was suddenly nauseated.
Everything
lived on? If they dredged her computer’s hard drive, they’d find so much more than these few pictures—flagged because she’d been tinkering with edits to this particular group, changing exposures and color tones and shadows, cropping, enlarging, applying effects. Anthony was so beautiful, his lean body as ideal as the sculptures she’d seen in museums, as perfect as the subjects of Michelangelo’s paintings. She had these pictures, and pictures of herself, and a bunch more of the two of them together—not doing anything smutty, but not always dressed. Suppose they found those? Not to mention that while browsing what her parents always referred to as “inappropriate content” (they believed her when she said she never looked at that stuff), she’d viewed and deleted things she’d be embarrassed to show Anthony, let alone have revealed by some über-geek and shown to God-knows-who.

Her father was saying, “So then, you just take the computer and have it checked, then you’ll be able to charge him?”

She covered it with her hands. “You can’t take my computer; I need it for school.”

The seated officer said, “To be honest with you, I don’t specifically know what the charge for this might be—”

“But it is a crime,” her father said, as if instructing the officer, or trying to persuade him. “You’ll be arresting the guy.”

Amelia’s heart plummeted. “
Arresting
? Doesn’t that seem, you know, like overkill? I mean, it’s just pictures—there’s no actual harm in it. After all, I’ve seen paintings of nude men, so what difference?” She gave the officer her wide-eyed look,
sincerity
, moving a strand of hair behind her left ear for good measure.

The officer glanced at his notes. “The DA’s office has to make that judgment. A couple more questions, miss. If you don’t mind.” He looked at her again, straight on this time, in a way that struck a low, clear note of fear in her heart. His words, innocent as they sounded, confirmed the feeling. He said, “You claim you deleted the email, okay, but you’ve got these pictures saved, and in a file marked ‘flagged.’ Why is that?”

Her mind scrambled like a rat in a maze. “I—”

“For proof,” her father said.
Yes!
she thought, recalling the quick lie she’d used in her first attempt to stop this. He went on, “She said she already reported him to the school, but, I don’t know—” He turned to Amelia. “Did they ask you to show ’em to them?”

“They … Well, no, they, they just took my word for it.”
Please God
, she prayed,
don’t let them ask the school for confirmation
.

The officer stood. “Excuse me just a minute while I make a call.” Amelia’s breath caught, then eased as he added, “This is something I haven’t dealt with previously, so I’ll need to get a read from the DA’s office.”

Powerless to do anything other than wait, Amelia crossed her arms in front of her on the table, then leaned over and rested her head the way all the kids used to do during quiet time at school. As a child, she’d let her mind wander, idly turning over pleasant thoughts as if they were stones in a stream. Now the stones were boulders and there was nothing to do but pray for help in lifting them.
Please God help me please God help me please God …

“Sir?” The blond officer stood in the doorway, and her father motioned him into the kitchen. “What we’re going to need to do is have Miss Wilkes surrender her computer, for further investigation.”

Amelia’s hands began to tremble, and she squeezed them into fists. “Wait,” she said, knowing now that the only way to stop this about-to-topple boulder was to confess. “Wait, that won’t be necessary. Okay, yes, Anthony did send them, but … but it’s not what you think.”

All three men’s eyes were on her now, but that was all right. She was used to the spotlight. She knew what was required of her.

Straightening her back and squaring her shoulders, she lifted her chin and said, “The truth is, I asked him to send them. It’s all my fault. It was my idea. He didn’t do anything.”

The police officers glanced at each other in a way that said,
This changes things
.

“She doesn’t mean that,” her father said. “He threatened her, intimidated her. Something. I know my daughter. She wouldn’t do that, and she wouldn’t lie about doing it unless he’d got her afraid of him.”

“No,” she said firmly, feeling an odd satisfaction in shattering—or at least trying to shatter—her father’s blind faith in her innocence. “I swear. I … we … This is really embarrassing, okay, but, I thought he was good-looking, and I wanted to see what he looked like … you know. Undressed. I was …” She shrugged. “I was curious. I’m sorry. I know it was wrong.”

“Amelia.” Her father’s voice was careful and stern. “It’s obvious you’re scared.”

“Daddy,” she said, shaking her head, “I’m sorry. I know you’re disappointed in me.” She dared a look at his face. “But I
am
almost eighteen.”

“So, just to confirm,” the dark-haired officer said, “you’re saying it was this man—”

“Boy,” she said. “He’s a senior, like me.”

“This Anthony Winter is the person in the pictures, and they were sent by him, using email, at your request.”

She nodded.

“What would you say is the nature of your relationship?”

“We … we’re friends. Good friends is all,” she said, hopeful that she might yet save them from complete exposure, put all this to rest without endangering the system that had worked so well for them up until now.

The officer shut his notebook and said, “All right, then. Looks like we’re finished here.”

