Fascination Street

six : aces up your sleeve

"Yeah, go fuck yourself, Bitch!" I screamed at the woman leaving the interrogation room. "You ain't gettin' nothing out of me, goddammit!" I would have thrown something at her as she exited, but they had cuffed my hands to the chair by the first questioning. I had been dragged to this depressing gray room at the crack of dawn. They were trying to make me say my mom had shot Asshole and that she forced me into prostitution for her own gain just so I wouldn't go to jail for manslaughter. I'd rather rot away for a hundred years instead of having my mother do more time in the slammer.

The industrial metal door clicked open and an old guy walked in. Gray hair, nice suit-- your typical guy you'd see on a detective drama. He sat in the chair across from me, folding his wrinkled hands on the steel table.

"I'm not making no deals," I said. The old guy raised a fuzzy eyebrow at me and pulled a small notebook out of his suit. He opened it and slid a picture over to me. I glanced down at the Polaroid print before looking up at him.

"Who's this?" I asked him, staring down at the happy red-headed boy in the picture.

"I'd ask you the same thing," Old Man said, "After all, he is your son." It couldn't be.

Forrest.

I gave him away when I was fifteen. Sent him off with my sister, Jordan, to our grandparents' house. I was too fucked up to be a mom. Too irresponsible to follow and try to straighten up.

Almost three years ago, I had chosen to stay in Vegas despite knowing I would never see my sister or son again. I had said I was going to stay to protect Mom, but I was really too afraid to leave cocaine behind. So I had stayed.

I felt tears welling in the back of my eyes. Forrest looked so happy. He was playing with a dalmatian puppy. My grandparents' giant stone home was in the background. I struggled against the cuffs. The noise was deafening in the silent room.

I didn't even have a picture of him as a baby. This was the only glimpse I had seen of him since... since that day.

"You chose Vegas over your own son," Old Guy said. I stopped pulling on the cuffs. "Look at where it's landed you, Miss Allen."

He gestured grandly to the concrete room around us, then turned his gray eyes onto me.

"Look at what all the partying and drugs have done to you. Well, I've got news for ya. Your nights of partying are over, Miss Allen."

He reached over and took the picture of Forrest, placing it back inside the tiny blue notebook. He just... took it. Took it away. The one glimpse of my son I had had since I had sent him away. I started sobbing. I couldn't hold it back any longer. Old Man didn't even seem fazed by the wails echoing around him.

"Your grandparents don't even want you to see him," he said over me. "They think you are a no good, nasty lying whore. Which you are. And you're never going to see your son, your mother, your sister or anyone else again. Not unless you do something for yourself and learn how to live. What is prison going to do for you, Miss Allen?"

I pulled at the cuffs again. I wanted to lay my head on the table and die.

Old Man got up from his chair and walked over to me. He uncuffed my left hand, then sat back down across from me. So level and uncaring. Fucking dick. Someone walked in with a box of Kleenex, then walked back out. I grabbed one and blew my nose. I tried to wipe the tears away with another, but I couldn't stop crying.

"W-why us?" I asked through sobs.

"Derik's job was to find and single out drug dealers," he said, his gaze unwavering as I cried across from him. "Unfortunately, he's just a kid himself and I suppose he fell for your charm. You see, he was put to community service after a drug crime. We thought he'd be perfect to put inside of high school hallways and sniff out the dealers. You just happened to be 'just his girlfriend' until you told him you had shot Mister Jack Moore to defend your mother. He was going to keep it quiet that you were a prostitute until then, but Mister Moore's shooting caused him to take action."

Derik? I had told him the morning before school about what happened to Mom. No wonder he had been so spacey. But why hadn't he just... told me? I blew my nose again.

"Dakota, you killed Jack Moore, as the other agents have told you," Old Guy continued on. "This would go down as murder and you would be locked away for most of your life. For your mother, this would be a manslaughter charge, if any charge is given at all. She would have shot him out of self defense; the court might not even charge her. Even if they do, with all of the other charges she has against her, five or ten more years isn't going to make a difference."

I tried to steady my breathing. The other people had told me the same thing. A picture of my son wasn't going to change my answer. Like Old Man had said, I wouldn't be seeing any of my family again. I started to reject the deal once again, but he cut me off.

"You have one chance to make this right," he said. "You can still fix yourself. This gives you the ability to be able to make amends with your family and get clean. Would you rather spend the next forty-to-life in jail? Roseanne is beyond fixing. She is the one who proposed this deal in the first place. You can fix yourself, Miss Allen, you just need to do the right thing for yourself."

"Can I t-talk to Mom?"

"No. She specifically requested to not speak with you."

I glared at him through the tears. Mom really would have wanted me to take the deal. But why didn't she want to talk to me? I sniffled and tried to finally wipe the tears off my face.

"What'll it be?" He asked. He was so calm, staring at me the whole time, completely unfazed by my sobs. He had taken Forrest's picture from me. The only picture I had ever seen of my son. The tears started coming again.

"Can I h-h-have that picture of F-Forrest?"

Old Man pulled the picture out of his notebook and handed it to me. I held the picture up to my face. One of the straps on his jean jumper had come unclasped and the puppy was chasing after it. He was so chubby and cute. The picture was taken while he was laughing. So happy. I took deep breaths, trying desperately not to start sobbing again.

"I'll take the deal," I said. New tears rolled down my face.

"Rehab starts tomorrow, then," Old Man said, standing up and starting toward me. "After that, you will be put into an orphanage until your eighteenth birthday. What you do then is up to you."

He patted my left hand and unlocked the other cuff before walking out of the room.