Mean Girls of Maplewood Ch. 23

"I promise Rosa."

"Oh, you looking a little tired little girl; I tell you what I'm gonna do Leslie. I make you something really nice for you and the baby, so you get back to bed and I bring it to you, okay?"

"Okay." Leslie sniffled.

Rosa took her by the hand leading the troubled teen back to her bedroom where she promptly tucked her under the covers. She stood there holding Leslie's hand for a good twenty minutes as she thankfully dozed off. Rosa remained at the entrance to her bedroom watching Leslie until she felt it was safe to leave her alone returning to the kitchen. She leaned against the wall calming her nerves fanning herself a little before removing a tall can from the grocery bag. Rosa popped the tap on the brew taking a deep chug before wiping her hand across her lips.

"Estúpida puta. " The housekeeper popped her phone out dialing.

"You've reached the law offices of Kennedy, Rosenberg and Brennan; we are unavailable to take your call at this time. Press zero to be directed to a live operator or leave a message at the sound of the beep." Rosa hesitated pensively before pushing the button to speak to a live operator.

*************

"This is the second instance of what has been termed in popular culture as revenge porn to hit the town of Maplewood in less than a week." Before the reporter could continue, the channel was switched to some garish variety show featuring a contestant dressed as a human sized fish to compete in a singing contest.

Patty stood off in the bathroom that connected her bedroom to her parents as a midpoint in this barbell shaped plan to their modest family home. Even though her father made a salary in the upper five digits, he'd remained in the first home he'd ever purchased with his wife's blessing. The compromise was a cabin purchased up the interstate ten miles out from the camp grounds.

Things kind of worked out due to Patty being an only child after her mother became infertile due to uterine prolapse. Patricia Clark at once became the golden child to her doting parents who spoiled her rotten leaving the teen with an unquenchable lust for popularity as a result.

Now all that had changed leaving the eighteen year old former cheerleader and popular high school student, a recluse.

Patty stared at her reflection in the mirror hating the fractured person that stared back. It was early enough in the morning and she'd just finished washing her hair in the bathroom sink. She instinctively started to redo her hair into her signature Cindy Brady ponytails, but stopped short dropping her hands to the edge of the sink. Her hair hung loose, stringy, and wet just above her shoulders with a visible plug missing where it had been snatched out by a monster disguised as a cheerleader.

One of her wisdom teeth had been loosened by repeated clubbing blows leaving her with a nagging pain that she refused to address. She looked down at the makeup kit sitting on top of the adjacent toilet retrieving an eyebrow pencil. Patty found herself unable to use it as her mother appeared in the doorframe.

"Need some help Patty?" The tiny pencil was shaking in her trembling hand.

"Uh, maybe I'll use my real face today; it's not like I've got anywhere to go mom." She dropped the pencil back into the makeup kit.

"Well how about we make it a girl's day out; I'll take you to the mall and get you that little cocktail dress you've had your eye on for a while. We can have lunch there or go wherever you like."

"NO!" Mrs. Clark was stopped cold as her daughter abruptly shouted.

"Patty?"

"Uhm, sorry mom, I can't do that. I can't do anything like that anymore and I don't want people looking at me." Her chest was heaving with emotion as she thought of the sex tape circulating around town after being nuked on social media by Red and April.

"Of course you can honey, we can put that cute little pink hoodie on you, and nobody will know the difference." Mrs. Clark reasoned. Patty had been a recluse since being released from the hospital keeping to herself ashamed even to look her father in the eye.

"PLEASE MOM!!"

"I'll hold your hand; we'll do it together, okay baby?"

"LEAVE ME ALONE!!" Patty screamed at the top of her lungs unwilling to budge even an inch. She couldn't look her mother in the face for more than a few moments feeling the shame of exposure. There wasn't a moment in the day her mind didn't wander back to April's bedroom where her tormentors waited frozen in time. It felt like she was broken, shattered on so many levels. Her parents would never understand.

"I'm sorry." Patty whimpered looking up finding her mother gone from the doorframe.

She'd only recently got up thinking a good washing of her hair might bring some clarity to her troubled thoughts. The lithe blonde was wearing a baby tee and some red and white polka dot running shorts. Patty sat on the edge of the tub brooding for a few seconds before rising shoulders slumped to find her mother.

