Exposure (9 page)

What he saw first were pictures of a bunch of teenage girls goofing off together, laughing and making faces in what looked like a Taco Bell restaurant. The date displayed beside the photos showed that these were the most recent. He scrolled down, and found images taken in the stands at last weekend’s football game, then images from somebody’s slumber party—some of those girls looked way older than their ages, he thought. He averted his eyes from a few that he would say were pretty suggestive; girls acted like
that
when they got together? But then he looked again, figuring it would be good to know which of Amelia’s friends he ought to maybe caution her about.

He noticed, on the left, an index that included “flagged” photos, and clicked on that—then jerked back in surprise. He looked away and scanned the room around him
(cabinets … windows … bottles of olive oil lining the sill)
as if making sure he was still anchored to reality in spite of the twisting of his gut. Then he looked, again, at the screen.

There were six images in full view (and in
full view
, good God!), and at least three more peeking from the bottom of the screen below these. He stared. It was easy enough to identify the boy (the
man
, not really any question, physically). But how in God’s good name had Amelia gotten these, and why did she have them? Did “flagged” mean she intended to report him, that son of a bitch Winter—maybe had done it already? He prayed that was the case.

Another possibility—that she had them
voluntarily
—flitted into his mind like a huge, dark moth, then flitted out again, no light to be found there.

Harlan sat back, his brain suddenly crowded with questions (
Why hadn’t she told them? Was Winter some kind of porn actor? What damage had these done?)
, and fears
(Would this give her unhealthy attitudes or, heaven help them, desires?)
, and the creeping black veil of anger, of outrage. His baby girl had been attacked in a way he struggled to define.
Defiled
, he decided, by these lewd pictures—had doubtless had them forced on her by that wannabe-movie-star, thinks-he’s-God’s-gift, Anthony Winter.

Oh, Harlan understood guys like Winter—join the drama club, seduce as many girls as possible, get them to fall in love while, to Winter, they were nothing more than playthings, ego food. Thank God Amelia was too smart to be fooled by his act. The question was, how was she handling this harassment? Probably she’d been embarrassed to bring it up to him and Sheri—Harlan could understand that. Or maybe … maybe she was afraid to. Maybe Winter had threatened her. But even if he had—especially if he had—this was exactly the sort of thing parents needed to know about, so that it didn’t turn into something worse.

He heard the door behind him opening and he swiveled around, snapping the computer closed as he did. Expecting Sheri, his pulse jumped when he saw it was his daughter instead.

“Hey, Daddy,” Amelia called as she closed the door behind her. “I didn’t know you’d be home. Mom was supposed to—”

“That Winter boy,” Harlan blurted, “do you hear from him a lot? Does he bother you at school?”

Amelia stopped still in the kitchen doorway. Harlan noted, almost despite himself, that her blouse was undone one button lower than he thought she used to wear it. She said, “What? Why? What’s going on?”

“I just need to know.”

Red blotches bloomed on Amelia’s face and neck, and Harlan saw the muscles working in her jaw as she considered an answer. It was just as he suspected: she was reluctant to say anything. She’d been intimidated by the kid, he was sure.

“He … I mean, I see him sometimes. He’s in my English class, and I see him a lot when we’re in plays together. He doesn’t bother me, no.”

Harlan drew a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She looked scared. Still, he had to push for answers. “Your computer …”

“I came to get it.”

“Honey,” he moved over a little and rested his hand on the computer. “Ladybug, now, I’m gonna ask you something, and I apologize for invading your privacy, but, well, I am your father after all.”

Amelia’s face had reddened fully, but she said nothing.

“Those pictures, did he send them?”

Amelia continued to stand there, motionless.

“You can tell me,” Harlan urged. “I know this kind of thing goes on. Some guys … well, they just aren’t right about things, and they try to get young girls to—”

“How did you get into my computer?”

He paused, then said, “I know you’re worried, him being a classmate and all, but I won’t let him trouble you after this. I guess it was email, right? Did you report him already? ’Cause if not, I’ll need to—”

“No. I mean … yes. Yes, I did report him, and you don’t need to do anything else about it. It’s, it’s already done and … and I was going to get rid of the pictures. Now that I did it. Reported it.”

