Bull's Eye by Sarah N. Harvey Read Free Book Online

doing?”
    I’m not about to answer, so I lob the paint can into a garbage bin and take off across the soccer field. Whoever is in the car yells, “
Stop
!”
    I race through the park and make it home in record time. Sandra’s car is gone, so I’m safe for the moment. Safe and sound and really shaky. I don’t think the guy got a good look at me, and besides, it’s just paint. Nothing a coat or two of peach paint can’t fix.
    In the middle of the night, I wake up when someone pounds on our front door. I can hear Sandra talking to somebody and then my door opens. She says, “Emily, get dressed and come downstairs.”
    I mumble, “What time is it?” and try not to throw up.
    â€œTwelve forty-five,” she says. “Downstairs. Now.”
    I take my time getting dressed. When I get downstairs, Sandra is sitting at the kitchen table with two cops, having coffee. The smell brings another wave of nausea. Or maybe it’s the sight of my pack, sitting in the middle of the table.
    â€œSit down,” says one of the cops, a woman with spiky, bleached blond hair. I sit across from Sandra.
    â€œThat your pack?” says the other cop, a man.
    I nod.
    â€œWant to tell me what you were doing tonight?”
    â€œI went to jazz choir practice.”
    â€œI think you did a little more than that,Emily,” says the woman. “Can I see your hands?”
    I slowly bring my hands up from my lap and lay them on the blue placemat. There are red speckles all over my hands and wrists.
    â€œWe’re going to have to get you to bring her to the station, ma’am,” the woman cop says to Sandra, who nods.
    The station, as in the police station?
    â€œAm I being arrested?” I squeak.
    â€œKinda looks that way, doesn’t it,” says the guy as he stands up and heads for the door. “You know what they say—‘Don’t do the crime...’ ”
    I want to spit on him, but the look on Sandra’s face stops me. She doesn’t look angry. She looks the way she did when I broke my arm falling out of an apple tree. And when I got the flu so badly that I threw up for three whole days. And when I lost the sack race at the grade five sports day after I’d trained for weeks in the backyard.
    On the way to the police station sheasks me one question. “What were you thinking?” I don’t know the answer to that, so I don’t say anything. I wonder if I’m going to get fingerprinted and whether they’ll throw me in a cell. I just want to get this over with so I can go back to sleep—somewhere, anywhere. I feel as tired as Sandra looks.
    When we get there, the two cops ask me questions and I answer them truthfully, since I don’t see any point in lying. I want a Pepsi in the worst way, but all I get is water. At the end of an hour I have confessed to vandalizing the school (they don’t ask about anything else) and my fingerprints have indeed been taken. I sign my statement and the woman cop says, “You can take her home. For now.” She smiles and her partner laughs at some inside cop joke. Sandra glares at them. “Someone will be in touch,” the cop continues. “Emily’s a good candidate for diversion.”
    â€œWhat’s diversion?” I ask in the car, thinking it doesn’t sound too awful.
    Sandra sighs and says, “Don’t get your hopes up, Emily. You’re not getting away with anything.”
    That’s what she thinks.

Chapter Eleven
    Turns out police diversion is a way of keeping first-time juvenile offenders out of the court system, which sounds pretty good to me. Until I hear that the offender (me) has to apologize to the victim face-to-face
and
do community service
and
go for counseling. I wonder if it’s too late to go to jail.
    â€œAt least we’ll get free therapy,” Sandra says, cracking a tiny smile. Always the accountant.
    We, I think.
We
are