The Black Sheep (18 page)

After a couple of moments, I shake my head. “I don't think so. Besides, this is your chance to get to know that new guy who's been volunteering at the aquarium.”

“Luke?” Carrie asks. “What's the point? He's only here for the summer.”

I shake my head. “Didn't you shoot down the same argument when I used it earlier?” I give her a little shove. “Go talk to him.”

“Okay,” she says. “Then we'll both make the most of tonight.” She gives me a quick hug. “Deal?”

“Deal.”

When Mitch returns, Carrie goes off in search of Luke. Beckoning, I lead Mitch to the edge of the cliff to watch the moon on the water. I reach out and wrap a tentative arm around his waist.

Behind us, there's a disapproving cluck from the grannies. “Young ladies didn't make the first move in my day,” the one with the cane says.

Mitch calls over, “I'm all for it, myself.”

I drop my arm hastily, but the grannies totter off to find a better view anyway.

“Don't let them bother you,” Mitch says.

“I'm not, I just want to—” I pause, struggling to find the right words. This is it, my chance to say something romantic and elegant and poetic. To tell him how much it's meant to me that he has supported me this summer. To confess that I couldn't have survived
The Black Sheep
—or become one myself—if it weren't for him. “I want to tell you something.”

“Sure,” he says. “I have something to—”

“Well,” Judy interrupts him. “Izn't thiz cozy!”

She is weaving her way toward us, one arm around Bob and the other around Chili. I should have known she wouldn't let a guy get in the way of her career for long.

“Where's Ted?” Mitch asks Judy.

“Pazzed out,” she says. “Great guy, but he can't hold his liquor. Plus, we mizzed our spunky KB.” Judy releases the guys and lurches forward unsteadily. She shoves Mitch toward the fire and says, “Go away, little hottie. I need a moment alone with my sheepy.”

Mitch mouths
Good luck
and leaves with the guys. Flopping onto the grass, Judy pulls me down beside her. “Judy forgives you for the nazty things you said today,” she says.

“Tell Judy I didn't apologize,” I say. “I meant what I said. I'm going home soon.”

“Soon?”
She kicks off her flip-flops and runs her toes through the damp grass. “I could swear I heard you say the day after tomorrow.”

And I could swear she had a slur two minutes ago. “I was making the point that I'll go home when I want to go home.”

Judy gives up the fight. “Whatever. It doesn't matter.” She drops back onto her elbows and stares up at the stars. “I'm going to get fired after taping this protest anyway.”

“Then why do it?” I ask suspiciously.

“I told you. Judy is working for Joe Average now, and she isn't going to let Terrance Burnside stop her from delivering the truth.”

“What's in it for Judy?” I ask.

She looks at me, and the distant campfire is reflected in her pupils, as if it's flickering within. “You know me too well, KB,” she says. “This protest is going to make for spectacular TV, and the ratings will be my ticket to any job I want.”

That sounds more like my Judy. “Are you shooting all night?” I ask, sensing the end of romance.

“Nope. Just wanted to be on-site early.”

“Hey, Judy,” Aaron calls from the fire. “I Googled you yesterday and saw you worked on
Pimp My Ride
.”

Since Judy enjoys nothing more than talking about Judy, she immediately ditches me for Aaron's crew.

After she's gone, I resurrect my hopes for the evening. While the rest of the camp dreams, Mitch and I can explain away all the mysteries and misunderstandings, snuggled up in our cozy tent.

If there's one thing I've learned in the past six weeks, it's that ten-year-olds sleep very soundly.

“Jeez, when's the last time you trimmed your toenails?” I ask.

Meadow rolls over, pushing my half of the Barbie cocoon off the air mattress, which I blew up after an hour of tossing uncomfortably. Twin beds are sounding good right now.

“Sharing a sleeping bag with you is like being wedged into a tinfoil jacket with a baked potato,” Meadow says. Beside us, in my sleeping bag, Judy rips out a loud snore. Mitch lifts his head on the other side of Judy. “Quiet, guys, I'm trying to sleep.”

I wrestle Meadow to reclaim my spot on the air mattress, and the tent falls silent. Then another sound emanates from Judy's quarter. It isn't a snore.

“Kendra,” Meadow says, “Please tell me that wasn't you.”

“Of course it wasn't me,” I say, scandalized.

Judy giggles. “Oops! Must have been the onions.”

Mitch opens the tent's flap, and the remnants of romance float out on a wave of toxic gas.

“O
ffither,” Judy says, pulling a blood-soaked towel out of her mouth and sticking her bruised, swollen face between the bars of the holding cell. “Where the hell ith the dentitht?”

Desk Sergeant Newman reluctantly shifts his eyes from the small TV in front of him. “Lady, I already told you, there's no one local on call. Someone's coming in from San Francisco, but it's going to take a couple of hours.”

“A couple of hourth? I could bleed to death by then. Jutht let me out of here and I'll take care of it mythelf.”

“No can do,” he says, turning back to the television. “You're here until someone bails you out, or Boulder Beach Golf Club drops the charges.”

“I don't need bail for a charge of trethpathing,” Judy says.

