As predicted, Janelle lost her case against her probation officer. The judge insisted he was only doing his job and that it was up to each individual probation officer to determine what they deemed to be a reasonable number of home visits and that there was no right or wrong amount.
Janelle, catching the smirk on Boris’s face as she turned to leave the courtroom snarled at him and muttered, “Yeah, really funny.”
“Be prepared for him to come around even more now,” said her husband on the way down the elevator.
“I still don't regret at least trying to speak up for myself and just because he may come around more doesn't mean I have to answer the door every time he knocks.”
“I'm just telling you.
“Yeah, I know. You're always just telling me.”
Janelle would have been able to get on with her life in just a few months if she hadn’t wasted time getting into trouble again.
A week after her probation ended, she and Steven were pulling into their driveway when they discovered a handful of reporters waiting by their place.
“What is going on?” asked Janelle.
“I don't know,” Steven said with a shrug.
“Who are these people?”
They got out of the car and just as Steven was heading for the door, a woman called out a question to Janelle that she didn’t catch.
“What?” she called loudly.
“Are you Janelle Stone?”
Janelle hesitated, suspicion crossing her expression. “Why?”
Just then, the woman whipped out a microphone and placed it in front of her while a cameraman jumped into view next to her. “We just had some questions about the baby you gave up.”
Janelle's eyes widened. “Have you really come to my home uninvited to ask me personal questions that are none of your business?”
Steven listened from just inside the door, grateful to have escaped the media's cameras. He heard Janelle demand them to get the cameras out of her face.
“Get off my fucking property!” he heard her shout next.
“We have the right to be here.”
“No, you don't have a right to be. You're trespassing on private property and I'm telling you to get the fuck off of it now and out of my business.”
“Ms. Stone, why isn’t your husband at your side?”
Steven heard a series of scuffles and shouts. He then dashed through the kitchen and over to the living room window. He parted the blinds and found Janelle had trashed the equipment of three or four reporters, and with pushes, shoves, and threats, she was herding them into their vehicles.
In his typical fashion, Steven was quick to disagree with his wife's actions, insisting she could have ignored them since it's not like they were knocking on the door, ringing the doorbell, or banging on the windows.
“No, but they were trespassing so I fail to see what I did wrong.”
Steven scoffed and said, “Come on, you must have trashed over $1,000 of video equipment out there.”
Janelle made a sound that was a cross between a snort and a chuckle as a hint of amusement crossed her features at the thought of this but only for a few seconds. “Well, they should have thought about that before they trespassed and refused to leave when I asked them to. I mean come on. You go on someone else's property uninvited like that and you deserve to lose whatever you may lose in the process.”
Despite Janelle's firm beliefs and opinions regarding her guilt, she soon received a subpoena in the mail for aggravated assault which she promptly ignored along with the knocks on the door by the police that came shortly after the incident. Steven urged Janelle to open the door for fear of them kicking it in but Janelle refused to do so saying she would kick them in if they dared try it.
“This is ridiculous,” she said to Steven as she glanced over the subpoena. “I mean, surely even you gotta agree that it's absolutely insane that they have the nerve to charge me with assault when they're the ones that came onto our property.”
“They're always going to be on you because of things you've done in the past.”
“Well, I'm not going to let them get the better of me.”
“I'm just saying.”
“Yeah, I know. You always love to be just saying and just telling me, not to mention running like a coward too. Instead of diving into the house and leaving me to fend off the lions on my own, you should have been by my side defending me and fighting them off with me.”
Janelle stormed into her bedroom and slammed the door behind her and then she did just what she said she was going to do and got on with her life.
That was until performance night a month later.
Until then, Janelle logged onto a website she had discovered where people share their personal journals depicting their day-to-day lives as well as things they might have experienced in the past. Some even shared stories and poems.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg0P4hi4tul
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Steven hated the fact that she was really getting into this sort of thing because he was always worried she might say the wrong thing. Not just something hateful, untrue, or offensive but that could get him in trouble. The bills were still in his name. But as always, Janelle did what she wanted to do. This included skipping court, of course.
One night, she felt well enough to perform at the local arena. This would be her last performance and then after a bit of a wait, she would begin receiving Disability benefits because the gunshot wound she had suffered to her back limited her movements and often caused significant pain. She also suffered from other health issues which she always claimed was the real reason she gave up her child. Most would agree, however, that it wasn’t those health issues that motivated her to give the child up. Janelle missed her freedom and having a quieter house. To put it bluntly, Janelle simply got sick of her child and the responsibilities that came with it.
Unbeknownst to Janelle, Steven would sometimes checked out some of the sites his wife visited, including the journal site. He was mostly concerned with what information she was sharing. She did share some personal things and eventually, she stopped allowing others to comment on her posts because she was getting an awful lot of backlash for it, not surprisingly. She was criticized for giving up her child.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡN4URiRl6g4
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“How could you give up on your own flesh and blood?” one reader asked her.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYD0ObDEDbd
8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡa82AkNJyQ4
“I didn't give up on him. I gave him a better life,” Janelle answered. “Now fuck off before I block you, you judgmental bitch!”
Steven sighed with frustration. It was this back-and-forth trolling that he was worried about. some people really never did grow up.
One thing he found amusing was the lack of positive reviews on the corny lesbian love story she’d written.
“Honey, no one's romance is that perfect. There is no perfect love. If you worked on your grammar and sentence structure and made your stories a little more realistic, I think you would do okay for yourself among us amateur writers.”
“I agree, someone else wrote. It's too fairytale-like. Don't give up, though!”
On the night of what Janelle considered her farewell performance - as if anyone would really miss her - she was allowed five minutes of stage time for a dance she prepared that didn't include any intricate moves in its routine due to her health and past injuries.
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The audience chuckled as it usually did when she first emerged into view, thinking she was some kind of joke. Janelle, of course, was quick to play right into it and make as if she was being goofy and therefore you should laugh and not because one didn't usually go to the circus to see someone so obese and old-looking dancing about as gracefully as she somehow managed to.
Midway through her routine, she thought the joke was on her when three guys dressed in dark colors approached her.
Or so she at least pretended.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPriMY6uh2f
8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcg0WClKGRL
The guys were actually detectives who had come to arrest her for failing to appear in court after attacking the reporters.
Between the music playing, the audience’s raucous laughter, and the distance between the detectives and Janelle, no one was able to overhear what was going on. The only things that were apparent were Janelle shouting at them to get off the stage and the guys being very determined not to listen.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFJDCEkrKY2
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When one went to reach for her, she pulled away, high-pitched ponytail bouncing behind her. Another guy was seen trying to grab her and she yanked herself out of his grip as well. The four of them began yelling and one of them eventually took a swing at her. Janelle fought back, taking a swing of her own and breaking the guy's nose. That was when the other two began pummeling the crap out of her.
The horrified audience gasped in shock at the sight of her bloodied face once they pulled her to her feet and cuffed her. Bloody, bruised, and dazed, the three of them practically dragged her out of the arena.
Janelle later claimed she hadn’t known they were detectives. She swore they never introduced themselves as detectives and never saw any badges or weapons. For all she knew, she later told investigators, they were connected to the family of the pregnant woman she’d “won” her court case against if not the reporters.
She swore the officers would pay for breaking her nose and punching two of her teeth out. Meanwhile, she was forced to go to court and stand trial. It would be months before Janelle would see her freedom again.
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