The defrocked cheerleader wanted to make things right with her mother who'd seldom left her side since the ordeal began. Both of her parents were voluntarily out of their jobs living off the family's lucrative stockpile of savings. The guilt of wreaking havoc on her parents was stifling to the point that she'd been unable to get out of bed on occasion.

"Mom?"

Patty shuffled into the living room finding the front door open. She walked up to the screen peering out into the front yard at her parents. Her father was presently shoring up the picket fence at the far end of the lawn while her mother talked. It was obvious she was crying, but her father was stone faced. It was his default expression whenever their eyes met.

Patty watched her mother follow her father along the fence both engaged in heated discussion when a patrol car suddenly pulled up along the fence. She watched Mooney and Deputy Jimmy slowly exit the vehicle as her father became standoffish with the officers. Her mother stumbled over hands clutched to her chest as Patty's brow furrowed.

The officers looked there on official business which didn't sit too well with her parents as her mother buried her face in her father's chest. Goosebumps prickled up on her skin as her mouth hung open fearing the worst. She ducked to the side of the front door as Mooney gestured towards the house.

"No, shit fuck me; no fucking way!" Patty went into a frenetic shaking fit quickly slamming the door locking the deadbolt. She could hear their footfalls running towards the door backing away almost going into a seizure.

"NO!!! IT'S NOT HAPPENING!! THIS AIN'T HAPPENING!! SHIT MAN, FUCK!!" Left with nowhere to run, Patty retreated to the bathroom as the front door shook and creaked under the weight of her father.

She could hear her mother sobbing uncontrollably. Patty ran towards her bedroom thinking to climb out of its only window high on the wall but found it unmovable. Only the upper portion opened transom like, but she couldn't fit despite her thin, athletic frame. Her teeth were chattering as she heard some keys at the front door. She hopped up on the bed frantically yanking at the window like a caged animal before accidentally tumbling to the floor. Patty scrambled back into the bathroom on all fours as the front door swung open with a loud thud hitting the wall.

"DON'T HURT HER!!" Her mother shrieked.

"HEY THAT'S MY DAUGHTER MOONEY!!" Her father yelled amid sounds of scuffling. Patty nearly vomited slamming the bedroom door locking it. She bolted towards the open door adjacent to her parent's just as Deputy Jimmy's cowboy boot appeared at the edge of the door frame. Patty lunged for the knob using her weight to slam the remaining door closed in his face locking it.

"OPEN THE DOOR PATTY!!" Mooney was already at the opposite door trying the knob.

She watched it jiggle looking between the dual doors trapped like a rat. Her mouth was gaped with a scream trapped in the depths of her soul. Nothing was coming out as she went into a fit knocking the makeup kit on the floor. Trembling, Patty raised both fists to the sides of her head, nails digging into the tender flesh of her palms as she finally found her voice.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!!!"

Her voice was loud enough to be heard three homes over as she glanced down finding her hairdryer still attached to its extension cord. She would sometimes plug it into the bathroom socket and sit on the edge of her bed gossiping on the phone. Now, it represented a desperate out for the trapped teenager. She hadn't noticed the quiet that followed her outburst.

All reason gone from her mind; Patty knotted a makeshift noose around her neck glancing up at the shower rod above the tub. Her father in his infinite wisdom remodeled the bathroom a year earlier making the steel bar a permanent fixture going deep into the concrete hidden behind the wall. Now, his daughter was tossing one end of the extension cord over the bar making the still attached hairdryer float about in the air. She looped it again.

"I'M SORRY DADDY!! I'M SORRY MOMMA!! I LOVE YOU!!" Patty dropped quickly bending her knees, feet hovering off the floor as she sought to hang herself.

Her arms were folded across her chest as the cord drew air tight around her neck.

The door suddenly splintered under the weight of her father and Deputy Jimmy's combined weight. Mooney opened his door having used a butter knife from the kitchen to finesse the lock. Patty was quickly grabbed while her mother went into hysterics. The makeshift noose was removed from her neck while she was held aloft in her father's arms. She curled into a ball hiding her face in her dad's chest sobbing as he sat on the edge of the tub cradling his child in his arms.

"Daddy, I'm so sorry about all of this."

"You're my baby girl, the only one I'll ever have and goddam you for trying to leave us Patty." He broke in dramatic fashion as her mother knelt beside them hugging her daughter. Mooney and Deputy Jimmy watched the family reconnect.