“True,” the sergeant replies. “You need bail for the charges of failing to disperse and damaging personal property. And if you drip blood on those bars, I'll add damaging police property to the list.”

Judy puts the towel back to her mouth, muttering something in which the word “pig” figures largely. She gives a muffled oink.

“Don't push your luck,” Sergeant Newman says. “You're in enough trouble.”

We certainly are. The rally turned out to be a textbook case of civil disobedience gone wrong. It started with Judy getting the crowd riled up to maximize conflict, and ended with the Boulder Beach bigwigs calling the cops. In between, everything is a blur. The wigs flipped when they saw the cameras and started yelling. The crowd yelled back, and then one of the grannies took a swing at the plastic model of the new fourteenth fairway with her cane. In trying to capture the shot with her camcorder, Judy stepped right into the line of fire.

Ultimately, the police hauled everyone off to jail except Bob and Chili, who pretended they were reporters. They offered to take Meadow, but she insisted on coming with us and has been sitting with Sergeant Newman watching TV.

More than thirty of us are crammed into this large holding cell in Carmel. The others are in the Monterey police station, which is apparently a palace compared to this hellhole. Judy has commandeered the one bench, on medical grounds, so the rest of us are sitting cross-legged on the grimy floor—a sad echo of our earlier protest. There is a toilet in the corner, which some people have actually used. I'd have to be here a year before that ever happened.

My stomach is another matter, however, and if I am hungry, the rest of the team must be, too. I nominate myself cell spokesperson. “Could we get something to eat, please?” I call to Newman.

“A waiter will be along any moment to take your order,” he replies.

“But it's one o'clock and we didn't even have breakfast.”

“You gave up the right to regular meals when you broke the law.”

It wasn't enough to strip us of human dignity; now they're going to starve us as well.

My wrists still hurt from being cuffed at the golf course and herded roughly into police cruisers as if we posed some sort of threat to national security. My pride hurts even more, because the Bigwigs and their followers applauded as we were carted away (the grannies, now in Monterey with Carrie and Calvin, blew raspberries back).

At the station, the police frisked everyone for weapons, fingerprinted us, and confiscated our personal possessions, including belts and shoelaces. They even took my lip gloss. I explained to Newman that because of my sunburn it was a fundamental human need—that without it, my lips would crack like the paint on an old Rembrandt—but he said I might as well get used to it, because luxuries like makeup aren't allowed in “the big house.”

It was a blatant attempt to intimidate, but I didn't buy it. There is no way I'm going to do time for attending a rally. I'm a minor. My lawyer will point to my clean record and argue that I'm incompetent to stand trial due to raging teenage hormones.

Still, I'm in a bind today, and I really want to think of a way to get everyone out of here. I tried slipping Newman Mom's credit card to bail us out, but he said we'd need an adult to sign the paperwork. So then I asked Meadow to make some calls, but she doesn't have any quarters, and Newman is such a hard-ass that he refused to let her use his phone unless it's to call her parents. Max and Mona are at the quilting show until tomorrow, and naturally, they scorn such modern conveniences as cell phones.

It's almost enough to make me wish I were a regular white sheep again, content to graze in fenced pastures and follow the flock without question. My old life may have been dull, but at least I was never behind bars. If I'd stayed on the sidelines, like a good Banker in Training, none of this would have happened.

But it has happened, and the truth is that I don't regret coming to California. If it weren't for
The Black Sheep
, I wouldn't have experienced the thrill of working with a group toward a common goal. I wouldn't have learned how to stand up to my parents and fight for the right to make my own decisions. And, I wouldn't have ended up with a boyfriend like Mitch Mulligan.

Not that he's behaving much like a boyfriend right now. In fact, he's sitting in the corner with Lisa, who's crying so hard her eyes have puffed into slits. What does she have to cry about? Sure, she organized the rally, but she made it perfectly clear when we got locked in here that it went south because of me.

To be honest, I agree. Because I was there, the cameras were there to set the wigs off and Judy was there to stir up trouble. Still, none of that is
directly
my fault. I feel like having a good cry myself, but I won't. You've got to be tough to make it on the inside.

A little sympathy would be nice. I know Mitch can't make a big show of supporting me in front of Judy, but would it kill him to throw me a smile to show that he doesn't blame me for what happened? As far as I know I'm still his girlfriend, even if no one is aware of that fact except Meadow and Carrie.

He is so lucky we're in jail right now. Otherwise I'd be throwing a tantrum that would make this morning's riot look like a pillow fight.

Aaron is standing behind Judy, massaging her shoulders. Tia says Aaron has set his sights on a career in reality television and sees Judy as his ticket in. Since she isn't refusing the massage, she must have agreed to let him start paying his dues as her personal slave.

She looks up as I approach. One lens of her glasses is missing, the other is cracked. “What?” she asks.

“I want to know if there's anything you need. Other than a dentist and an optometrist, I mean.”

She raises her eyebrows. “And if I did?”

“I'd implore Newman to show a little compassion and get it for you.”

She closes her eyes and sighs. “What do you want, KB?”

“I want you to get us out of here, and I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”

Her eyes pop open again, proving she hasn't lost her will to live—and make trash TV. “I'd love to take you up on that offer, but I have no idea how to get uth out.”

