Jane, Age 8
The pool water is freezing, and Jane momentarily glad when swim team practice ends, but changes her mind the moment she hauls herself out of the water. The morning air is the chilliest it's been all summer, and the wind is freezing against her wet skin. The sky is gray and overcast, preventing the sun from offering any warmth.
"Let's go, Jane!" Her father calls impatiently from where he's waiting by the pool edge with the other parents. "I'm not waiting around forever!"
Rolling her eyes, Jane pushes herself from the pool, and walks to her knapsack, removing her swim cap and goggles as she does. Her father makes a point of showing up to the country club to pick her and Bill up from swim team practice, or insisting that their mother do so, at every opportunity. Today he's taking the morning off from his office "for the sole purpose of ensuring we don't burden other families with our own children," as he told her mother the previous night. Even years later, he's still angry about carpooling.
Jane wishes she didn't have to ride with him. Bill is away on a campout with his Boy Scout troop. Jane wishes she were as lucky.
"Ready, Dad," she says, wrapping a towel around herself as she hurries toward her father. She would like to change out of her wet bathing into dry clothes, especially since it's cold, but she doesn't want to make him more upset by keeping him waiting.
"About time," her father snaps, turning on his heel and striding up the long, winding path to the main building, where the car is parked in the front lot. "It's embarrassing enough knowing we have to rely on the goodwill of strangers to drive you home because your mother can't be bothered. Don't make me wait for you like I'm your personal driver. You're going to get uppity by having so many adults play chauffeur for you, I just know it."
Though she doesn't know what "uppity" means, Jane can guess from her father's tone that being it will only mean trouble for her.
She's saved from another of her father's rants when Mr. Beckholder stops her father to talk to him. Mr. Beckholder's son, Talon, is a grade above Jane, and nastier than anyone she knows. Being on the swim team is really fun, except when he's around.
Luckily, Talon doesn't seem to be around right now. But that's the only bit of luck. Her father and Mr. Beckholder talk for a long time, till everyone else from the swim team has escaped the cold and gone back inside. The pool area is completely empty other than for them.
Never a patient person, Jane is desperate to leave. But she doesn't want to upset her father by whining. She glowers through the shrubbery down at the pool, and then an idea hits her: she can go back to the pool until her father's done talking. The pool water isn't warm, but at least it will protect her from the wind.
"I'm going back down to swim in the pool, Dad," Jane tells her father.
He barely glances at her when he nods, which Jane takes as permission, and runs around the bend back down to the pool. She's always liked that the pool is fairly closed in by hedges, like a fort would be. Her mother says it's for privacy, but Jane likes to imagine she's in a spy hideout.
Shedding her towel, Jane guiltily glances at the sign warning anyone from swimming when there's no lifeguard on duty. No one else is even at the pool right now, let alone a lifeguard. But Jane is a good swimmer. She's on the swim team, after all. Still, Jane decides to compromise by remaining in the shallow end of the pool, where her feet can touch the bottom.
She's barely been in the pool for thirty seconds when something crashes into her back and forces her down into the water. Jane thrashes wildly, trying to escape the grasp of whatever is holding her down.
The force relents, and Jane breaks the surface of the water, frantically searching for her attacker. She spots him immediately.
"Talon!" She exclaims furiously. "What are you doing?"
"Having a good time," Talon sneers, and lunges toward her again.
"No, stop!" Jane tries to shriek, but her cry is cut off when he uses his full weight to shove at her shoulders and push her back under the water. Jane tries to fight him off, using her long fingernails to scratch at his arms, but he refuses to let her come up for air. She tries to bite him, but she can't maneuver her head when he's using all his strength to press her down.
Just as her lungs begin burning and Jane is sure she is going to die, Talon lets her up for a breath of air before knocking her back under. The scenario repeats once, twice- Jane loses track. Her heart is pounding and her stomach is twisting. Every time she's at the surface, she opens her mouth to scream, and just takes a mouthful of water when Talon rams into her again.
In her struggles, Jane finally lands a solid hit on Talon; she kicks out and smashes her heel into the soft spot beneath his legs. He jumps back, and Jane darts away like a minnow, briefly breaking for air only once she's out of reach. The rapid pace continues until she's safe at the steps of the pool. A quick glance around tells her Talon has left the pool area. No sooner has Jane breathed a sigh of relief when her throat burns and her mouths overheats, and she rushes to the nearest trash can to empty her stomach of the water she swallowed.
Just as she's finishing being sick, her father's bellow breaks the day's gray silence.
"JANE!" His angry shout is close to a scream.
Overcome with dread, Jane gathers her towel, flip-flops, and knapsack, and starts up the winding path, past the pool's tall hedges, to where her father awaits her.
