Chapter 5
As soon as Cindy sat down at a bench in the park, she called her brother, but he didn’t answer her phone call. Therefore, she called John’s best friend Tony to pick her up. Eight minutes later, a white Toyota showed up, and Cindy got into the car.
“How are you doing?” Tony asked.
“Fine, how are you? Can you take me to the shopping mall that’s near the 60 Highway? By the way, do you know where John is? I called him one thousand times but he didn’t answer.” Cindy replied anxiously.
“What? You don’t know that he is in the jail?” Tony was very surprised by Cindy’s question.
“Wait…what? How come? That’s impossible. Tony, If you are joking with me please stop. This is not even funny, ok? I am very serious now; please tell me where John is.” An uneasy feeling inside Cindy began to grow as she finished the sentence.
“But… the truth is that John is in the jail.” Tony answered.
“Are you sure? When? How come he didn’t tell me? And..why?” Many worries and urgent thoughts suddenly filled Cindy’s mind. She couldn’t think of anything else.
“He told me to keep this a secret from you so you won’t worry about him, but out of my kindness I decided to tell you the whole story. It happened on the day of Jason and Stephanie’s wedding. What happened was that someone killed Stephanie in the dressing room, but no one saw the killer. When Jenny heard Stephanie’s cry for help, she went into the dressing room. She saw John standing in front of Stephanie’s body, and there was a lot of blood on John’s clothes. Jenny thought that John killed Stephanie so called 911. When the 911 came, they arrested John and…as you know, put him into the jail. But I trust John. He will never do this terrible thing. It must be someone else,” Tony said as if it was a tale from one of the stories he had read.
Cindy’s heart kept repeating the terrible fact again and again: John is in the jail, he is in the jail…..
“Cindy, Cindy, we are in the parking lot now, Cindy.” Tony woke Cindy up.
Cindy, half asleep, thanked Tony and then she grabbed her handbag and went to her car. She lay on the car seat for half an hour, thinking about all the things that happened this morning. Finally, she started her car and turned on the radio. A broken- hearted love song spread out from the radio. It reminded Cindy of John’s situation now, so, she drove to the direction of the jail.
Soon, she was in a room waiting to talk to John. After awhile, a lady called Cindy’s name and showed her the way to another room. Cindy sat on a long bench facing the huge glass window. She was looking at John, who sat on the other side of the window. Cindy picked up the phone, crying tears unconsciously, and she wiped away the tears bravely. She couldn’t believe that the man who sat in front of her was her brother, the brother who used to be so full of energy. Who used to seem like he could never exhaust his energy. Instead, the man sat in front of her had a face that looked similar to John’s, but much older; the black shadows below his eyes gave away the message that he was very tired and worried. Instead of a clean men’s shirt that he usually were, an old T-shirt was what he had on.
“How are you?” This short sentence made Cindy’s hands tremble, and tears fell again. She tried to squeeze a smile to comfort John. But this made John feel sorry for himself.
“I am fine. I just didn’t have a nice sleep last night. Are you OK?” John spoke lively, he looked at Cindy kindly and waiting for Cindy’s reaction, but as he saw Cindy tears, he knew the answer right away. Therefore, he decided to cheer Cindy up by changing the subject.
“So, what do you do all these days? You look awful.” John spoke.
“Of course, being a couch potato all day long. But I went to the mall today.” Cindy replied leisurely. Her tears stopped falling.
“Was the shopping fun? You went alone?” John added.
“Ya, but some policemen came and told me to go back to the police station with them.” Cindy naively responded.
The things that kept bothering John were finally coming clear.