“You could bail us out.”

“My lifethtyle doethent leave a lot of room for thavingth,” she says, holding up the diamond ring that recently reappeared on her finger. I left it in the drawer of my bedside table, so either Judy or Meadow went snooping.

“You could get Bob to pawn it for us,” I suggest.

“No way,” she says. “It might be the only diamond I ever get.”

“So ask the network to bail us out.”

“Are you kidding? Burnthide ith laughing his ath off right now. For all I know, I might already be fired.”

“Well, think of something. You said you were smarter than me on your worst day.”

“That was before I had a concuthion,” she points out. “You got uth into this meth—you get uth out.”

“Me! If you hadn't riled everyone up, it would have been a peaceful protest.”

“Peathful proteth don't make good TV. Bethides, pathive rethitanth never workth, KB. Remember what happened to Gandhi?”

“No.” That was decades ago.

“Murdered,” another voice supplies. It belongs to the sole resident of the station's third holding cell, a tall, bald man in jeans and a denim shirt. If it weren't for the tattoos peeking out from his shirt cuffs, he'd look like a regular guy. “So was Martin Luther King.”

Judy lifts her head to look at the guy and drops it back on the bench, knocking her glasses awry.

“Get up,” I say. “Talk the officer into letting you make a phone call. You must know someone who can get us out of here.”

“Yeah,” the bald guy tells her. “You're the adult. Do something.”

“Thut up, you,” Judy tells him.

The guy laughs. He's got a nice smile for a felon. I wonder what he's in for.

After a moment, Judy does get up. “Offither, I demand to know what ith going on.”

“We're still processing paperwork,” Sergeant Newman says, keeping his eyes on the TV. “The ringleaders will be the last to go, so expect a bit of a wait.”

I join Judy at the bars. “You've been processing paperwork for four hours,” I say. “Meadow, get out your camcorder and shoot Sergeant Newman on the job. The people of Carmel won't be impressed by how their tax dollars are being spent.”

Meadow squirms in her seat before whispering, “It's gone.”

“Gone?” My voice rises a couple of octaves. “Gone where?” There's incriminating footage of Mitch and me on that camera.

“I don't know,” she says. “I lost it when they were loading us into the van.”

Judy watches me shrewdly. “Why tho worried, KB?”

“It's Mitch's camera,” I say. “He won't be happy.”

Judy turns to get a look at Mitch through her cracked lens. “Litha will conthole him.”

“You were going to try to get us out, remember?” I say.

Shaking the bars of the cell, Judy says, “I demand my phone call.”

“Is that the best you can do?” the bald guy asks her.

“Keep it down, Walter,” Sergeant Newman says. “I'm trying to watch the news.”

“Sorry, Mike,” Walter says. If they're on a first-name basis, Walter must be a regular here. “But can't you let the toothless one make her call now? The whining is getting painful.” Walter winks at me.

Sergeant Newman reluctantly unlocks the door and lets Judy out of the cell. They disappear into another room.

“Thanks, Walter,” I say, winking back.

“No problem,” he says. “You're famous, kid. Newman watches your show all the time.” He points to the TV. “Hey, you're on the news now.”

A local reporter I recognize from the rally is standing on the golf course, saying, “A riot broke out today when Boulder Beach Golf Club unveiled plans for a new fourteenth hole. Ringleader Kendra Bishop is the star.…”

In the cell behind me, a couple of people boo.

Walter shouts, “Shut it. Incoming badge!”

“Look,” Newman says, “you kids give me any grief and I might misplace your paperwork. You're supposed to be using this time to think about what you've done.”

He pushes Judy into the cell and we crowd around her to find out what happened. She shakes her head to signal failure. “Bob thaid Terranthe threatened to fire him and Chili if they bail uth out.”

Someone calls, “Kendra's the one who should fix this.”

A ripple of agreement spreads throughout the cell.

“Whiners,” Walter calls to them.

He's right. These people are taking prison way too hard. It's a life experience, and if they knew more about Black Sheepism, they'd value that.

Mitch finally emerges from his corner to check on me. “How are you doing?

“Fine,” I say. It's more or less true. My life may be spiraling downhill, but I'm hanging in there. “We haven't come up with an escape plan, though. At this point, our best bet is your parents.”

“I'm not sure they'll bail us out,” he says. “At least, not until they're good and ready. Like I told you before, they don't approve of breaking the law.”

“They've broken the law themselves.”

“And they paid a price for it.” He explains that the redwood forest incident wasn't their only arrest. At another protest they organized, a police officer was injured when violence broke out, and they were charged with assault. “My grandfather couldn't get them off. Later, they couldn't get a credit card, or buy a house, or travel outside of the country because of their criminal records. My dad couldn't get a job, and he couldn't find anyone to insure him when he tried to start his own business.”

“That's awful,” I say.

“I know. That's why Lisa's so upset. Berkeley could kick her out, or she could lose her scholarship, which would amount to the same thing.”

Oh.

“But don't panic,” Mitch continues. “A good lawyer will probably be able to convince the golf course to drop the charges, and we can apply to have our records expunged later.”