He glares at her as she approaches, as does Mr. Beckholder.
"What did you think you were doing?" Her father demands. "Talon's arms are so scratched they're almost bleeding! What makes you think that kind of violent behavior is acceptable?"
"I only scratched him because he was dunking me!" Jane protests.
"That's enough of your back talk, young lady!" Her father snaps. "Do you know the way home?"
The off-topic question throws Jane. "I- I think so."
"Well, you're going to learn. I'm not taking you back to the house. Not if you're going to insist on embarrassing me." Her father turns his back and strides away.
"Wait!" Jane calls frantically. "Dad, just give me the chance to expla-"
Her father whirls around. "Why is it so important to you, Jane, to always have the last word?"
Utterly defeated and drained, Jane watches her father walk away from her, then moves to follow him into the club building. When she passes Talon, he sends her a smug smile and she scowls back; the marks on his arms are barely pink and practically indistinguishable from his normal skin, let alone bleeding. What a wimp.
Jane loses sight of her father once she arrives at the club building, but at least if she's walking home on her own, she the chance to change out of her wet swim suit.
Once she exits the locker room after putting on dry clothes, anger begins rising within her. The farewell she receives from the front desk receptionist does nothing to help her blackening mood.
"Better hurry up, Jane!" The young woman tells her. "Your father left a while ago. He'll be waiting for you!"
Jane does not reply. She's sure if she opens her mouth, she'll say something she'll regret one way or another.
For the first part of the way home, Jane motivates herself by thinking of all the people she hates. Her father, obviously, for always being disapproving and never saying anything nice to her. Her mother, for not standing up to her father enough and letting him continue to be mean. Talon Beckholder, of course, for getting her into this trouble. Mr. Beckholder, for not giving her a chance to explain what happened, and also for raising a person as horrible as Talon. For this reason, Jane decides she also hates Mrs. Beckholder.
Eventually, though, Jane's anger fades, leaving her miserable. The neighborhoods she's walking through look less and less familiar. The air is cold, and her T-shirt and shorts offer little protection from the chill. Her feet hurt from walking in flip-flops. Her wet hair drips down her back, making her shirt damp and bringing her skin beneath to sting when the wind picks up. Though her towel is also still damp, Jane withdraws it from her knapsack and bundles it around her shoulders before slipping on her knapsack again, hoping the addition will make her more comfortable.
Unfortunately, the combination of the towel and the knapsack restricts her arm movements. When the toe of her flip-flops catches in a rift in the sidewalk, Jane normally might have been able to use her arms to regain her balance. But with her arms limited even in her attempts to stay upright, Jane twists and falls sideways, her left knee slamming against the curb. She lands awkwardly, with her lower legs still on the sidewalk and the rest of her body on the street, but the one saving grace is that she managed to cushion her head with a towel-wrapped elbow.
Still, the impact momentarily stuns her, and for several seconds Jane just lies there, too shaken to move. Then, she painstakingly eases her legs down to be level with her body, and hoists herself up to sit back on the curb. A stinging pain in her knee brings her to look down, and she realizes blood is flowing freely from a grime and gravel-encrusted gash. Cautiously, she tries to brush out the worst of the gravel, but a fresh surge of pain convinces her to stop. Instead, she shrugs off her backpack, removes the towel, and presses it against her cut.
Suddenly, Jane is overcome with tears. She's lost, she's cold, she's hurt, and she's angry. Nothing about this situation is her fault, and yet she's the one who's badly hurt. It's not at all fair. One hand holding the towel to her knee and the other covering her face, Jane begins to sob in earnest.
The motor of an approaching car hums lowly, and Jane is very embarrassed to be caught out in the open in such a mess, but she can't stop crying. Even as she hears the car slow and stop, its door opening, then shutting, she silently begs the person just to leave her alone.
"Miss?" A deep voice asks her. "Miss, are you all right?"
Uncovering her face, Jane blinks away her tears and looks up. A big and tall man stands before her, wearing a blue uniform. The car parked in the street is a police car, so he must be a police officer.
"I hurt my knee," she tells him, lifting the towel to show him. "I tripped on the sidewalk."
"That looks like it hurts," the officer says kindly. "My name's Officer Molinson. What's yours?"
"Jane Sammael," Jane answers. "Actually, my first name is January, but that's dumb, because my birthday is in May. So everyone calls me 'Jane.'"
"Do you live around here, Jane?" Officer Molinson asks her. "Are your parents with you?"
Jane shakes her head. "My dad told me to walk home from the country club. But I don't know where I am, and my parents are at work. I live on Silent Springs Drive, near the Whispering Pines development."
