“I JUST say it?” I asked again, picking at my fingernails. I’d bitten them all down to the quick, and a hangnail on my right thumb bled on and off. “Just like that?”
“It’s the truth,” Haywood said, glancing at my mother. She sat at my elbow, a slip of a woman in a smart pantsuit. “You just need to tell the truth. I’m going to ask if you’ve seen much of him, and you tell me that you hadn’t, until he killed your friends.”
Every time he said it, a jolt ran through my body, a tiny shock of electricity. It had been nearly ten months since the murders, but it still felt like a dream. It was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. It was my life.
Haywood cleared his throat. “Do you recognize the defendant?” he asked, gesturing to the bookcase to his right. In our imaginary courtroom, that’s where Dustin would be sitting. I obediently looked in that direction.
“Yes, I do.”
“Who is he?”
“Dustin Adams, Kate Barrett’s brother.” I froze again. “Half brother, shit, sorry.” I anxiously scratched at my neck with my ragged fingernails, no doubt leaving angry red welts on my skin.
“No, say whatever feels natural. You’re allowed to correct yourself.”
“He’s Kate’s brother. Her half brother, technically, but they never made the distinction.”
Haywood nodded, making a note in his dossier. “Good, that’s good.” He looked at me again, assuming his courtroom posture and voice. “And how well do you know the defendant? Did you see him often?”
“I don’t know him…,” I started, then stopped. “That makes it sound like I lied about recognizing him.”
My mom touched my arm encouragingly. “You do know him, honey. You weren’t close, but you do know him.” I pulled my arm away from her hand instinctively. We hadn’t been getting along lately.
“I don’t know him… well.” I looked to Haywood, and he nodded. “He was around when we were younger, but he left for college when Kate was eleven. He came home during breaks, but I never really saw him much.” I paused again and looked at Haywood carefully. “Until the night he killed my friends.”
Haywood laughed, a thin and breathless sound. “You don’t have to lower your voice every time you say it.” I frowned at him. His laugh left me uneasy. He waved his hand between us, as though gesturing to the awkward thickness of the air. “Sorry, Corey, sorry. I shouldn’t’ve laughed. I’d tell you to lighten up, but I know you can’t.”
“Not for this,” I said.
“Not for this,” he agreed, rearranging his papers. “We’ve been doing this nearly an hour. Should we take a break or keep going?”
I shook my head. “I’m meeting a friend for a group study,” I told him warily. “Exams are starting really soon. I don’t want the trial to affect my grades.” My mother patted me on the arm again, a pleased little smile turning up the corners of her mouth. She was glad I’d met some new people in college, made friends. She thought it made it easier, but it didn’t, really. I still felt their absence like a physical hole, sometimes, or worse, like a presence just next to me, never quite going away.
“You’re going to be great up there, kiddo,” Haywood said, and I nodded humbly, still feeling quite strange about the whole thing, the “kiddo”s and the “sport”s and the pats on the head when he walked by.
In the car my mom was silent. She clearly wanted to say something, but every time she parted her lips, she pursed and then closed them again, pinching them together in a sticky lipstick pout. I turned away and looked out the window for most of the drive from Haywood’s office to the university. Traffic was bad for three o’clock, and it took us nearly half an hour to cross town.
I shot Abby a quick text message letting her know I would be late. Had an appointment, stuck in traffic. On my way, I typed out neatly, refusing to use abbreviations unless I was in a desperate rush. The car jerked to a stop as I sent it, nearly touching the bumper of the Prius in front of us.
“Learn how to drive,” my mother said under her breath, slamming her hand down on the steering wheel in frustration. “Damn teenagers.” I didn’t point out that she had a teenager in her car. One who was a fairly competent driver, though I still only had my learner’s permit.
When she pulled into the designated drop-off loop in front of the school library, my mom put her hand out to prevent me from undoing my seat belt. I looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“I’m late meeting my friend,” I said.
“She can wait a minute longer.” Anxiously, my mom jerked her hand away from me and placed it on the steering wheel, wrapping all her fingers around it tightly. “Corey, I have to tell you some—”
“I really don’t have time right now,” I said, undoing my seat belt before she had time to stop me again. I slipped my phone in my pocket and climbed out of the car. Leaning back in I added, “Tell me over dinner!” and then slammed the door in her face. It felt incredibly satisfying.
I practically jogged to the study rooms on the second floor of the library, taking deep breaths all the while to calm myself. I knew exactly what she wanted to tell me, and I wasn’t going to let her. I didn’t want her to say the words. I didn’t want her to admit it. I didn’t want to hear it, to have it confirmed.
My mother was sleeping with Mr. Haywood. She was going to leave my father.
Life as I knew it was circling the drain, had been since last summer, and I wasn’t any more ready to let go of my parents’ marriage than I had been to attend the triple funeral of the three girls who had sworn to be my Best Friends Forever in the third grade. Not Best Friends for Life, Best Friends Forever. Not even ’til death do us part, though apparently that vow was meaningless too, at least for my mother.
I walked into our usual study room, empty but for Abby slouched in the back corner, her books spread haphazardly around the table in front of her as she dawdled on her smartphone. She looked up when I entered, her customary smirk falling when she saw me.
“You look awful,” she said, frowning at me as I dropped my backpack onto the table and began riffling for my physics notebook. “No, really.” She reached out and touched my arm. “Are you okay? Did the doctor tell you something awful?”
“Nothing like that,” I said, tumbling gracelessly into the chair beside her and flipping open my notebook. “It wasn’t that kind of appointment. Lawyer stuff.”
She nodded thoughtfully and dropped the subject. I was grateful. Abby was one of the few people here who knew who I was and what I’d seen. She hadn’t blabbed about it to anyone yet. I could tell she had questions, but she kept them to herself. One day, maybe I’d tell her about it. The trial, the murders, the friends I’d seen lying in pools of their own blood. I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, to go over every gory detail—not on the stand, and not off it. But I’d have to be ready soon. I didn’t have any choice.