“To school? To Mr. Braddock?”

She nodded.

“So I’ll guess he was suspended, then.” Expulsion would’ve been the better action—get the kid away from Amelia, and all the other girls, too. Though that wouldn’t prevent his doing what he’d done, harassing them through email. Christ, he could do that from
anywhere
, and to as many girls as his sick mind desired. This, Harlan realized, was a bigger problem than he’d thought.

“Um, no,” Amelia said. “He … I think … just detention.” She nodded. “Really, it’s n-not a big deal. I mean, kids are always sending pictures around.” She paused, visibly took a breath, then said, “Lots of people do it.”

“Filthy pictures like those? This, what he did, it isn’t like your little friends vamping for the camera. And I
told
you, I said that kid was after you. No … I think we need to make sure this is put to a real stop.” He took his phone from its holster and, thinking for a moment on who was best to handle the trouble, dialed.

“Who are you calling?”

Harlan held up his hand to silence her, and then when the 9-1-1 dispatcher answered, he gave his name and said he had an emergency he could not detail on the phone—no fire, not an injury, just send the police.

———

Amelia felt the world upend. She grabbed the door frame to steady herself, to ground her so that she could think. As calmly as she could manage, she said, “What are you doing? W-why did you call the police? I
told
you, it’s nothing. It’s fine. He’s not bothering me at all.”

Her father looked at her with sympathy. The stutter—when had he last heard that? “Maybe not now, Ladybug, but who’s to say what else he’ll do if he’s not set right? When the police get here, you tell ’em whatever you know about it, and they’ll take care of the rest, don’t you worry.”

She crossed the room, trying to think of how to plug this leaking dyke before it broke open and flooded them all. Bad enough that he’d seen the pictures. Bad enough that he’d hacked her computer to do it! God knew what else he’d found … maybe nothing, though, since by all indications he was upset, not angry. Bad enough that this was for certain going to mean that she and Anthony would have to go completely underground until graduation next spring. But police involvement? She felt sick at the thought.

“Daddy, no,” she said, speaking slowly, calmly. “There’s no reason—I mean, he already got in trouble, and really, I don’t want to have to tell some strangers that … that I saw … He won’t do it again. It was, you know, it was just a joke.”

Her father shook his head, mouth turned down in that stern head-of-the-household attitude he took whenever he was trying to teach her right from wrong.
Because you know, Ladybug, there are standards worth upholding
, she remembered him telling her some years back, when she’d faked being sick one Sunday so that she wouldn’t have to go to church.

“I’ve done wrong myself,” he said that day, hoisting her out of bed and pushing her toward her closet, to get dressed. “I know how bad it can rot you if you stick on that path.” That was his thing: he’d lived a hard life, growing up, so he knew everything about what not to do. Amelia tried not to discount his upbringing, and the sad, hidden-from-the-public fact that his mother had been a stubborn alcoholic who died of cirrhosis still pining for Amelia’s grandfather. As Amelia heard it told, the woman had adored him right up to her last breath, though he’d run out on her years before and was presumed dead. (“Wow, that’s like a bad country song,” Anthony once remarked, and Amelia replied, “I guess
someone
has to inspire them.”) Amelia respected how much her father had accomplished, she truly did. His concern and protectiveness were sometimes like a noose, though, threatening to cut off her air supply.

Now he said, “Listen: I don’t know what kids think these days, but sending smut like that to an innocent girl is no joke. I’m sure the police will tell you the same. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a law against it.”

“Please,” Amelia said, trying to beg without being so desperate that he’d cue in to the truth, “call them back and say don’t come. Anyway, I
can’t
stay. I have to get back to school.” If she didn’t leave now, Anthony would be left wondering what happened, why she wasn’t meeting him in the hallway before class. She felt her pocket for her phone, intending to text him the minute she got free to say she was running late, then realized she’d left her phone in the car.

“We can talk about this later, okay?” She reached for her computer, but her father grabbed it first, and tucked it under his arm.