"Well, Jane, why don't you come with me, and we'll go to the hospital and get your knee checked out, okay?" Officer Molinson offers her one of his hands, and picks up her knapsack with the other.
Accepting his hand, Jane follows him to his car. She knows she's not supposed to go off with strangers, but she figures a police officer is okay. Besides, going off with a stranger would serve her father right after he was so mean to her.
On the way to the hospital, Officer Molinson asks her a lot of questions. Does she live with both of her parents? Does she have any siblings, and if yes, how old are they? Does anyone else live in the house with her family? How often do her parents expect her to walk home alone? What about Bill? Are she and Bill left home alone often?
"Jane," Officer Molinson asks her as they arrive at the hospital, "has any adult, your parents or anyone else, ever hit you? Or hurt you in another way?"
"My parents say some pretty nasty things to me sometimes," Jane admits. "But they've never hit me that I can remember. I don't think anyone else has, either."
At the hospital, Officer Molinson takes her to the emergency room, and then to a doctor's room. A nice nurse examines Jane, shining a bright light into her eyes, and asks her questions about her fall, while another cleans up Jane's knee. She has to get stitches, twelve of them, but Officer Molinson lets her hold his hand when they're putting them in, and afterward tells her she's been very brave. A doctor comes in and begins asking Jane questions like the nurse did, while Officer Molinson keeps walking in and out of the room to take calls on his radio.
After a long time, Jane's father shows up, but when he does, he doesn't go to Jane. Instead, he immediately starts speaking to Officer Molinson, who makes him be quiet and leads him out of the room. They stay outside talking, and when the doctor is finished asking questions about her knee, that one leaves. A lady doctor takes his place, and begins asking her questions like the ones Officer Molinson asked her before. Jane explains about being a member of the swim team country club, her father being angry about carpools, Talon trying to drown her in the pool, and her father not wanting to listen to her and making her walk home.
Because she's still angry at her father, Jane tells the lady doctor her address and then where the country club is, and also adds her father's remarks about being Jane's personal chauffeur. The doctor seems interested by all Jane tells her, and writes it down faster than Jane's ever seen anyone write. Though it's on her mind, Jane doesn't tell the doctor about something that's been bothering her for a while: her father could hear her yelling on the third floor when he was supposed to be on the second floor, even though Diana couldn't hear Jane on the third floor when Jane was calling her on the second.
Jane can't explain why, but she thinks she should tell the doctor about it, but she doesn't, because explaining the situation would be confusing and take a long time.
At the end, the doctor gives her a business card.
"If anyone is hurting you, either someone you know or a stranger, you can use my phone number to call me," the doctor explains.
Officer Molinson gives her a card, too, and says almost the same thing before he lets her father take her home. "Call the number on the card if you need to talk to me, Jane. Even if you're not in danger. Even if all you need is a ride home." He smiles at her, and Jane smiles back.
On the way home, Jane's father ignores her. He doesn't ask if she's all right, and he definitely doesn't apologize.
But her mother gives her a new book, another one of the Royal Diaries series. This one is about Cleopatra.
That night, Jane and Bill sit near the bottom of the first staircase and listen to their parents argue.
"To think," their mother snaps at their father, "that you've been snarling at me for years now about Bill and Jane carpooling with their friends. But when you yourself go to drive Jane home to prove a point, not only do you not take her home, but she has to rely on a public servant to rush her to the emergency room!"
"Christ, Elissa," their father snarls in return. "You'd think we'd barely escaped a visit with social services! It was all a misunderstanding, and I made sure the police and the hospital knew that!"
"She can't be part of the swim team now, not with her stitches!" Their mother rages. "How am I supposed to explain that to the other parents? To the other club members? My God, Troy, as if your activities don't already have us as a gossip topic on a regular basis-"
"Just lie and claim she hurt herself!" Their father shouts impatiently. "She's clumsy and uncoordinated, anyway. And you'll never have anyone disbelieve that she's foolish enough to be injured completely on her own!"
Their voices rise further as the argument heightens, and Bill leads Jane up the stairs, leaving the shouting behind.
"Come on," he says. "We can build a blanket fort in my room."
Later that night, Jane wakes abruptly from her spot on the floor of Bill's room. At first, she's not sure why she's awoken, but then she hears creaking from the floorboards further down the hall.
Outside of her room.
Paralyzed with fear, Jane listens as footsteps continue quietly past Bill's room and then down the stairs.
The next morning, despite turning the house inside out, Jane can't find her Cleopatra book anywhere.
However, a present waits for her on the kitchen table, a small velvet box, the type that contains jewelry. Opening the box, Jane finds a beautiful cameo necklace of an owl.
No card accompanies the box, only a post-it note with the words "For Jane," scribbled in her father's handwriting.