"I'm sorry mamma."

"We love you no matter what happens; we're a family." Mooney was touched, but there was business to be had as he took a knee looking at the frightened girl.

"Patty you know you can trust me, right? We just wanted to ask you about Coach Hamblen." She looked at her parents who nodded their acquiescence.

"They made me go over there with this burlap bag on and a box with all this stuff to make it look like he was having an affair. I was told I had to get into Coach's house and just empty the bag on the floor, then hide. I- uhm, didn't have nothing on under that bag because they still had my clothes, my phone and everything."

"Who did this Patty?"

"Red, and the other crazy one; made me wear this track phone around my neck so she could talk to him on facetime and threaten him, blackmail him."

"Blackmail him, for what?"

"I don't know; they had something going on and I was just a means to an end. They did "stuff" to me and filmed it, made me open my phone and all my social media. I was gonna get fucking doxed and that tape was gonna be posted if I didn't do what they wanted, but they did it anyway!" Her mother was devastated as well as her father whose face was flushed with a mixture of grief and rage.

"They tricked me, told Coach he had to get back into the game and made him "Do It" to me; I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS GONNA HAPPEN, I SWEAR!! I'M SORRY DADDY, I DIDN'T WANT GRANDMA TO SEE ME LIKE THAT!!" Mr. Clark lost it as his wife tightened her grip on their only child.

"MOONEY WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT THIS SHIT?!!" He bellowed more out of distress than pure rage at the revelation of his sullied daughter. Mooney glanced over at Deputy Pete.

"Send a car over to Leslie Kennedy's house; I want her ass down at the station asap." Patty perked up looking at his face incredulously, tears flowing.

"WHY, SHE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING TO ME!!" Deputy Jimmy stopped short of leaving shooting a look at his partner.

"Patty, you said, "they made you do it" and everybody around town knows Red and Leslie were inseparable."

"NO, IT WAS THAT CRAZY BITCH APRIL!! SHE'S THE ONE WHO RAPED ME!! SHE'S RED'S GIRLFRIEND OR SOMETHING!! THEY'RE BOTH CRAZY AND I'M GLAD THAT BITCH IS DEAD!! I'M SORRY DADDY, I'M GLAD SHE'S GONE!!" He hugged his sobbing daughter to his chest, the family now openly crying as Mooney took it all in.

"Who's April?"

**************

My baby girl is gone." He turned up the decanter finishing off the fancy bottle of brandy letting it drop to the hardwood floor along with two other similarly emptied vessels.

He sat on the floor back to the wall knees drawn up into his chest staring liquor addled at the edge of his bed. The king sized bed hadn't been made up since he'd finally put his daughter out of the house. His clothing was stained and disheveled, his strong jaw littered with stubble under a running nose and baggy bloodshot eyes.

Reed wasn't so much looking at his mattress, but more beyond it remembering something horrific. He raised the bottle to his lips again silently frustrated at its empty state, bumping his head against the wall. No matter what, the former sheriff of Maplewood couldn't seem to wrap his head around what happened in the wee hours of the night.

Everything seemed a dream, obfuscated reality leaving him stuck in the eye of the tornado mentally speaking. Both of them could feel their shared world coming to an end with no way to stop it. She'd done too much without his parental oversight. He hadn't been looking out for her like before. There were no checks and balances for the troubled teen culminating in a future behind bars and the total financial ruin of their tight little family.

It had always been just the two of them, peas in a pod who shared a symbiotic understanding of one another. Both of them father and daughter, shared a uniqueness. Both equally similar genetically, ideologically differentiated by gender alone. He'd raised her in his image feeling a pride in her that he seldom openly expressed. It was tough love designed to steel her against the world.

Perhaps he'd gone too far leaving a irredeemable sociopath unleased upon Maplewood and the world at large. His affair with Leslie Kennedy had come in like a hurricane fogging his eyes, clouding his mind to everything crumbling around him. Reed lost himself in the buxom eighteen year old blessed with a body beyond her years coupled with an irresistible sexuality that washed over him taking with it years of quiet depression and loneliness.