“I know this upsets you, and I’m sorry. But this is something you just can’t go being nice and forgiving about. You’re a lamb, honey, and I’m so glad you are, but you don’t understand how men can be. Maybe … maybe I should’a been plainer about all that.”

He paused as if considering what he should have done differently, then added, “He won’t let you alone unless we make him—and what about other girls? You want him thinking he can harass them, too?”

“He won’t,” she insisted.

“That’s what we’re gonna make damn sure of. Now park yourself. I don’t want to have to go looking for you when the police get here.” He went to the refrigerator. “Want a Co-cola?”

“No.” Amelia sat down at the table, back straight, eyes focused on her mother’s new beaded place mats. Brown, orange, rust, red, gold, yellow … tiny beads, thousands of them … There had to be some way to fix this mess, some story that would satisfy the police that there was nothing here worth their time or trouble. Some way to protect Anthony, to defer her father’s doggedness—the trait that had led him to grow the largest automotive franchise in the South from what had begun as a single used-cars lot in nearby Zebulon, something he never let her forget. She had to make this go away, and fast.

“They’re here,” her father announced from the front hall. Buttercup sat up and gave a threatening bark. “Put her in the basement,” he said. He waited until Amelia stood and grasped the dog’s collar, then he opened the front door. As she led a growling, displeased Buttercup across the kitchen, Amelia saw her father step onto the columned front porch and push his hands into his pockets.

No solution came to Amelia’s mind. Her father had seen the pictures, and now he’d show them to the police. Anthony was easily identifiable in most of them—no getting around that.…

She waited for Buttercup to start down the basement steps, then closed the door and went back toward the kitchen, stopping at the wide entry so that she could see into the front hall.

“I’m Harlan Wilkes. Come in,” her father was saying.

Two male officers, both white, both young, the pair of them distinguishable primarily by hair color, remained on the stoop outside the door, alert and with hands poised at their sides. Brilliant blue lights strobed the stone walls of the porte cochère behind them. The blond one asked, “Sir, what’s the nature of your emergency?”

“I need to report a kind of sexual assault, I guess you’d call it—that happened to my daughter. Amelia.”

“Is the suspect present?”

“Oh—no. No, that boy wouldn’t dare come here—but I know how to find him. Come on in, we’ll go into the kitchen, where my daughter’s waiting.”

The dark-haired officer stepped inside first. Amelia moved silently into the kitchen as he said, “When did this incident take place?”

Her father told him, “I—well, I just learned of it today.”

“I’ll go out to the car and call it in,” the other officer told his partner. Amelia heard his hard-soled shoes on the marble, avoiding the rug, she supposed.

Her father called after him, “And could you kill those lights, too?”

Then there was the sound of the two men coming toward the kitchen. Amelia’s heart thumped double time while her brain remained petrified, useless.

“Miss,” the dark-haired officer said, nodding to her as he came to the table. He pulled out a chair and sat, then took out a notebook and pen. “Amelia … Wilkes, is it?
W-I-L-K-E-S
?” She nodded. “And what is your age?”

“Seventeen—I’ll be eighteen in February,” she added.

“And you live at this address?”

“Yeah. Yes, I do.”

He said, “Okay then,” and looked up at her, his expression as neutral as she’d ever seen on a man. She wondered whether he’d had to learn to do that, or if it came to him naturally. He said, “Can you describe the event?”

Her father, now standing behind her chair, put his hands on her shoulders and said, “It was pornographic emails.”

The officer glanced up, then back at Amelia. She said, “Not really.”

“Oh yes, really,” her father said.

The officer pursed his lips and ran one hand over his close-cut hair. “I’ll need you to be specific, and start from the beginning.”

“It’s nothing—”

“He’s threatened her or something,” her father said. “She won’t say, but I’m sure of it. This kid—”

“Sir? If it’s all right with you, I need to get your daughter’s statement first, and then I’ll hear yours. Miss?”

“I really can’t see the point of this. I’m fine. No one is harassing me.”
Except my father
, she added silently.

The officer nodded. “I’ll just need my report to be clear. You received an email—or emails—containing what, exactly?”