“DO I have to be in the courtroom the whole time?”
My mother turned to me at the next red light, her expression softer than I expected. “Not if you don’t want to be, sweetie. Your father can stay home with you, and I can tell you what happened when I get home.”
I didn’t like her volunteering my father like that, as if he had no say. “He can watch too if he wants. I don’t need a babysitter.” I sounded petulant but didn’t care. “I just can’t sit through another day of that. Another day, a week, however long the trial lasts.” I rubbed anxiously at the wrinkles forming on my forehead.
“It won’t be that long, sweetie,” my mother said. Two sweeties in one conversation, an unusual occurrence. She held my gaze in the rearview mirror as she pulled onto the highway. “It’s an open-and-shut case with your testimony. I see why they got you out of the way first. That’s all the jury will be thinking about during the trial, is the conviction in your voice when you said that he killed them. They’ll remember that, and nothing the defense can say will sway them now.”
“I’m not sure I want to be there either,” my dad admitted, turning around in his seat to look at me. “It’s awful. I don’t know how lawyers stand it… all the lying and the duplicity, the distrust and animosity. It would give me a heart attack inside of a week.”
“That’s because your heart’s so good, Dad,” I said, rubbing the top of his head fondly. It was the only part of him I could reach. His thick black hair was thinning at the back now, the gift of middle-age. “You’re too nice for this world.”
My mother raised her eyebrows in the rearview mirror at me meaningfully, but I chose to ignore the sinister arches. I put my earbuds in and fiddled with my phone as if turning on music, though really I just wanted some peace and quiet for a while. I leaned my head against the cool glass of the window and watched the scenery pass by; it was the same view as always, the same calm of the long drive. Neither of my parents spoke after I had apparently tuned out.
That night, with Brandon on the phone, I relayed the events of the trial as best as I could from memory. Things felt confused in my head, one angry image merging into another. Brandon would be in town again by tomorrow, having spent some time after his exams at his maternal grandmother’s house in Pittsburgh. I wanted to see him more than anything.
“I can’t wait to be home again,” he sighed. A dog was barking on his end, an incessant yapping from something small and fluffy, by the sound of it. “I miss sleep. Phoebe is always barking. That dog and my gran’s sad eyes are driving me crazy. She keeps baking pies to make me feel better.”
“That’s sweet, you know,” I said, lying back on my bed and closing my eyes. “That she cares so much. She just wants you to be happy.”
The barking was getting on my nerves after five minutes on the line. I couldn’t imagine how Brandon felt if it was a common sound where he was.
“I know she does. But I’m being smothered. I miss school already, I miss my friends there. I was finally someone, you know? Someone other than Jessa’s boyfriend. “There goes the dead girl’s boyfriend.” He pitched his voice up, mimicking a gossipy girl. “Isn’t it so, so sad?”
“Don’t I know that feeling,” I sighed. “I still want you to be here. Mostly so you can go to the trial, so I won’t have to. I can’t stand it, Brandon.”
“What? Why?” Brandon sounded angry. “Don’t you want him to go to prison for what he did? I wish he could get the death penalty for it. I’d vote for that.”
“Of course I want him to go to prison,” I said quietly. Suddenly there were tears on the edge of my voice, and I wasn’t quite sure how they’d gotten there. “But having to see him there, sitting in a suit and tie like he deserves those things? With his mom behind him, petting his hair when he killed her daughter? It makes me sick.” I turned on my side and pulled my knees up to my chest. “And the cross-examination. It was awful, Brandon. You can’t even imagine. That woman treated me like I was the one on trial. It was physically painful to watch her go at the other witnesses afterward. She goes for the throat. It’s like a National Geographic special.”
“You make the courtroom sound like the animal kingdom,” Brandon laughed. “I wish I could have seen you testify, from the way you tell it. It sounds like you showed her up pretty good when you answered that last question.”
“I don’t know, Brandon. It felt so good at the time to make that spiteful little speech, but what if the jury sees how spiteful it was? I was supposed to look sweet and innocent. I put barrettes in my hair with little bows on them, for God’s sake. I wore a skirt and blouse. How often do you see me do that stuff?”
“Not since the funeral,” Brandon admitted. “But that prom dress of yours was pretty spectacular, if I remember correctly. It was purple, right?”
A lump formed in my throat. “Yeah. They took it as evidence, though. Not that anyone ever wears their prom dress again, but I liked it a lot. Kate helped me pick it out. She said it made my skin look amazing.” I laughed hollowly, eyes still closed. “Whatever that means.”
“You all looked so beautiful that night,” Brandon said, and it didn’t help prevent the tears welling under my closed lids. “I was the only one who got to dance with all four of you. I felt so blessed, you know? To have gotten that beautiful night with Jessa. We danced like we’d never get another chance. And then we didn’t.”
“She was talking about weddings that night,” I confessed, remembering her joke to Kate about her finding a man to settle down with. “And about what you were keeping from her in your pocket.” I hadn’t told him this when he’d shown me the small box that contained an engagement ring, a ring I never saw, because it would have been too painful. “I think she had a hunch.”
“She would have said yes,” Brandon said determinedly. “And we would have danced again at our wedding like that, like nobody was watching.” He laughed. “But not until we’d graduated college. I made a promise to her father.”
We waited awhile in silence. I wiped up my tears and sat up on my bed, holding the phone to my ear in case he said anything more. Sometimes we just did this, had “quiet calls,” no one speaking, barely breathing, but knowing the other was there.
“I’m going to have to see him at the trial tomorrow,” Brandon said after a while. I had changed into my pajamas while waiting for him to say something, alternating which hand was on the phone so it never left my ear. “Won’t I?”
“He’ll be there. He was there today with Mrs. Fuentes, but I didn’t talk to them,” I admitted. “Mr. O’Brien was there too. Jake’s parents. Mine.” I pulled off a sock without any grace, nearly toppling over. When I chucked it at my laundry basket, I didn’t make the shot. It ended up falling behind it, where there was a collection of dirty sock balls developing. “One of the reasons I don’t want to go tomorrow.”
“Will you go anyway?” Brandon asked. “Since I probably won’t be home in time to go myself? You’re my eyes and ears of the trial, Corey. I need you.” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose between my thumb and my index finger. My head was pounding.
“Yeah. Of course I will. They say I have a choice but I don’t, really. I’m going to be there every day, sitting in the audience, until that jury comes back with a decision. And it better be a ‘Guilty’ one. It has to be.”
“If it isn’t?” Brandon’s voice was small, like a child’s voice, tentative and nervous. “What do we do if they let him out?”
“Easy,” I said. “We kill him ourselves.”