"Midnight is."
Noah cleared his throat. While Everett dialed his
wife's home number, Hailey Marie asked, "Who's going to take care of him after midnight?"
"I'm going to hire a colleague to sleep with him."
Outraged, Noah said, "What?" and Hailey Marie laughed hysterically.
"I didn't mean have sex," clarified Everett as his wife's phone rang, "I meant sleep with you, in your bed. I have colleagues that--" his wife answered the phone. "Honey, have a tow from the insurance company pick up my car. Noah left me behind and I had to go after him."
She laughed hysterically and said, "What was he thinking?"
Just to get on Noah's nerves, he replied, "He was thinking about how good it was when he banged his enemy's daughter and how he wants to do it again."
Hailey Marie thought that Everett was just pulling Noah's strings, so as he looked at her, astonished, she laughed hysterically and said, "He's kidding."
Noah looked back at Everett. Everett was smiling evilly because he knew that he had reached his objective--bothering Noah. "Yes, so just go ahead and do it. Don't worry about dinner until midnight because midnight is when I'm coming home."
"I thought you watched Noah all day and all night."
"I'm going to ask someone else to watch him at night," Everett said, but Noah and Hailey Marie didn't know if this bodyguard would be a man or a woman. Hailey Marie hoped that it would be a woman just so that Noah would leave her little sister alone. She knew that he never had sex with more than one woman at the same time, and that one woman was enough for him, whether he was committed to a woman or not.
"Ok," said the woman. "You're going to love dinner tonight. I'm going to make you beef stew, your favorite."
Smiling, Everett said, "All right. I'll see you tonight at midnight."
"Bye," she said and hung
up.
Everett got in the backseat
to show the lady in the passenger seat some respect and waited for the tow to arrive. It only took two and a half minutes for Marjorie to make the call. Hailey Marie and Everett got to know one another better and just twenty minutes later, the tow was there. In less than five minutes, the car was carefully lifted and taken away. Instantly, Hailey Marie, Noah and Everett took the road. They conversed and had fun as they burned the road with the rubber.
Meanwhile, Brandy was in Noah's room, exploring it.
Suddenly, she went to the closet, picked out the shirt that she thought that looked best on Noah, took it down from the hanger, went to his bed, opened her purse, and placed it inside, right under her cosmetics, chewing gum and wallet. Then, she closed her purse, went to the door, opened it, walked out of the room, and closed it. This was the first object that she'd ever stolen from anyone before, but it wasn't the first thing that she'd robbed anyone of. She'd also robbed Noah of his morality and dignity, and she'd changed a sweet, innocent, and strongly moral man into a liberal man that cared about nothing but having fun--harmful fun. She thought about staying with the kids because she knew that Jessica wasn't mentally capable of taking good care of them, and staying in the house with them wasn't enough. Scott and Natasha wouldn't return home until nighttime and she didn't want the kids to be alone for too long. She didn't know that retardation was the only mental disability that Jessica had, and she was unsure if she was schizophrenic, bipolar, or if she suffered from multiple personality disorder, and if she could turn into a totally different person that would do harm to the children, whether it was physical, mental or psychological. She kept her purse in Natasha's room because she knew that the kids didn't go there unless she was in the room; thus she wasn't their grandmother. Then, she stepped out of Natasha's room, ran in the hallway and ran back down the stairs so that the kids didn't know what she was up to.
What she'd done wasn't a big deal, although it was something that she would go to jail for if the family found out about it, but she felt as if she had stolen a million dollars.
Corey was waiting for her downstairs, sitting on the sofa, in the game room. She saw him, smiled at him, and joined him in a matter of minutes. "Hi, Corey, I see that you turned off the game," she said. "Did you get bored of it?"
"No," he said, "it's just that I finished it."
Brandy turned serious, gasped, opened her eyes wide and said, "You finished it?"
Smiling, he said, "Yes. I get it now. I don't have the mind to play a rated 'T' game. I'm not a twenty-year-old yet, I'm five years from becoming one, and I should stick with the 'E' games."
"See, I told you that it didn't have anything to do with you or your intelligence, for that matter. It had everything to do with your age. Hey, Corey, have you ever been pressured to do things that you can't do because you're too young?"
"You mean things like using drugs or having sex?"
"Yes."
"Well, I was never pressured to have sex. Only kids in middle school do that. I'm about to enter middle school, so I'm scared of those kids, but I was lured to having sex once." This astounded Brandy.
She doubted that Noah knew anything about this. "How were you lured to have sex?"
"An adult French-kissed me, and it wasn't in school."
Brandy's curiosity turned into ardent fury. "Who was it?"
"I will tell you if you promise not to tell. It happened recently, and I don't know what kind of person she is, so I don't know what she would do to get back at me. That's why I'm afraid. She could kill me, for all she cares. She thinks that she has all of the power because she's the adult and I'm the child."
"Was it the first time that you French-kissed?"
"Yes."
"Did you want to?"
"No, but I had to because she was stronger. I wanted my first kiss to be with a girl, not with a woman."
"I understand. Let's get to the point. Who was it?"
