Back when Robby was lying on the floor of the holding cell with his head buried in the lap of a giant transvestite, police and prosecuting lawyers were interrogating Lisa. Her clothes were torn, and parts of her body were visibly bruised. Her Mom and Dad sat next to her and held her hand. Her mother gushed and cried incessantly, but what delighted Lisa was that she could see her father fighting back tears of his own.
Lisa had been initially terrified of what her Father would do if he found out that she had deliberately disobeyed him and gone out with Mitch anyway. So she made up the rape story primarily for him, and it seemed to have paid off even better than she expected. He was the most loving and caring version of the man that she had ever seen. The second he heard her tale of how Mitch had jumped in to defend her, he admitted that he had been wrong about the boy and instructed her to invite him over for a family dinner.
Lisa had never heard her father use the words "I" and "wrong" in the same sentence before. It had all worked, and that wasn't even the best part.
Cameron Docks, Lisa's father, was the senior supervising plumber for the Action Plumbing Company of North Hollywood. He had gotten her a summer job answering phones for the company. And before they even left the Van Nuys station, Cameron called the office manager to say that Lisa wouldn't be coming in for a week or so. When the manager objected, Cameron screamed at him on Lisa's behalf.
Lisa was in ecstasy. Her father had screamed at her many times, but she had never seen him defend her like this to someone else. Yet that was still not the best part.
The Noho Cafe had been the hangout of cool since Lisa entered high school. As far as she knew, it had been that way since the beginning of time. The truth was that the vast area of North Hollywood had been rundown for some time. Yes, there were nice houses in the southernmost parts of the suburb, but they had renamed themselves "Valley Village" or "Sherman Village," and most of the kids went to private schools.
But like the Melrose area before it, some very sharp developers swept in with big bucks to make it ultra hip. Diners and strip clubs were transformed into art galleries and coffee houses. They renamed the area "Noho," the first two syllables of "North" and "Hollywood," mainly because it sounded like the chic "Soho" of New York.
Lisa didn't know the history, nor did she care. All that mattered was that it was where the cool kids hung out. So when Mitch called at three p.m., waking her up from her full day's sleep, and told her to meet him at the Noho around four, she knew she had arrived.
The kids stayed on the phone and swapped the stories they had given to the police that morning. Lisa couldn't believe how stupid Mitch was. She carefully instructed him as to the correct story to tell, and made him repeat it back to her. She told him that if anyone questioned him on the discrepancy, he was to answer that he was too freaked out that night to think straight.
When she got off the phone, she saw a note on the kitchen table from her Mom. It suggested she microwave a frozen pizza for lunch and said she was not to leave the house under any circumstances. She carefully put it back exactly where she found it, so she could claim she never saw it. Then she wrote her own note saying she was going to meet friends and she put it on top of the phone. She took her shower and got ready to go.
Mitch arrived at the Noho Cafe a little bit before Lisa did, and he couldn't have been happier at the reaction he got. The mediocre white quarterback and the black, soon-to-be All American halfback led the standing ovation. Mitch knew that as a starting Husky he was in the upper echelon of North Hollywood High. But he was just a tackle, which ultimately meant that he was at the very bottom of the very top.
But every beautiful girl he had ever considered out of his league was now all over him. They had always known he was not the best player on the team, nor the best-looking boy in the school. But he was the one who would risk his own safety for the girl he loved, and that suddenly made him the most desirable boy around.
"Any of you guys woulda done the same thing in my position," he said, feigning modesty and winning points.
"So did you fuck her?" asked the mediocre quarterback, soft enough so the babes couldn't hear him.
"Only once," confessed Mitch because he thought it would sound better. "Then the drunk actor showed up and fucked it all up."
"Awright!" shouted the showboatin' All American halfback. "M'man, m'man!"
They all slapped high fives.
"Do you love her?" asked the leading candidate for prom queen.
"More than my heart could say," lied Mitch. "And it wounds me that she had to go through the pain of which she, uh, had to go through that pain."
And all the cheerleaders hugged him and loved him. And, dumb as he was, he was smart enough to know that he would "date" Lisa for the rest of the summer, then "break up" with her in early October. Then all these girls would be his for the taking.
When a local news crew showed up to trap Lisa for an interview, they decided to make their time useful and tape the other kids to see what they had to say. The Noho creme de la creme -- who had never liked the girl before -- now embraced her as one of their own. Varsity athletes and cheerleaders alike condemned the has-been TV star they had never heard of before. They described Lisa as wonderful, smart, and caring. It was kid power versus adult power, and they all wanted to be on TV.
What the Noho kids didn't know was that the same crew had been to several other hangouts where other teen-agers honestly described Lisa as a "hanger-on." "Obsessed with joining the cool crowd." "Amoral, and ultimately pathetic."
Basically, the kids who had always dissed her, now embraced her to get on TV. And the kids who had always embraced her, now dissed her to get on TV.
The cool kids were just not savvy enough to know that condemnation gets you on TV while love and warmth do not.
By the time Lisa arrived, Mitch had so expressed his love for her that she was undeniably one of them. She got a bigger round of applause than he did.
Mitch stood up quickly and greeted her with a warm hug and a disgustingly slobbering kiss as he jammed his tongue into her mouth, then whispered into her ear.
"I said we fucked once, but not twice."
She nodded her agreement, thrilled with her reception, then moved away from him to accept the accolades of her new friends.
"Thank you, everyone," she gushed. "I don't think I could get through this without your support and friendship."
They all suddenly felt horrible about the dismissive way they had always treated her up till then, so they embraced her more than they ever would have had she actually been one of them.
