Shallow Pond (15 page)

I had an image in my head of what a sex offender looked like, so when I saw the picture of Shallow Pond's lone sex offender, I was surprised. I let out a little yelp, and then, because I didn't know what else to do, I quickly flipped off the computer.

Nineteen

I debated turning the computer back on and retrying my search. Maybe there'd been some error, but I knew what I'd seen. His picture had been there, some sort of mug shot. How could that be a mistake?

Why was he there? This time I did turn the computer back on. I returned to the site and typed in our zip code. I shut my eyes as the results page loaded, willing some completely different person to appear, or better yet, a friendly little message that said
Hooray, there are no sex offenders in Shallow Pond!

No such luck. I found myself looking at a horrible picture of Cameron Schaeffer. His name, age, and physical details appeared beside the photo. What was
not
there was any information about his crime. Was he a rapist? A child molester? Falsely convicted?

With a chill, I realized that I'd spent the afternoon alone with him. I'd been together with him in his car. We'd been out there on the ice all alone for hours. Anything could have happened. Yet nothing had. Maybe that counted for something. If Cameron Schaeffer was such a horrible criminal, then surely he would have at least attempted something. Perhaps the fact that he didn't proved he was reformed, or maybe not such a bad guy after all.

“Babie!” I heard Gracie call. She was headed down the hall toward my room. I quickly snapped the computer off. Cameron's mug shot had already burned itself into my mind.

“You never gave the phone back.” Gracie walked right into my room without knocking. The phone was on the desk beside my now-dark computer screen. She grabbed it.

“Wait, Gracie,” I said. I needed to tell her. She needed to know. I couldn't keep something like this from her.

“What?” she said. The friendly, laughing sister from dinner was gone. She was back to being her usual annoying self.

“There's something I want to talk with you about,” I said. I was stalling. I didn't know how exactly to tell her that her boyfriend was a sex offender. It felt like the sort of thing I should break to her gently.

“Can this wait? I've got a phone call to make.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I was too relieved to be let off the hook.

I didn't sleep well. I kept having nightmares. Someone was chasing me. Every time this mysterious person was about to catch me I would wake up, my heart racing. I peered around my darkened bedroom, half-expecting Cameron Schaeffer to be lurking in the corner or crouched behind my door. I even turned on the light a couple of times in the middle of the night, just to be sure.

I sleep-walked through school the next day, and Jenelle told me about fifty times that I looked like crap. I felt like crap, too. Maybe I wasn't just tired; maybe I was sick. Maybe whatever Annie had was contagious. When school finally got out, I wanted to go straight home and crawl into bed, but I couldn't. Instead, I walked all the way out to Mr. K's.

I found Gracie working one of the registers. She didn't look pleased to see me. I stood at the end of her checkout lane while she rang up an order.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I need to talk to you.”

“In case you didn't notice, I'm kind of busy.”

“This is important. Can you take a break?”

“Just took one half an hour ago.”

“It's about Cameron.”

I saw the customer look up from her wad of coupons with a flash of interest. She obviously wanted to hear the latest gossip.

“Stay away from him,” Gracie said. Her voice was like ice.

“Actually, you're the sister who goes around stealing other people's boyfriends,” I said. I hadn't gone there with the intention of being mean, but Gracie always brought out the worst in me.

Gracie blushed, then turned to me, her eyes slitted in anger. I think if she hadn't been at work she might have gotten physically violent. Instead, she read off the total to the now-flustered customer, who fumbled to get her money out of her wallet. Gracie shut off her light and told the guy who had already loaded about half a million cans of cat food onto the conveyor belt that she was closed.

She led me over to the corner where the lottery machines were, looking around to make sure that no one was listening to us.

“I don't appreciate you coming here and bugging me at work,” she said. “This better be important.”

“It is,” I said. “It's very important. I think you're in danger.”

“In danger? In danger of losing my job because of my irritating little sister, maybe.”