Amelia looked from his face to the other officer’s, afraid to be relieved, yet hopeful she had saved Anthony, even if she’d gotten herself into what would surely be boiling-hot water with her father. “That’s it? We’re done?”

“We are, yes.”

“I can keep my computer?”

The officers, now both standing, both nodded. “If we have any other questions, we’ll get in touch. What’s the best number to contact you?”

Her father took the man’s elbow and steered him toward the front hall, saying, “I’ll give you one of my business cards, it has all the ways to find me.”

The blond officer gave Amelia an appraising look, then followed the other two men to the front door, where Amelia could hear her father saying, “I have to tell you, boys, I’m not entirely satisfied here,” and her interrogator replying, “The DA gets the final word, sir.”

Meaning what? That Anthony might still get into trouble? That they might still check her computer?

Despite the laptop remaining in her possession, Amelia had a sinking feeling that the final word, the word that would come to characterize their situation, would be one a polite girl would never utter. She formed it letter by letter using sign language,
F-U-
 … Then she leaned her forehead against the table and prayed—because praying couldn’t hurt, though she wasn’t sure it had helped so far—that she was wrong.

A minute later, Amelia’s father returned to the kitchen rubbing his jaw thoughtfully as he walked. He stopped in front of her on the far side of the table, tucked his hands into his pockets, and said, “Seems like this is worse than I thought.”

“I told you, I’m sorry.”

He picked up her computer. “He’s sunk his claws into you right good, that boy has. Where’s your phone?”

“Outside. In my car.”

“I’ll get it. Go on up to your room.”

“What?”

“I said get to your room. Go on.”

“Daddy, I’m not a five-year-old. You can’t just take my toys and send me to my room.”

His raised eyebrows and tight jaw dared her to protest further. “I believe I can do exactly that, and you had better get. I’m in no mood to debate with you right now. I need some time to think.”

“Oh, and you can only think when I’m locked up in my room, is that it?”

“Amelia.” He appeared baffled by her sarcasm. “What in God’s good name is going on with you?”

“You were trying to get an innocent person arrested!”

“He is
not
innocent, honey. Let’s just stop right where we are and back up a minute.”

“
I’m
the one who caused the problem.”

“Which never would’a happened if he hadn’t somehow got to you. He’s a slimeball, trust me, I know the type.”

They stood there, facing off, Amelia ready to dig in further, and then her mother came clattering into the mudroom from the back door with a cheerful, “Well, hey, I didn’t expect to find both of y’all home.” The cheerfulness vanished quickly, once she saw them. “What’s wrong?”

Amelia let her father recount the tale of her secrecy and the photos, the excuses she’d tried to make to both him and to the police, and then he absolved her completely by the end of it. He said, “Somehow, Winter’s got her covering for him, but we’re goin’ to make sure we’ve put an end to it so that Ladybug here can get back on track.”

“Momma,” Amelia said, getting up so she could take her mother’s hands in her own, “it isn’t like Daddy said at all.
I’m
the one who did the wrong thing—voluntarily, totally on my own. Anthony doesn’t deserve to get in trouble.”

“Harlan?”

“She said this before, too. Amelia, it’s all right, you can tell us the truth.”

“I’m
trying
to, but you won’t listen!”

“The police,” her mother said, looking at her with concern, “they’re done with this?”

Her father said, “They’ll have to question him, too.”

“They do?” Amelia said, startled. “I thought they were finished.” She’d thought—well, she’d hoped—that what trouble might yet come would be through her father raising it with Ms. Winter, maybe with the school, since she and Anthony had a class together.

“
Your
part is finished, but they have to go see what he has to say for himself, ’fore they take the information to the DA—waste of time if you ask me.”

Her mother, face fixed in a reassuring expression that did not reassure Amelia at all, said, “I’ll suppose that if he’s done nothing wrong, they’ll find that out quick enough.”

“What? Come on! You’re siding with Daddy?”

“I’m saying, it can be hard to tell what feelings are real and what are … provoked, by situations.” Her mother seemed far away for a moment, but then she focused on Amelia again, saying, “You’re only seventeen. It’s not like you really know your own mind when it comes to … to this kind of thing.”

“Not to mention understanding that boy’s motivation,” her father said.

“Unbelievable,” Amelia said, backing away from both of her parents. “You’d
do
this, subject an innocent person to who knows what kind of mess just because you don’t want to believe I’m capable of this all on my own?”

Her father frowned at her. “You act like that boy did not provide you with pornography. The evidence speaks for itself, miss. Now go on like I said. We’ll take this up with you later, after your momma and I’ve had a chance to talk.”

Her mother watched her with eyes that seemed sympathetic and knowing at the same time. “Harlan,” she said, then went to him and whispered something in his ear.

“I did, yes, and I thought of that, too.”

When Amelia got upstairs, she stopped in the game room to call Anthony from the home phone, discovering from the absence of a dial tone just what it was that her parents had both foreseen; her father had unplugged the phone base so that none of the extensions worked.