According to some, Jessica saw Alan Bates as her golden ticket, a gateway—or free pass—into a better way of life. After all, Jessica hadn’t grown up with all the benefits of a normal two-parent household. For Alan, he didn’t know it yet, but there was no turning back once Jessica set her claws into him. “No” wasn’t an answer Jessica Callis accepted. And regardless of what friends said, or what Jessica herself later claimed, her behavior became the best indicator as to where her life was heading.

Naomi was out of school by the time Jessica became pregnant with Alan’s child. Naomi was working, getting ready to attend college. Jessica called, however, and brought Naomi up to speed about what was going on in her life.

“I met this guy,” Jessica explained one night, referring to Alan. “He’s something.” Jessica laughed.

“What is it?” Naomi wanted to know. What was so darn funny about meeting a boy?

“We’re sneaking around . . . messing around in my car.” Jessica thought it was funny that she and Alan were having sex at will. It was as though she had bagged herself a catch and used sex to keep him coming back.

It didn’t take a lot of work on Alan’s part to get Jessica to put out. She had no trouble attracting a flock. When she met him, she was still seeing and sleeping with another boy, several friends said. And yet, as soon as she realized Alan could give her something more, maybe something she wanted that the other boy couldn’t, she made Alan her focus.

The Bates family took most of their summer vacations down on the Gulf Coast. They stayed on the beach at a condo they rented from a friend. During the summer before Alan’s final year of high school started, weeks after Alan and Jessica had met, Alan explained to Jessica that he wouldn’t be around for a while. He and the family were going away on vacation. He told her they went down to the coast every year. Alan said he enjoyed it. The vacation was the perfect place to get his mind ready for the upcoming school year.

Alan told Jessica not to worry. They could hook up when he returned. He liked her. He wanted to continue the friendship. He ended the conversation by letting her know the beach his family was heading to, but he never gave Jessica the exact address. They said their good-byes, and agreed to meet up when Alan returned.

Heading south, Alan felt good about this new relationship. It was the beginning of a typical high-school romance. Jessica showered him with attention and affection, sleeping with him willingly, and Alan was thrilled by it all. Most kids his age would be. He met a good-looking girl who put out.

Alan’s older brother, Robert, was off at college. But Kevin, Alan’s little brother, went to the Gulf Coast with the family. One morning Alan and Kevin stood on the condo balcony. No one else was awake. Two brothers just enjoying the early morning, looking out at the span of the wondrous water in front of them. They talked as two brothers might. Kevin looked up to his big brother Alan, six years older. He saw in Alan a role model on which to mold his future.

Standing, scanning the beach, Alan did a double take. He stopped and stared at two people sitting on the sand out in front of the condo building. It was early. Too early for beachgoers. The shore was pretty much deserted at this time of the day. These two looked like they had slept on the beach.

Alan took a closer look. No way. Couldn’t be.

“That’s Jessica,” he said, surprised by his own words.

It certainly was Jessica. She was with a friend.

“No way . . . you’ve got to be kidding me,” Alan said aloud, more or less talking to himself. “Why is she here?” Birmingham to the coast was a 260-mile trip, almost four hours of driving. One way.

When they arrived, Jessica and her friend traveled up and down the coastline in the town Jessica knew Alan was staying in until she found the Bates family van. It was parked, sitting in a driveway with scores of other vehicles. After locating the vehicle, Jessica and her friend went out on the beach and stayed the night, knowing that Alan and his family were in one of the condos and would ultimately end up on the beach that day.

Alan had no idea Jessica was coming. She never said a word about it. In fact, they hadn’t even been officially dating. They were “seeing” each other. Alan had slept with her a few times. That was the extent of the relationship.

Alan and Kevin ran down to the beach. Greeted Jessica and her friend.

“Hey,” Alan said.

“Hey, yourself,” said Jessica.

Alan invited them to lunch.

“He was a teenager. . . . He was flattered,” Kevin Bates later recalled. “They didn’t stay with us or anything like that. She just came down for that day.”

An eight-hour drive to see Alan for a few hours.

Alan didn’t think anything of it. He was a little puffy-chested at the notion a girl had gone to so much trouble to visit him. Here she was, all the way down at the Gulf Coast from the center of Alabama—a teenager, driving the entire way, scouting out the family van, just to see a guy she had just met.

Alan felt a pang of intimacy. Maybe even love. He was special. At least in Jessica’s eyes.

“It was shocking to him more than anything that she could just . . . that she had this freedom (as a teenager) to just do whatever she wanted,” Kevin said later.

Had Jessica’s parents allowed her to travel all that way? She was sixteen. Out and about, running around the South.

Chasing a boy.

When Alan and his family returned from vacation, school was just about ready to begin. Alan and Jessica had some fun. The summer was filled with memories, but Alan wanted to refocus his attention on school. His future. College.

“They were on the verge of breaking up,” one friend remembered later. “They weren’t really dating at this time.”

But Jessica wasn’t going to let Alan get away. Not a chance. He was too good a catch.

It was here that Jessica and Alan’s relationship took flight—that is, after Jessica went to Alan with the news of being pregnant. They were on the brink of a breakup, and Jessica just happened to get pregnant. Was it even Alan’s child?

Soon after, Alan became more and more withdrawn from his family. He had always been a child—like his brothers—who felt comfortable going to his mother and father with the adolescent problems beleaguering most teens. They were a close-knit family. Philip Bates liked to tell his kids that any problem could be worked out: “Just come to us with it.”

Be not afraid.

“We’ll help you through anything.”

As the fall came and school commenced, Philip noticed that the space between Alan and his family grew. Alan was clearly distracted. Something weighed heavily on the boy’s mind. What’s bothering him? Philip and Joan Bates, and even eleven-year-old Kevin, often wondered. They’d watch Alan walk about the house, his head drooped, shoulders slumped. They could tell his mind was buzzing with an obvious problem he was trying to solve alone. Alan had never been like this.

Joan encouraged Philip to talk to his son. Ask him what was going on.

But Alan said nothing. He was fine. He could work it out on his own.

The Bateses respected their son. What else could they do? Trust was an important family value in the Bates household. Alan would speak up when he felt comfortable. No need to push the boy.

“Something was upsetting him,” Kevin Bates recalled, “and [my parents] kept trying to talk to him about it. But didn’t get far.”

On the other end of all this, Alan was likely feeling pressure from Jessica. There was no way she was going to abort this child, she had told several of her friends. Alan was going to have to stand up, be a man and take responsibility.

Alan needed his own time to process what it was that was consuming any serenity and confidence the kid had built up during his preceding years. Alan was a senior, heading into the year he had looked forward to since he was a freshman. It wasn’t nerves about graduation and college and beginning life as an adult. Although that all probably added to Alan’s sudden change. But there was more. Kevin, Philip and Joan were sure of it. Alan hadn’t even put in his nomination for class president. He was backing off his music. All of this was so unlike him.