“No,” I said. I thought about that idea of breaking the news to her gently. That wasn't going to work. “It's Cameron. He's a registered sex offender.”

“What?” I expected her to be incredulous, but I didn't expect her to start laughing like I'd told a hilarious joke.

“I'm serious,” I said. “I had to look something up for school, and he's on the Megan's Law site.”

“Cameron is not a sex offender.”

“But he's—”

“Look, I think I would know if I was dating some sort of criminal, okay? I'm sure this is all Daddy's fault.” I tried to think of a way my dead father could be involved in this. “He hated Cameron, you know that, right?” Gracie said.

“Yeah,” I said. I recalled what Cameron had said about the two of them not getting along.

“Well, he probably filed some sort of complaint against Cameron when he was dating Annie. It's the sort of thing Dad would have done.”

“But Cameron had to have been convicted of a crime to be on there,” I pointed out. Gracie shook her head.

“Drop it,” she said. “And don't go shooting your mouth off about this to anyone, okay?”

It was on a public website for anyone to see, but perhaps Shallow Pond's rumor mongers were not that tech savvy. I nodded and watched Gracie storm off back to her register, shaking her head as she went.

I wondered if she could be right. If Dad had filed some sort of fabricated charge against Cameron, maybe he had gotten in trouble for something he'd never done. It made sense and I found myself buying the idea, because some part of me still believed that Cameron Schaeffer was more than just some guy that Annie had dated—that he was indeed my father, messed up as the whole thing was.

“You look lost. Let me guess—you forgot your shopping list.” I recognized the voice and felt myself blush. Zach stood beside me, a pair of shopping bags in his arms
.

“I was just here to see my sister,” I said.

“Well, in that case, I was going to make a pit stop for pie on the way home. Want to join me?”

“Yeah,” I said.

A few minutes later we were sitting once again in a booth at the diner, a plate of pie before Zach and a chocolate milkshake in front of me. It felt so natural sitting there with him. It really was like I had known him my entire life. I felt like I could say anything to him.

So I blurted out, “You're so much like my sister.”

“She wears more makeup than I do,” he said. “Also, I don't think my giggle is quite so high-pitched.”

“Not Gracie,” I said. “My other sister, Annie.”

“I haven't met her yet. So, is she particularly manly or am I very feminine?”

“What I mean is, the way you're kind of like a grown-up even though you're still a kid—how you do your own grocery shopping and live on your own and everything. Annie pretty much raised me single-handedly even though she was still a kid when I was born.” I didn't tell him about my conviction that Annie was my real mother. Maybe I wasn't ready to share everything.

“How is she doing? She's the one that was sick, right?”

“Yeah, she's better. I mean, she's still sick, but she seems to be doing better.”

He nodded and shoveled one last giant piece of pie into his mouth. I watched as some of the filling missed his mouth and slid slowly down his chin. He wiped it off with his napkin, his mouth bulging with pie.

“That old-flame situation still going on?” he asked.

“I guess,” I said. Cameron's mug shot popped into my head. “It's strange. All these years I always thought that he was the one who dumped her, but yesterday he told me she
was the one that broke up with him.”

“You two spend a lot of time chatting?”

“I went ice fishing with him,” I said. I knew it sounded weird, but it all made sense when you knew I'd been
convinced that Cameron was my father. Of course, Zach lacked the benefit of that knowledge.

“Huh,” Zach said. He nodded as he considered this. He pushed his empty plate out in front of him. “So that's what you had to do yesterday after school.”

“Yeah.” Why did Annie still act interested in Cameron if she was the one who'd broken up with him? Maybe I'd misunderstood Annie's reaction; maybe she wasn't interested in Cameron. “I just don't get why my sister would break up with Cameron.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Cameron said she had someone else, but I can't remember her having any other boyfriends.”

