Cassandra

Parole

After a month at school I had a first meeting with my parole officer. I didn't really wait forward to that. Actually I was quite nervous, when I walked to the police station. I kept repeating myself, that I hadn't done anything wrong, so there was no reason for me to be nervous. Well I kind of did punch Seth and stole wallets, that I gave back, but that was already a month ago and nobody found out or cared about it.

I went to the front desk at the police station, where a woman was sitting and doing something in her computer.

"Hallo, my name is Cassandra Madson. I was supposed to come here today," I said, my voice sounding a lot weaker, than I wanted it to.

"Hey, Cassandra, right on time," said a man walking towards me. He seemed super cheerful for a forty something man. He was in a good shape though. The woman at the desk didn't even raise her head.

"Are you my parole officer?" I asked with suspicion.

"I sure am. My name is Nicholas Thompson, but you can just call me Nick."

"You can call me Cassy." Nobody really called me Cassandra, except my parents.

"Alright then. You ready to have a little chat with me?" he asked, still smiling, which kind of freaked me out.

"As ready as I'll ever be, I guess," I said, sounding quite nervous and put on a fake smile.

I fallowed him to his office. There were two tables, but one was empty at the moment.

"Have a seat," he said pointing at a chair opposite to his desk.

I did like he asked. It might have been only a few seconds before he started talking again, but to me it felt like forever. I didn't really know what to say or do, so I just sat there like a statue.

"Everything okay?" he asked, now looking more worried.

"Yeah, fine, just a bit nervous."

"Is there any reason, why you should be nervous?"

"No... I don't think so."

"Then don't be. How about we just get to know each other today and then I'll ask you some questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"You want to get right to that part? I can assure you, there is no reason for you to be scared or nervous." Now that he was less smiling and looking more serious, I actually started to trust him a bit more.

"Okay. Tell me something about yourself then?" I asked him, since we were supposed to get to know each other and he probably knew a lot more about me, than I knew about him.

"Let's see. I have been working here for about twenty years now. I'm married. I have two daughters 17 and 14. I don't like donuts. Your turn."

"I don't work. I'm not married. I don't have children. I don't like homework." I answered quickly.

"Well... that was... refreshing..." Pretty sure, that he hadn't expected an answer like that. "How about we get to the questions then? You seem like you want to get out of here as fast as possible."

"Doesn't everyone?"

"Not always. It is hard for some to get their new life on track, so they appreciate if they can talk to someone about it."

"That's not me."

"So I'm guessing you are doing alright?"

"I guess you could say that."

"Okay then." He took out a pen and a notepad, that seemed to have questions written on it.

"We covered the first question already." He pulled a line across the question. "You are studying at the university, right?"

"Yes."

"What are you studying?"

"Chemistry."

"Why such an interesting choice?"

"I didn't want to study anything abstract. I wanted to be able to do something with my own hands and actually see the results."

"So is it what you expected?"

"Well I haven't exactly gone to school long enough yet to make any conclusions, but I am quite happy with my choice."

"Are you having any difficulties with your studies?"

"Nope, I'm actually doing pretty good. One of my professors even chose me to work in his lab." Saying that still felt good. Also I thought that bragging about how well I'm doing, will make him less suspicious of me, so that I wouldn't have to see him any time soon again.

"Okay, what about friends? Have you found any?"

"I wouldn't exactly call them friends, but there are people I get along with." I still preferred to keep to myself.

"I see. You live in a dorm, right? How is that working out for you? Any midnight parties?"

"I don't think anybody throws any parties at dorms anymore, they usually go to a nightclub. If someone throws a party, then everybody else, who has to study, would just call the police. But it's working out for me. I have a pretty cool roommate."

"Does she know about your life before?"

"No." I said quickly, but actually I still wasn't quite sure.

"Wow, we have covered all these questions really fast. Last one then. Is there anything you need? Do you have enough money? Are you eating alright? Getting enough sleep?"

"Do you actually ask everybody these questions?" I asked with surprise. Why would he care about my eating habits or my subject choices?

"Everybody isn't you. The people I usually deal with are adults, who don't exactly know what they are doing. They are having a hard time getting their life together, moving on from their criminal past, finding a job. You on the other hand seem a lot more mature. You seem to have everything figured out, everything working for you. So I'm asking those questions to make sure, that you are not just pretending like everything is alright, when it actually isn't. I am here to help you out, so if you need anything, contact me, okay." He gave me his card, that had his number on. I was surprised, that he was chosen to be my parole officer, there definitely had to be at least one, who dealt with young adults on teenagers. Guess, he had too much work on his hands already, so they gave me the one, that only knows old people.

"I'm not making anything up. I really am doing fine. I have everything I need. Getting a job could probably be a challenge, but I want to finish school first." If a work place finds out about me, then they probably wouldn't want to hire me, but I wasn't going to think about it yet.

"That's good to hear. How about I see you again in a month from now?"

"Sure... works for me." Even though this had worked out just fine, I didn't really want to have chats like this with him every month.

*

"How was your day?" asked Aurora once I got back to the dorm.

"Fine, why do you ask?" She usually didn't ask me that, but she talked about her day all the time. I didn't even have to ask.

"You just seemed really stressed out in the morning, so I thought you had a really difficult test today or something."

"Well I was a bit worried about this one thing, but it turned out fine, so I'm feeling much better now."

"That's good to hear." At least she didn't start questioning me about that "one thing".