Innocence

The mist of the tiny shower rolled off my red, sunburnt back as streams of water carved paths through the sand caked on the tops of my feet. As I reclined against the cool tiles behind me, I could feel the salt in my hair growing slippery and slowly being rinsed away.

I eased out of the shower, wrapping myself with a plain white towel, and strolled into the clutter of bras, tanning oil, tampons, and damp bathing suits flung around the small room. I found myself alone as my closest friend Willow had opted to use the outdoor shower of the quaint bed-and-breakfast where the four us were staying. My other two friends, Faith and Anna, were still out shopping on the busy Cape May boardwalk. As I stood there, drying off and musing about what I should wear for the rest of the afternoon, my phone rang. It was Anna.

Assuming she was calling to say they were on their way back, I answered the phone with a goofy hello. At first I could not understand a word of what she was saying. Her voice was garbled and she wasn’t speaking in complete sentences. Then I realized she was crying. “Anna, I can’t hear you! What happened? Is everything ok?”

As she composed herself, I was able to decipher what had happened. “Faith got arrested and she’s with the police and they have her handcuffed on top of a police car and I don’t know what to do can you guys please come quickly?”

“Oh my god what happened?”

“The store manager is being such a fucking asshole and he’s pressing charges because Faith stole a pair of sunglasses like who does that? She’s fucking thirteen! Like he was yelling at her, and I don’t even know if she meant to steal them like she just walked out of the store with them on her head!”

“Ok stay calm we’re coming right now. Just stay with her so that she isn’t so scared. Also make sure you call your mom right now.”

Her voice came back in a whine. “Ok please hurry!”

Hurling my towel on the bed, I grabbed the first thing I could see, a striped beach cover-up, and threw it on over my tangled hair. I snatched my flip-flops and sprinted down the stairs, my flimsy footwear slapping with every step. Racing around the corner, I pounded on the stained wooden door of the outdoor shower.

“Willow!” “Willow!”

“What!” Her answer pierced through the sweet-smelling clouds of steam and shampoo.

“Faith got arrested and we have to go to her. Anna called and she’s freaking out!”

The shower turned off abruptly and Willow opened the door a crack, sticking her head out to look at me. “Are you kidding?”

When she saw my face, her expression grew solemn, and she quickly rinsed herself off. My heart was pounding as she quickly dressed in what she had been wearing before and grabbed her flip-flops from the soapy concrete. Together, we sprinted across the road, cutting across a grassy park. As we crossed a small bridge, I thought we had reached our destination but quickly realized that this was only the first of two similar-looking bridges along the way. 

We cut through a crowd gathered around a pizza place. In the midst of the crowd, I glared at the apathetic old people in their pastel polo shirts and sun hats who moved slowly and gave us affronted looks as we charged by. I couldn’t remember it ever taking so long to get to the boardwalk. My mind should have been reeling, but truthfully I wasn’t surprised, and I was definitely far too focused on finding Anna to get bogged down in the existential implications of Faith’s disastrous actions. Stepping onto the sandy planks, we ripped off our flip-flops and ran with renewed speed. Halfway down the boardwalk, my phone rang again, and once again, I heard Anna’s voice on the other end. “They’re taking her to the police station in Asbury Park!”

“Holy shit why? Wait for us and then we’ll go together!” We soon spotted Anna’s lanky legs and high black ponytail and rushed towards her. Panting, we listened as she explained in a hurried voice what happened in greater detail. “Basically, I don’t really know what happened with Faith, whether she meant to take them or not, but she walked out of the store with them on her head.” 

Anna hastily brushed a loose lock of hair behind her ear and repeated the task when it fell down loosely beside her face. “The guy noticed her, and him and his wife started yelling at her and called the police. I also stole a bracelet, so I sprinted when Faith got caught and buried it in the sand down that way right by the boardwalk. When I came back they were handcuffing her by the police car. We have to go though! She’s already on her way to the police station!”

The three of us took off in the direction of Asbury Park, stopping to ask an overweight woman carrying a trash bag if she knew how to get to the police station. We ran barefoot along the sidewalks, three fourteen-year-old girls without the faintest idea where they were going. Looking around, I noticed that the streets had begun to fill with trash, and the fences along the sidewalks became rustier and more broken down. Three Hispanic men in work boots came sidling down the street towards us, and I kept my head forward and ran faster. We ran around a block and crossed a main avenue, only to realize we had already been on this street. We asked an old couple on their dilapidated porch if they knew how to get to the police station, and they replied with some vague directions using street names we didn’t know.

After what felt like an hour of disoriented running, by some miraculous stroke of luck, we reached our destination. We stumbled into the parking lot of the police station, a hideous grouping of large brick buildings with small windows where no light could enter, crowded by obtrusive cement columns. Entering the police station, we went up to the front desk and asked for Faith. The greasy-haired front desk attendant informed us that Faith was in the cell in the back. “Just wait,”  she said.

As we sat in the waiting area, the interior of the police station was bathed in fluorescent light. The floors were tan vinyl tile, so covered in scratches they appeared to be part of the intended design. Five minutes later Anna’s mom strode in, keys in hand, her hair disheveled. After a conversation with the woman at the front desk, she came and sat with us in the waiting area and spoke tensely to Anna in German. She then addressed the three of us in her thick German accent. “What happened girls? This is very bad.”

“What’s going to happen to Faith?”

“It depends on whether the store owner presses charges. She’s a minor, so I don’t think she’ll go to jail.”

After a short time passed, she spoke to the woman at the front desk. The next thing I knew, she was hustling us into her car, and we were on our way back to the bed-and-breakfast. Anna’s mother explained in the car that Faith’s mom was on her way to pick Faith up, and that we would have to wait in our room because charging Faith could take a while.

We were silent on the car ride home. When we got to the room, I called my mom, looking out over the bright blue ocean and the bustling beachgoers below. Talking on the phone, I could not escape the heavy feeling that I had been so lucky not to have been there with Faith when it happened. I couldn’t help but feel that it could have just as easily been me-- the line between guilt and innocence seemed so thin. All it takes to cross it is for a good person like Faith to make a rash decision in one moment. Then all at once she is a thief, and her life is turned upside down. From the balcony where I stood, everything in view below was light and laughter, but all I could see was the vague outline of my friend as she sat alone in a dark holding room.