It was the greatest day in Lisa's life!
By dinnertime, she knew she should call her parents, but there was no way. She was at a booth with three girls, one of whom would be head cheerleader next year, the other prom queen, and they were all telling her what a hero SHE was. And they weren't lying! They had all watched the Lifetime movies and knew how defense lawyers would trash her, and they were in awe of Lisa's strength for going forward. They shared their own secrets with her, invited her to their parties, and took her into the back alley to smoke pot with them. The greatest day of Lisa's life just kept getting better.
By the time Lisa's parents went to bed that evening, Cameron had already called the police three times to protect his family from the unruly mob of reporters and photographers that surrounded the Docks' home. L.A.'s finest did their job and shooed the media away after each call, but the film crews and photo jocks simply returned as soon as the cops left. Only once the lights went out inside the house did they accept that they wouldn't get anything good on this night, and they simply hoped that their counterparts who hounded the Rockman home failed equally. Gradually they dispersed, knowing that tomorrow was another day.
Lisa's bedroom light, however, didn't stay off for very long. She had slept till three in the afternoon that day, then went on to have the most exciting day of her life. There was no way she could sleep! So when her parents went to bed, all she could do was fake it. Once she was pretty sure they were both asleep, once the press had all gone, she got back up to watch TV.
Every news show broadcast her on the mountaintop accusing the actor of raping her. Flattered as she was, it was the exact same thing on every channel, and it quickly became boring. But when the "Johnny Carsons" came on to vilify him, it finally dawned on her what she had done to Robby. She knew his biggest crime was being a drunkard like her father, and it made her feel a little guilty. So she changed the channel.
"All in the Family" made no sense to her, and "Taxi" and "Newhart" were clearly for old people. So she watched the last few minutes of "The Brady Bunch," and then a new show came on where the main character looked very familiar.
He was younger and thinner than the guy she had accused, but it was undeniably him. He was a teacher in a high school, and he really seemed to care about his students.
The first episode was about a boy with a drug problem, and he helped the kid go straight. The second was about a pregnant girl who asked his advice on how to get an abortion. He told her to talk to her parents, which she didn't want to do, but did anyway. Her parents ended up being very supportive and, fortunately, the girl had a miscarriage, so she didn't have to make the very difficult decision. The third episode was about a girl who had a crush on another teacher, but Mr. Bell straightened it all out. It was the same one Robby was watching, only he didn't know it was a whole marathon.
Lisa watched one episode after another till four-thirty in the morning, and it became her favorite show ever.
She knew it was corny, but Mr. Bell spoke right to her. Sometimes he had a beard, sometimes just a mustache, sometimes clean-shaven, but he was the greatest teacher or parent she had ever had. She suddenly couldn't handle how she was ruining the man's life, and she realized that she just couldn't go through with it.
But to come clean would make her the laughing stock of North Hollywood High. Up to now she had only been the geek they ignored. If she told the truth now, she would be on the outside forever.
Only her therapist could help her, but she was scared to tell even him. She picked up the little notebook Dr. Joe had given her to write down the conflicting feelings she might have. By writing them down, he had told her, it would help her see them more objectively and help her sort them out.
Call the therapist, was all that she wrote.
Call the therapist, she wrote again.
CALL THE THERAPIST!!! she wrote in the same capital letters I just used. But she didn't, she couldn't, and her eyes transfixed on the word.
"THERAPIST." If you broke it down into two words it spells "the rapist." She giggled because she knew it was true. Dr. Joe had been fucking her brain for years.
She didn't know what to do. If she destroyed Mr. Bell, her life would become what she had always craved it to be. But what good would that do if she had to live with the guilt that she had put a good, cute man away for life? She knew she simply had to tell the world the truth -- but then her own life would be ruined forever.
There was only one solution, one way out. She had known this a year ago, and it was never truer than it was on this day.
She had never asked to be born. Given that she came to life only six months after her parents got married, she had always known that they had never wanted her to be born either. God and fate were pointing her to one solution.
She crept into her parents' room and went to their medicine cabinet to once again choke down her mom's Valium. But it wasn't there. Lisa vaguely recalled hearing her Dad say they should keep it in the same high security lock box where he kept his guns.
Lisa had known the combination for years because she had watched her dad take his gun out when he went to target practice. He barely even tried to hide the combination from her because it never dawned on him that she might be watching. He simply punched in the numbers on the lockbox keypad and let the chips fall where they may.
2-4-4-7-8-8-3 were the digits Lisa pressed carefully. It was her Dad's ATM number and his e-mail security code. Lisa had long ago figured out that according to a telephone keypad it spelled "Big Stud." The lock box door swung open, and there was the vial, waiting for her.
But as she pulled it out, she saw that there were only five pills left. She had taken significantly more than that last time and had survived the ordeal. But she swallowed them anyway, without water, and put the bottle back inside. That's when her eyes fell upon the gun.
The gun. Her dad's .32 caliber buddy. Moonlight snuck into the room through cracks in the Venetian blinds, causing the black steel to glisten in the darkness. It was as if it was calling to her, beckoning her. It wanted to be her buddy as well.
The revolver was empty, but there was a big box of bullets underneath the Valium bottle. So she loaded it up and put the barrel in her mouth and hoped it wouldn't hurt.
*** Up Next: "A Prick Goes To Work" ***
The main characters in this e-novel are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual individuals, whether living or dead (except for Jeff Abugov who is a real screenwriter, director and producer.) Although certain real people and companies are mentioned in this e-novel, all of the events are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual events.
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