“Maybe she just decided the guy was a jerk,” Zach said. He sounded sort of pissed off when he said this. Did he know something about Cameron that I didn't know? Maybe he'd looked at the Megan's Law site. Oh my God. What Zach said finally sank in:
Maybe she just decided the guy was a jerk.
Not just any old jerk—a rapist jerk. What if it wasn't my father but Annie who'd filed the complaint against Cameron? Maybe the way she'd acted when she found out about Cameron's return was nervousness—the kind of nervousness that's actually fear. I couldn't believe I'd been so blind, but it all made sense.

“I need to go home,” I told Zach.

“Well, okay. I'll drive you.”

“Right now!” I said. I shouted a bit in my excitement.

“Was it something I said?” he asked.

“Yes!” I realized this came out sounding all wrong. “No, I mean, what you said made me realize something
.”

“Right, okay, well, let me just pay for this.”

I was only half done with my milkshake, but I knew I couldn't drink another sip. I practically sprinted out of the diner while Zach paid, only to pace around until he got outside. During the short car ride to my house I could barely sit still.

“Listen,” Zach said in a serious tone. “I know you don't really like me, and I get that you are trying to be nice to me because you feel bad for me or whatever, but it's okay. You can be straight with me.”

“What?” I said. Really, my head was spinning so much I could barely understand what he was saying.

“I guess you must think I am completely annoying.”

No, I didn't think anything of the sort. “That's not true,” I said, but we'd pulled up in front of my house and I had to talk to Annie. “I have to go. And no, you're not annoying.”

I got out of his car and looked back at him with what I thought was a sweet smile as I shut the door. Then I sprinted up the stairs.

Annie was on the couch when I walked in. The television was on, and I couldn't tell for sure, but it didn't look like I'd woken her up.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

“He raped you, didn't he?” I said. The words burst out of my mouth, where I'd been holding them in for the past few minutes.

“What?” Annie asked. Her already-pale skin looked like it had grown even paler. She looked like someone whose dark secret had just been exposed. It was true.

“He raped you, and that's why you never left home.”

“Why … ” Annie began, but seemed to reconsider and said instead, “Where did you get this idea?”

“It was something Zach said.”

“Zach?”

“A friend of mine from school,” I said. Annie looked confused. Confused and scared. “I mean, Zach didn't say anything about rape,” I went on. “I figured that out from the Megan's Law site. Well, and yesterday Cameron told me you were the one who broke up with him.”

“You were talking with Cameron?”

“Yes, I was talking with Cameron. And if you want to know why I was talking with Cameron, it's because no one in this family ever tells me anything! So, yes, I went ice fishing with some rapist all because my stupid family can't tell me anything.”

“Cameron's a rapist?”

“You don't need to deny it,” I said. “He's a registered sex offender. His picture is on the Megan's Law site.”

“There has to be some mistake,” Annie said. “Cameron is not that sort of person.”

“But he raped you!”

“Cameron? Babie, you don't know what you're talking about.”

I'd been so sure. That look on Annie's face—she'd looked so scared—but now she just shook her head at me like I was the crazy one.

“Well, then what's he doing on the Megan's Law site?” I asked.

“I don't know. It must be some sort of mistake.”

“Why did you break up with him, then?”

“It was a long time ago,” Annie said with a sigh. “I really don't feel like getting into this now.”

“He said you said there was someone else. Is that true?”

“Yeah,” Annie said, and she got a sort of far-off look in her eyes. In a faint whisper she said, “There was someone else.”

Twenty

“So, I don't even know if I should bother asking you this,” Jenelle said as she stood beside my locker, “but Shawna and I are going to go look at prom dresses this afternoon, and if you want to—”

“It's February,” I pointed out.

“Do you have any idea how long it takes to find the perfect dress? Plus, if you wait too long, there's nothing but crappy ones left.”

“I can't,” I said. “I have something I've got to do.”

“Oh my God, Bunting, it's like you completely hate us all of a sudden.”

