Love, Aspen

I sat down in the ugly chair in my probation officer’s room with a list of seven numbers. Five of the seven were likely to get me nowhere, but I had hit a dead end somewhere with my memory and was unable to remember anymore numbers. Even the ones I had managed to remember were hard to write down, knowing there was maybe a 5% chance the phone call was even going to be answered.

I pushed the list of numbers towards my probation officer and he picked them up, reading each one carefully. I had written down the full name of the person and their number, as well as my ‘relation’ to them. I watched his face as he read each one and I saw no emotion at all. He was like a fucking statue or something; I could never tell what he was going to say next. I could never tell if he was going to be angry or upset about something. He folded up the paper in the crease and looked at me over the rim of his glasses, sighing loudly.

“This is it?” He asked, “you getting out of here depends on the people on this list and this is all you give me? A bunch of people who you know because you hung around with their kids in high school and some guy that bought you cigarettes all the time?”

I cleared my throat. “He never bought them for me.”

“Oh, right. Gave you cigarettes.”

“Look,” I snapped. “I already fucking told you, no one wants me at their god damn house. I did the best I could do, okay?”

He nodded, not bothering to argue with me. I think he was pissed because I hadn’t given him much to go on, but I think he also knew it was all I had.

“Do you want to call or do you want me to call?”

I shrugged. “They’ll probably give you more time to explain.”

“Who do you want me to call first?”

“They’re in order from top to bottom.”

“All right.” He paused. “Aunt Julie is up first.”

I leaned back in the chair as I watched him dial the number. It wasn’t nerve wracking yet. He was lucky if he got past the first two words of his sentence. But, over the next half hour or so, I watched as he talked and talked to my mom’s sister, totally selling her some bullshit story about how much I’d changed and how I wanted to do something for the community. Then she asked what I was in for and that was the end of the conversation.

Next up was Lauren, the girl who’d been my best friend up until freshman year. I could hear her mom yelling at the probation officer, asking him what the hell he was thinking, why would she want someone like me at her house? I was a little white trash bitch and had almost taken her daughter with me.

He dialed the next three numbers; one being my grandmother, one being a boyfriend that I had in high school and the other being some girl that had given me her number and I had simply remembered it for some reason. After the first two hung up on him, laughing their asses off, he didn’t even bother calling the third girl.

Erin’s mom and Matt. He called Erin’s mom and she listened to him for the first ten minutes, then burst into tears and started telling him that she was sorry, that she never meant to buy me alcohol or cigarettes and that she’d never do it again. He hung up on her.

“All right Aspen.” He spoke quietly. “This Matt guy is all you’ve got.”

I watched as his eyes traveled from the paper and back to the phone on the desk, pressing the gray numbered keys with his index finger. As he hit the last number and brought the phone up to his ear, I suddenly got nervous. My hands got sweaty, my body went warm, my head started spinning and I felt like I was going to throw up.

“I’m not sure if that’s still his number—“

I was cut off by him holding a finger in the air. “Hi, is this Matt? Okay. This is Brady Wiles at the Ada County juvenile center, can I talk to you for a moment?” He paused only slightly. “I have Aspen Whiting sitting here and she is about to be released in a few weeks. Since she is under the age of eighteen and a ward of the state, she has to be released to someone who is of age and passes a certain set of requirements.” He was quiet for a moment, nodding every few seconds. “Yes, I understand that. Yes, yes, okay… Listen Matt, I don’t mean to be persistent, but I’ve been talking to Aspen and she seems to know you pretty well. She has nowhere else to go and no one to go to. She really needs a place to stay or she has to remain in this facility until her eighteenth birthday. Even then, she won’t necessarily have anyone to live with.”

My stomach was churning now and my eyes were searching around the room for a trash can, in case I really did need to hurl. The probation officer was extremely quiet at the moment, not looking at me or giving me any signal that what Matt was saying was good or bad. He was merely nodding and saying slight ‘mmhms’ every few minutes. I sat there, rocking back and forth in my chair like a little kid who hadn’t used the bathroom in a few hours. There was a slight knock at the door and it popped open slightly. He turned around to see one of the guards peeking in the room.