There was truly nothing he could do to stop her from taking him whole rolling back the years making him feel like a teen again. Nothing to abate the gradual thoughts of a relationship despite their age difference and the fact that Leslie was his daughter's best friend. His cup was empty and barren like a desert, but the striking teen filled it to capacity. He knew it was wrong, but he'd fallen hard for this young woman even thinking of marriage.

Then it all went to hell.

She'd come to him out of the blue wanting to break it off, her behavior indifferent chaste and alien. Leslie talked of their connection relegating it to a physical attraction and little more, speaking with a wisdom akin to her adult appearance. If it was ultimately some mental game to break his resolve, it worked. He found himself desperate enough to beg her for one last tryst internally scared of what he might do if she refused.

There was no way he was going to let the best thing that ever happened to him, fly out of his life. This prideful, roughhewn lawman shattered at her feet becoming a feigning sycophant feverishly elated at the opportunity to please his young mistress. He'd gone down on her almost immediately thinking to keep it up until she changed her mind. There was nothing he wouldn't give her to remain a part of his miserable existence.

Then Red caught them.

Tears rolled down his face as the former sheriff broke down knowing that he would've killed his own daughter to protect Leslie Kennedy. They fought openly and only his experience and age factored into Red eventually being subdued and cuffed. This broken man swam about in the river Styx wallowing in self-pity and shame begging his daughter to spare Leslie.

She responded by hocking a wad of spittle right in his face and calling her own father a pussy. Her continual threats of ending Leslie took her father to a darkness that scared the fifty something. It was at this point that he realized what was going on around him, but it was way too late to stop it. Red was already long gone and destined for a life behind bars. Both of them knew that it was over for father and daughter.

He resolved to make it up to his daughter with full disclosure. It would be a decision he'd come to regret as he finally revealed details regarding her mother's abandonment of the family.

Reed cried openly still checking the empty liquor bottle at his side. That bit of honesty unfiltered, that truth destroyed all that was left of his daughter's sanity. She'd come to him while the man was waylaid in a drunken stupor and taken him in an affront to all that was holy. In his condition, there was no strength or resistance left to stop what she was doing as he was taken over and over again until he lost consciousness.

The most horrific aspect of waking up compromised beside his nude daughter, was her reason. Red left with nothing mentally and spiritually, resolved to bring him back into their fold using her body in an attempt to make him love her again. She offered herself as mate and daughter simultaneously. It was over for both of them at that exact moment.

There was nothing for father to do but shun and expel his only child from his life. He finally pushed Red out of his life only for his subordinates to show up later to inform him of her death. It felt like he'd killed her himself.

"Made you my daddy again; but this time it's gonna be so much better because we understand each other. You're the only one I have left in the world, daddy. I want us to be-closer than we ever were. Nobody wants us and ain't no baby gonna come between us. Ain't no bitch ever gonna use you to hurt me again because I'll take good care of you, okay daddy?"

That explanation kept playing over and over in his head again. He could hear her words on a loop but couldn't see anything of his daughter other than her silhouette.

"Baby?"

"I want us to be-closer than we ever were. Nobody wants us and ain't no baby gonna come between us. Ain't no bitch ever gonna use you to hurt me again because I'll take good care of you, okay daddy?"

"Baby, Leslie?"

His brow raised as he came to a logical conclusion that had been staring him in the face this whole time. Red was intent on murdering the love of his pathetic life and there was nothing anyone would've been able to do given her indomitable will. She'd drugged him leaving her father lying on the hardwood floor of their ranch house to seek her vengeance on a former best friend. His daughter plundered his weapon's cache retrieving a single pistol only to return visibly defeated much later. Red sat there in the living room drinking hard, all the fight taken out of her without a single punch thrown.

"Mine, she's having mine."

His bloodshot eyes widened as things suddenly became brighter in the trashed bedroom making his loss sting a bit less. His mouth hung open as his barrel chest heaved. Reed began fumbling about looking at his clothing realizing his disheveled state of being. Life found his limbs as he stumbled to his feet.

Leslie's laconic attitude made sense as well as the attempt at breaking up. She was scared of what people would think about their relationship and her obvious pregnancy. Reed was at once euphoric and crestfallen simultaneously. Leslie Kennedy made an informed decision to protect them both in his alcohol soaked mind. He was huffing and fidgeting about his bedroom eventually looking at his own reflection in the mirror on his dresser. The former Sheriff Reed was the picture of a man savaged by the world at large.