“I don't hate you,” I said. I closed my locker and tried to get my lips to curl into what I hoped was a warm and friendly smile. Beyond her, I could see Zach and Meg walking down the hallway together. They looked awfully close to one another. Were they holding hands? I squinted, but there were too many other kids in the hallway blocking my view.

“Who is he?” Jenelle asked.

“What?” I said, snapping back to reality.

“This guy you're sneaking around with?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Oh come on, what are all these mysterious things you're always having to do? Danielle Roberts swears she saw you riding in a car with Cameron Schaeffer the other day, but I told her it must have been Gracie she saw. Unless perhaps he's going for the complete set.”

“Don't be disgusting,” I said. “And I'm not sneaking around with anyone. I have to go do something for my volunteer thing.”

“Honest?” Jenelle asked. The fact that she had to ask bothered me. Had we really reached the point where she no longer believed the things I said?

“I swear,” I said. I immediately felt bad. While I did have to do something for the volunteer job, I also had an ulterior motive.

I had to wait for a little while in the police station's uncomfortable vinyl-covered chairs. Officer Hantz was out on patrol. I suppose it was a bit of a relief to find out how little activity there was in the Shallow Pond branch of the Regional Police on a typical weekday afternoon, but it wasn't like I'd ever feared for my safety in this town. I think I would have traded a little of my security for a little less boredom.

He walked right past me when he came in, until the receptionist in whispering tones let him know I was there to see him. He turned around to look at me with a slightly puzzled smile, and in a burst of words I explained that I was one of the volunteers at the hotline.

“You're here for the background check? I'm sorry they didn't explain it better. You didn't need to see me directly. Anyone here could have helped you with that.”

“So, you can't do it?” I asked. I tried to make my voice sound deflated and pathetic. I probably didn't need to worry about trying so hard.

“No, of course I can. Just give me a minute. I'll be right with you.”

He disappeared for a few minutes, and when he returned he led me to a desk and offered me a seat. I handed him the birth certificate and the form I'd filled out.

“You're a Bunting,” he said as he looked over the form. “I thought you all had red hair.”
Strawberry-blond
, I mentally corrected.

“The miracles of Lady Clairol,” I said with a smile.

He smiled back at me. He looked at the birth certificate again, and then his smile froze. He squinted at the print on the certificate as if he was trying to make out some detail.

“This can't be right,” he said.

I'd only glanced at the birth certificate, which Annie had dug out for me the night before. I didn't want to look at it. No matter what the exact circumstances of my birth were, and I honestly didn't have a clue, I knew that it wasn't a happy occasion.

“What's wrong?” I asked. Perhaps it listed the age of the mother on the birth certificate. If Annie had given birth to me at some horribly young age, it would look all wrong to a police officer.

“The doctor that signed the form,” he said. He held the birth certificate up for me to see and pointed toward a scribbled signature. Was he criticizing the doctor's penmanship? I shook my head, not seeing whatever it was that he saw. “Dr. Hantz,” he said. “My father.”

“It's a small world.” I mentally breathed a sigh of relief. There wasn't anything wrong, just an interesting coincidence. My relief was short-lived.

“He died two days before you were born. In a car accident.”

Did no one in this town have a living father?

“I'm sorry,” I said, because it's what you say when someone tells you his father died, even if it was seventeen years ago.

But how could his signature be on my birth certificate if he was already dead? My mind began to churn through possible explanations. Someone forged his signature. No, why would they do that? The date on my birth certificate was wrong. Maybe whoever had typed it up had been off by a week, or their fingers slipped or something. It could happen, right? But weren't these things triple-checked?

It became suddenly clear. Someone had doctored the date on my birth certificate. There would be little benefit in changing the month or the day—so what they had to have changed was the year. How old was I really? Only sixteen? Fifteen? I had been robbed, cheated, and for what? To preserve some messed-up sense of normalcy? Like anyone had ever considered the Buntings normal.

