HERE’S WHAT HAPPENS when a girl gets arrested.
The police come to her house. Maybe they look smug about it, because they never believed her story in the first place. Maybe they’re rougher than they need to be when they put her in handcuffs, right in front of her parents and sister. They tell her she has the right to remain silent. As if they would hear her even if she screamed.
They let her know the crime she’s being charged with: the murder of Mark Forrester. They notice she’s wearing tight jeans, that she has makeup on, even though it’s eleven o’clock at night. They see the packed bag and wonder where she planned to go. She thought she got away with it, the little brat. She thought she had everybody fooled with those big eyes and the story she came up with, the story that made her out to be totally innocent. We went for a hike. We wanted to see the view. He leaned over too far. We. We. He. Never me. She didn’t do anything wrong.
This is what happens when a girl gets arrested. She gets questioned again, and again, and again, because they think they can wring the real story out of her. They know Mark didn’t fall. Mark was not the kind of guy who fell for anything.
“You did it,” they say. “We know you did it. If you admit it, this will go a lot easier. We can make a deal. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison?”
They wonder why she hasn’t cried. She must be a monster, devoid of emotion, running purely on instincts. It’s a good thing they arrested her, because who knows what she’s really capable of. They don’t know that she has cried, but only when nobody is around to see her do it. They don’t know that when she finally falls asleep at night, she has to flip over her pillow, because it is wet with tears.
She’s seventeen, so she’s held at a juvenile detention center. She sleeps in a ward with other scared girls. She wonders why they’re here, if they have been accused of the same thing. She didn’t do it. She couldn’t do it.
What she doesn’t tell the police: yes, she was angry at Mark on the hike. Yes, she walked behind him and for a second, maybe longer, she allowed herself to fantasize about what his sweaty back would feel like with her palms pressed against it, how she would feel being the one with the power. But she didn’t do it. She’s not capable of murder.
“I’m scared,” she says, practically a whisper. “I’m scared I had something to do with it.”
I know all of this because she’s allowed to have visitors.
“Just tell me what happened,” I plead. “We’ll get through it together.”
I’m not allowed to touch her, but I mentally touch her hand and hope she feels it.
“I can’t,” she says. “It’s just, I didn’t want him to die, okay? I never thought he would.”
I wanted to ask her what that meant, but our time was up.