Natasha was entering the game room at that very moment. He and Brandy were talking about a situation that involved an adult and a child, and although she didn't know who they were talking about, she decided to stay right behind them without them knowing, be quiet, and start listening. Right then, Corey dropped the bomb. "It was Grace, Rob's ex-girlfriend; the woman that he told me that broke his heart. That's why I left him with the words in his mouth as soon as he said her name." Natasha gasped and ran to the stairs and started running up. Brandy knew that someone had heard their conversation, but by the time that she turned her head to see who it was, Natasha was already on the second floor and she didn't see her.
"Oh, God, Corey, your secret's out. Someone heard us." "Oh, my God, don't tell
me that."
"Yes, well, it's too late for us to do anything about it. He or she already heard us. So, tell me, how did you meet Grace?"
"She's my foster mother's best friend." "Are you serious?" "Yes."
Upstairs in her room, with Michael beside her crying bitterly, and Simone all of a sudden ran up the stairs and stormed to Natasha's room to come to her baby uncle's aid, and as Simone leaned over despite how short she was and lifted him out of his crib and held him sweetly, Natasha picked up the phone and called the police. As Simone held and rocked her baby uncle back and forth and he calmed down, Natasha said, "I am calling to report a crime; sexual harassment." Natasha knew that any contact between an adult and a tart, any undesired contact would be a crime of statutory rape, and she heard Corey very clearly saying that he didn't want the kiss. With every word that Natasha said to the emergency operator, Grace's hopes of getting out of jail were more and more diminished.
Chapter 30
Brandy and Corey were still downstairs, in the game room, talking about Corey's incident with Grace. Natasha walked down the stairs with the peace in her mind that she had done the right thing and complied with her duty as a citizen to enforce the law; when she witnessed a crime. "I don't know who it was that heard us," said Corey, "but I'm in trouble."
"No, you're not," said Brandy. "I forgot to tell you. Grace is in jail."
"That's right," said Natasha as she walked to the game room and sat beside Brandy. "She's in jail. All that you've done by confessing your secret to Brandy is add to her criminal charges. By the way it was I that heard you."
As Corey looked into Natasha's eyes he gasped and said, "You're kidding. No, it can't be, Natasha."
"Yes, it can be, and it is.
Now, you're going to have to confess your secret to the police. They're on their way."
"Will I have to be in front of the prosecutor in her case?" "Yes."
"I'm scared," said Corey and got up.
Before he could go anywhere, Natasha held his hand and said, "Don't be. You're safe. She's in jail and she was denied bail. She can't come out to get you."
"What if she escapes?" "She can't escape. Even if
she does escape, she'll get caught hours or minutes later. Besides, the police, they know about her violent behavior, and that anything that she's told that she dislikes would drive her to hurt someone, so she's constantly monitored. Nothing will happen to you. I promise. You are the age that Michael should've been if it hadn't taken me seven years to get pregnant, so I'm going to make sure that nothing happens to you."
Meanwhile, Noah was with the psychiatrist, undergoing an evaluation of which if the results weren't what everyone hoped for, Scott could retain custody of the children permanently. With everything that Noah said, the doctor found more and more signs of a mental illness, but it wasn't the mental illness that everyone feared-
--it was the one mental illness that was way worse than the illness everyone thought that he had because it could drive him to kill himself---a profound and terrible depression that was never treated, and one for which Noah could lose his mind very soon if it continued to be untreated.
"I want to kill myself," said Noah. If he wasn't hypnotized, he'd never say this, but the doctor was dealing with his subconscious, and his deepest, darkest desires and secrets were slowly disclosed, as he lied down on the bed.
"Why do you want to kill yourself, Noah?" said the doctor as he wrote everything down.
"Because my son is gone," he said, crying. Right now, he was stuck on what happened when he lost Noah Bryan at age twenty-one, and he would be, for the rest of his life if no one intervened.
"Your son is gone. Which
son?" "The only one that I've ever had."
The doctor realized that Noah's mind had regressed to the time when Noah Bryan had just died the minute that he hypnotized him. "Oh, my God, his mind hit rewind to 2001!" said the doctor and cleared his throat. "How do you feel?" This was exactly the way Noah felt at that time.
"There's no reason for
living."
"Noah Bryan took your
life when he left."
"Yes," he said, crying bitterly. The doctor couldn't help it but to give him a big hug. He did this every time that a patient cried during his or her session to make him or her feel supported.
Everett and Hailey Marie were listening to everything in a secluded room. "Oh, my God, this is not schizophrenia," said Everett, "but it's worse than we thought!"
"Schizophrenia can be controlled," said Hailey, "but not this. This can drive him crazy, literally." "It can't drive him crazy now because he's getting treated."
"Do you think that we didn't do this too late?"
"No, Hailey. It's not too late. It would've been too late if he waited until his birthday, the day that he says that he wants to marry Nicole, and the day that he's going to get the fortune that his father has for him in the bank."
"Oh, my God, his birthday is so close. We're on July 1st, and it's only three months away!"
"That's right," said Everett and put his arm around the back of Hailey Marie's neck, "but thanks to you, nothing will happen to him because it was because of you that I brought him here."
"It's just the way that he started talking about other people's behavior, just because I asked him how he knew when someone couldn't or wouldn't do something."
"It's all starting to come
out."