Dangerous Girls

CLARA: Even blaming the victim herself.

MARTIN: Exactly. And seeing this, you’ve really got to ask yourself, is she just trying to pass the buck, or does this go much deeper, to an almost pathological detachment from reality?

CLARA: Now, I’ve got body-language expert Heidi Attenberg on the line, author of several books on the subject. What does this footage tell you, Heidi?

HEIDI: Thanks for having me, Clara. First of all, if you look at her posture during these answers, it’s very composed, controlled. Her hands are folded, she doesn’t twitch or move around at all; this tells us she’s a very self-possessed person, someone who likes control.

CLARA: Too controlled, perhaps? I mean, this is a girl who’s been locked up in prison for months now I have to admit, I was expecting her to be . . . more raw, a lot more emotional . . . Even before the cameras started rolling, she sat quietly, barely speaking, like she was analyzing the scene.

HEIDI: Right, and then when she does have a more emotional moment—here, where she’s talking to the parents and she starts crying, it’s almost too emotional, coming after all that calm.

CLARA: You’re saying she’s faking it?

HEIDI: It’s certainly possible. When people cry, for real, it’s an almost involuntary action; they just can’t help it. In the footage, if you keep your eye on Anna’s hands—

CLARA: We’re highlighting it on-screen here—

HEIDI: They stay folded, again, very composed. We’d expect to see her touch her face, wipe her eyes, maybe.

CLARA: That’s fascinating. Now, can we backtrack a moment and show you some footage from before the interview? This is background roll of Anna talking to her legal team, she’s got her lawyer there, and I want to show you this: Anna, getting very friendly with a young man we’ve identified as Lee Evans, age twenty-three; he’s a junior consul at the American embassy in the Netherlands. We contacted the embassy for comment, and all they’ll tell us is that Evans is not in Aruba in any official capacity. So, Heidi, what do we think? Is this a friend? A secret boyfriend? What does their body language say to you?

HEIDI: Whoever he is, they have a close relationship. You can see the physical affection when he touches her, the way she smiles at him.

CLARA: I would say he looks smitten with her.

HEIDI: Definitely not just a platonic relationship.

CLARA: Well, then, I’ve got to ask: What does this tell us about Anna Chevalier? I don’t know about you, but if I’m in prison, awaiting a murder trial, boys are going to be the last thing on my mind. But here she is, apparently flirting with a young man, in plain view of everyone.

MARTIN: And if I can add, we know there was confusion about her and her boyfriend, Tate Dempsey, and their alibis, which were later recanted. Anna’s always claimed he was the one who told her to lie, but looking at this tape, now I’ve got to wonder, you know—this is a girl with considerable feminine power. She’s got this new guy under her spell, even from behind prison bars. Getting a loyal boyfriend to lie for her would be easy.

CLARA: And we’ll get back to that later. But quickly, Martin, before the break, let’s talk about her bruises. A lot of people were shocked to see them.

MARTIN: Right, and I know this fight, this prison fight, has gotten her a lot of sympathy from some quarters—

CLARA: Even thought the prison authorities have assured me she’s being kept in isolation now, away from other inmates.

MARTIN: I think seeing her like this, up close for the first time, has really driven home the reality of the situation. I mean, whether she’s falsely accused or not, this is a young girl, a teenage girl locked up in a foreign prison with women—all kinds of criminals, most of them older than her.

CLARA: Now, Anna says she was the one who was attacked, but the other girl in the incident, a Johanna Pearson, she says Anna is the one who started it. That Anna flew at her in a rage—well, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? We’ve actually got some photos released to us, showing Johanna’s injuries after the fight. Well, clearly, it looks like Anna got off lightly here.

MARTIN: Wow. I mean, that’s some serious damage. The wounds to her face, a broken nose—

CLARA: And the hospital records say Anna broke two of this other girl’s ribs.

MARTIN: I’ve got to say, this is . . . This changes a lot for me. If Anna can do this with her bare hands, then I bet I’m not the only one wondering, what would she be capable of with a knife in her hand?

CLARA: We’ll be right back, after this message.

WAITING

I lie out in the prison yard every afternoon leading up to the trial. It’s the only perk of isolation, I guess, that I’m alone in my tiny, fenced-off strip of land, far away from the rest of the inmates. I don’t have to watch my back for fights, or gossip, I can just sprawl flat on my back in the yellowed grass, watching the sky.

If I tilt my head just right, I don’t see the barbed-wire fencing or the top of the guards’ tower, just the expanse of blue sky overhead. Every ten minutes or so, a plane takes off, banking in a wide semicircle across the island before heading out—to America, or Europe, or some other place that’s anywhere but here. You’d think the ache would lessen watching them go. I must have seen hundreds of planes leave by now, day after day; but every time, I feel it fresh, the same sharp longing in my chest, to be on one of those flights, squeezed up against some noisy seatmate in the tiny row, spilling peanuts and watching bad movies on an eight-inch screen.

Going home.

A wolf-whistle cuts through my reverie, sharp. I sit up, turning to find somebody leaning up against the barbed-wire fence. I squint, confused, until the figure shifts out of the sun, and I make out his familiar blond hair and ice-blue eyes.

Niklas.

I freeze.

“How did you get in?” I finally scramble to my feet, slowly approaching him. He’s on the guard’s side of the wire, lounging and smug in loose surfer shorts and one of his preppy pastel polo shirts, the collar popped. I study him suspiciously, staying back from the wire. “You’re not allowed. Visiting hours finished this morning.”

“I pulled some strings.” Niklas’s eyes trail up and down my body, with its baggy prison jumpsuit now dusty from the dirt.

“Why?” I fold my arms across my chest, remembering sharply how unnerved I felt around him, like he was imagining me naked. Of all the guys in the bar that first night, Elise had to pick the creepiest of them all.

“I saw you on TV.” He smirks, casual with his hands in his pockets. “Nice show. I liked the part where you cried, very touching.” His tone is amused, almost mocking.