“You know,” Officer Hantz said, “this doesn't even really look like his signature. Maybe one of the nurses signed it. He delivered a lot of babies there. It was probably just out of habit or something.”

“I guess,” I said, but I was too stunned to pay much attention.

Officer Hantz went ahead with processing my paperwork while I zoned out, thinking about the irregularities of my birth certificate and what it meant. All those times I'd felt like I was completely behind my other classmates, all those times I had felt immature—it all made sense. I wasn't young for my age, I was just young—well, younger than I ever thought I was, anyway.

I was so distracted, I almost forgot the real reason I'd come down to the police station.

“Remember you told us about that website we should look up?” I said. “The Megan's Law site?”

“Sure,” Hantz said.

“Well, I was wondering, is there some way to find out why someone might be on the Megan's Law site? I mean, it doesn't really give any specific information.”

“Is there something you were concerned about?” he asked.

“No. Not really. But, I mean, if someone was on there it would be because they have a record, right? You could tell me what they did and when they did it?”

“I can't freely dispense that information,” he said. The seriousness of his tone frightened me a little. “Did something happen?” I took in his look of concern, and realized that he thought I was there because I wanted to report an incident.

“No,” I said. My suddenly high and squeaky voice must have made my words sound like a lie.

“It's not something you have to be embarrassed about. If something happened, it's not your fault.” He looked at me with that serious and concerned face of his and I made some attempt to laugh the whole thing off, which only made me sound like a complete lunatic. I realized he must know who I was talking about. There was only one sex offender in Shallow Pond.

The anger broiled inside me as I walked home. I had visions of storming in the front door, marching right up to Annie, and demanding she tell me the truth for once in her life, but Annie wasn't in the living room when I got home. She was in the kitchen. So was Gracie. Annie was heating up the leftovers we were eating for dinner while Gracie set the table. I hadn't really counted on Gracie being there, or the fact that both of them greeted me in warm, friendly tones as if they were genuinely happy to see me. I played the obedient girl and sat down. I'd waited this long; what was another hour or so? I could corner Annie later and force her to be straight with me. It was a good plan … but I'd kept all of my questions locked inside of me for too long.

“You're my mother, aren't you?” I said.

I stared at Annie as I spoke. She dropped her fork on her plate. Gracie looked up in surprise.

“What?” Gracie said. “Are you completely insane?”

“I don't know where you got that notion,” Annie said. She sighed, then forced a smile. I could see she was trying to shrug the whole thing off, but she was trying too hard.

“She's only twenty-six,” Gracie added. “How could she possibly be your mother?”

“And how old am I?” I asked.

“Weirdo, what are you talking about?” Gracie said.

“Somebody doctored the date on my birth certificate.”

Annie had given up on dinner. She pushed her chair a few inches back from the table and folded her hands neatly in her lap. She looked scared and a little sad, and I knew that I'd figured it out. She'd been keeping secrets from me for years. Gracie, though, was still clueless.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gracie asked.

“The doctor who signed my birth certificate died two days before I was born.”

“But then, if the date was changed, that would mean you're older, not younger,” Gracie said.

She was right, of course. How had I missed that when my airheaded sister had picked up on it?

“Maybe the whole birth certificate is a fake.” I spat the words out in anger, feeling for some reason like a cornered animal. I glared at Gracie. “How come you can't remember Mom, if she didn't die until
I
was born? How come there aren't any pictures of her with you when you were a baby? Mom's not my mother!”

I shot to my feet, and my chair toppled over. My anger had turned to sadness. All I wanted to do was cry, but I didn't want to do it there. I needed to get out of there. I needed to be alone.

I had my hand on the front doorknob when Annie finally spoke.

“She's not your mother,” Annie said. Her voice was so quiet and faint I could barely be sure I heard her.

“What?” Gracie said.

“She's not your mother,” Annie repeated. “She's not the mother of any of us.”