“Mr. Wiles, I know you’re busy but it’s lunch time and if you don’t need Aspen, I’ll escort her to lunch.”

He nodded at me, then towards the door. I reluctantly stood up and followed her out the door, wanting so badly to stay. The entire walk to the lunch room, the only thing I could think about was what was going on between Matt and the probation officer, if he was selling me to Matt like I was some extremely expensive cover up he really didn’t need. I sat down across from both Tara and Alex, not bothering to really look at them. I had nowhere else to sit and if it really bothered them that me and Cassie had hooked up, they could fucking move. I was at the point in my head that I could really give a fuck.

The three of us ate in complete silence, chewing our shit food like it was the last thing we were going to eat. About twenty minutes later, the lunch bell rang. I walked up to the guard that had escorted me out here and asked if I was supposed to go back to the probation officer’s room. She told me no, to continue on to my session. At that point, my nerves were so wrecked I probably could have killed someone and not even realized that I had done it. It wasn’t fair that he just went and called up Matt, didn’t even bother to tell me if Matt was buying it all and then sent me on my way to eat and not even call me back into his office.

I sat down in my chair and looked around the room to see quite a few new girls. From the looks of it, they were all pretty fucked up. In my opinion, I didn’t belong with these god damn weirdos. My crime was dangerous, but it wasn’t like it had something to do with my mind. I wasn’t psychotic. My brain worked just fine. The bell sounded and the girls were quiet.

“All right, let’s get this started. Aspen, why don’t you go first?”

I nodded. I always went first. Easiest to get my ass out of the way; everyone already knew my crime unless they were new. I was the least shocking of the entire group. The counselor figured she’d let me go first and the other girls could show me up with their disgusting crimes. Honestly, I think she liked to hear about that shit, she was a little weird.

“I committed arson. Lit a playground on fire.”

“Why?” One of the girls asked.

I felt my face go red and my hands start to sweat, but I did my best to play it cool. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I dunno. Felt like it.”

And group went on the way it always did. Girls got crazy, got that freaky ass look on their face. They told their stories with no remorse. One girl had beaten her little brother because he ate the last piece of her birthday cake while she was at school. I was terrified to be in the same room as some of them, but I couldn’t show that. If they were aware of that, there was really no telling what they might do to me, or any of the girls for that matter.

So it was safe to say that when the door was knocked on and my probation officer was standing there, asking to talk to me that I was more than happy to meet him out in the hallway. Once I’d made it out there, he looked at me sternly.

“I just spent the last hour and a half talking to Mr. Good.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing special. Just explained to me how he knew you and all that type of stuff. There’s a lot of things you never got nailed for Aspen, you better consider yourself lucky.”

I nodded.

“Well listen. I didn’t convince him completely. Sounds like he’s a little down and out at the moment, but he did agree to come to your hearing next week. Now, if you can show that you’re going to be better once you’re out of here, I can almost guarantee that you’ve got a place to stay. But you have to really try, Aspen. Even when you are out of here, do your best to find a job, to get your GED, to do something with your life.”

“Okay.”

“Can you promise me that Aspen, that you’ll do something with your life? That you’re going to quit with the drinking, the weed, the graffiti and lighting shit on fire?”

“Yes sir, I can.” I said quietly, being sincere.

“You have a lot of ambition and you seem to be a smart girl, you just make bad choices. I know that you’re independent and you can be a strong person, it doesn’t take much to see that. I saw the grades you had before all this got out of hand and I know that you weren’t being raised at home by someone who was stable.” He paused. “I understand that you just lost it one day, but you need to get back on track and stop screwing around while you’re still young. You’ve fucked around enough, if you do it for any longer, you’re going to have a bad life.”

“I know.” I nodded.

“I just don’t want to see another teenage girl throw away her life because her mom was a crack whore.” He paused. “Sorry. Wrong choice of words there. I should have said something a little less harsh.”
“Don’t worry about it.”

He nodded. “Okay Aspen. I’ve told you all I know. The rest is up to you.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

As he walked away from me, I was pretty sure he could hear my heart pounding in my chest. When I had made that list of all those people, I was sure I was fucked. I mean, I knew Matt would pick up the phone and listen, just because he had the manner s and the patience, but I didn’t think he would agree to anything.