Without a Doubt - [67]

The next day at lunch, I deliberately chose to sit at a table of outcasts-those who’d either abandoned all hope of ever being popular or had never cared much to begin with. One girl leaned over to me and asked, “Do you realize how pissed off they’re going to be if you sit with us?” Of course I did. I actually enjoyed watching the Heathers glower at me from their privileged position. They didn’t like the idea of being rejected. Serves you damned right, I thought.

I did okay on my own terms. That year I got into gymnastics. I would have liked to try out for the women’s gymnastics team, except there wasn’t one. Instead, I became a cheerleader. Co-captain of the squad, in fact. Before I could really get into the season, however, we moved again. This time to Maryland.

I was prepared to hate the place, but I ended up loving it. The apartment complex we moved to was populated largely by families as transient as my own. They came from all over the world. In the afternoons and on weekends I’d play soccer in the central courtyard with kids from India, Chile, Argentina, and England. They were kindred spirits. Most of them had lived lives as unsettled as my own, and they had no trouble welcoming a newcomer whose tenure was uncertain. I faced the usual trauma of having to make new friends, but the transition was easier than ever before. Within two months I’d become part of a congenial crowd, with a few close friends among them.

That interlude of contentment, however, ended abruptly with yet another move, this time to New York. The announcement devastated me. I’d been so happy in Maryland. For the first time in my life I hadn’t felt like a freak. Maybe it was the feeling of having no control over my life, or maybe it was just the prospect of having to start all over again, but when I got news of our impending departure, I marched upstairs to my room, closed the door, and ripped up every book I could lay my hands on. Then I threw every fragile object I owned against the wall. When my belongings lay in ruins around me, I dropped onto my bed in a fit of sobbing.

We moved to a development on Staten Island, where we bought a large house. That, at least, made me happy. I had the whole downstairs floor to myself. It had its own entrance, which gave me more freedom than ever. The bad news was that the kids in my new high school regarded me with outright hostility. The California mystique didn’t mean spit here. The only group that would accept me were the hippies. They were not junkies or hypes or anything, just basically good kids who, like me, didn’t fit in anywhere else. I helped them organize the distribution of the High School Free Press and agitated for the abolition of the school dress code. And I smoked a little dope, something I admit without a twinge of regret or guilt. When I see a politician squirming when asked to admit he sneaked a toke as a kid, I just want to shake him and say, “Grow up, Junior.” The way I look at it, toking was just one more rite of passage.

One night my friends and I met at a local park that was one of our favorite hangouts. We were just sitting around acting cool. One guy brought his guitar and we were singing Dylan songs badly. Suddenly a crew-cut man wearing a Ban-Lon shirt, cutoffs, and a peace symbol approached us and flicked on a flashlight.

“This is a bust, everybody,” he barked. “Stand up.”

I thought it was a joke. I mean, he had to be kidding, especially in that getup.

“I mean it,” he repeated. “I’m a cop.”

“Oh, yeah? Well then, where’s your badge?” I taunted him. I was perfectly sober but high on attitude.

He produced a badge. We promptly stood.

The cop marched us out to where several other officers had stationed themselves in the middle of the park. Another girl and I were handed over to an older cop who questioned us apart from the others. I was scared. I was enough of a middle-class Jewish girl to know that an arrest would be terrible for me in every way. But I also knew that I’d done nothing wrong.

“Why are we getting busted?” I asked him. “We were just singing.”

“Don’t give me that,” he sneered at me. “We found a bunch of hype kits and Baggies of heroin right over there.” He pointed to some bushes.

Heroin! The thought of pushing a needle into my arm made me physically ill.

“You must be kidding,” I said in complete amazement. “We don’t do heroin!”

“Oh, yeah?” he said right into my face. “Well, let’s see your arms.”

I was wearing a sleeveless top, which, as I think back on it, should have told the cops right off the bat that I was no junkie. But I stretched out my arms obediently. The officer examined them and pointed to a small scratch on my right bicep. “You see,” he said triumphantly, “that could be a skin pop.”

Skin pop? What the hell was that?

The sickening realization swept over me that this guy could say anything he wanted. He could manufacture any evidence he wanted. No matter how innocent I was, he could send me to jail if he wanted to. To him I was just a scruffy piece of shit.

I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but that sense of total helplessness stayed with me long after I became an officer of the court. For a prosecutor, it’s easy to become annoyed at a criminal justice system that seems to be stacked so ridiculously in favor of defendants. But you have to have been on the downside looking up at the face of the law before you realize how thin those defenses really are. Once you’ve been there, you can’t honestly begrudge a defendant any help he can muster.