Tease by Amanda Maciel
July
“DID YOU EVER have a physical confrontation with Miss Putnam?”
“Did what?”
“Did you ever have a—”
“Oh. Yeah. Um, yeah, I guess there was the one time in the locker room.”
The lawyer writes this down, even though the tape recorder is on, has been on the whole time. Also, she already knows the answer to the question. Also, the law firm’s intern is taking notes, too. I shouldn’t notice how hot he is, but he’s the only good thing to look at in here. He’s also the only other person anywhere near my age—the lawyers are fortyish and the stenographer lady looks like she’s 105—plus he’s new, probably since it’s summer now and law school is out for break or whatever. Must be nice. Since the whole . . . thing happened, I missed a bunch of junior year, so now I’m in summer school.
And here.
“This was the incident of January the twenty-third?”
This lawyer is all cold and matter-of-fact and wasting everyone’s time. She’s the head of the firm or something, I don’t know. Usually I just meet with Natalie. Who isn’t much better, but at least she looks me in the face when we talk. Except today she’s also taking notes, and somehow barely paying attention at the same time. Maybe they’re all just writing their grocery lists or something.
Natalie suddenly looks up at me, raising her eyebrows. Like, Answer the question.
“Yeah. I guess so. Was that a Tuesday? You know, because we have gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I think it was a Tuesday.”
The no-eye-contact lawyer nods and then, of course, writes that down. Or she writes down arugula, toilet paper, orange juice, I don’t know. Jesus, this is boring.
Like everything else, this whole process is not at all like it is on TV. I mean, I’m wearing jean shorts right now. There’s no dramatic courtroom scene or anything—like, with the afternoon sunlight streaming through big windows while I cry and confess everything on the witness stand or whatever. Apparently you’re not even supposed to want to go court at all, though it’s gotta beat this, even if it’s not pretty or cinematic. We’re all sitting in a windowless room with a peeling fake-wood table (which I guess doesn’t matter, except I’ve been staring at it for three hours), and the lights are too bright and the AC is on so high I don’t even feel cold anymore, just numb.
I guess I’ve been numb for a while now.
But I didn’t kill anybody.
I sneak another glance at the intern. He’s black, with short hair and the smoothest skin ever. It’s very dark, and it looks nice against his shirt, which is a bright lilac color. It reminds me of one of the nail polishes I used to always pick for pedicures, back when going to the salon was no big deal. Before everything was in the newspaper every other day and people at the grocery store started calling me names. Even when I’m just picking up stupid chips and salsa for my little brothers. They’ve yelled at me in the aisles, said the meanest things.
I never really understood irony when Mrs. Thale tried to teach us about it in English, but I sure get it now. Now that I get bullied for being a bully. I haven’t tried explaining it to the people at the grocery store, though. Mom says that they’re morons and I should ignore them, and for once I agree with her.
“Tell us what happened that day.”
Great. Natalie has been making me go through everything all summer, but I still don’t like to. Hot Intern is looking at me now, all professional and stone-faced, but I bet if he saw me at the grocery store he’d yell too.
You worthless piece of trash. It should have been you and your friends.
“Um, okay.”
Everyone stops taking notes for a second, and my mouth dries right up. I look down at my feet, my favorite red flip-flops and the stupid silver polish on my toes, and remember how this used to happen in junior high. The year I became friends with Brielle Greggs, eighth grade, I was hopeless. We got paired up in speech and I was sure she’d hate me when she saw how jittery I got during presentations. I don’t like to be the center of attention.
But Brielle was—still is—fearless. She’d smirk at the whole class and start blabbing on and on about the death penalty or leash laws or whatever random topic we were supposed to give a speech on, and I’d stand there, her mute sidekick. Mr. Needy (really, that was his name) would say, “And Sara, what do you think?” all pointedly. I’d open my desert-dry mouth and nothing would come out, but Brielle would chirp, “She agrees with me, obviously. She did all the research.” And we’d get an A.
Anyway, now I’m back to dry-mouth-land. And Brielle isn’t here. She’s doing her own interviews, I guess, somewhere else. With her own lawyers. We’re not supposed to talk to each other. And we haven’t, not in more than two months.
So here I am, expected to tell the lawyers more bad stuff about Brielle. Because basically, that’s what this is all about. Like that stupid day in the locker room . . . that was really Brielle. Everything about what happened to Emma—it wasn’t me. I mean, actually, it wasn’t any of us. It was Emma. No one hung the rope for her. And even before that, it’s not like Emma was innocent. At all. She was the one who—
“Miss Wharton?”
I keep taking these long pauses, I guess. The AC should be keeping us all awake, but it’s been at least an hour since I finished the Diet Dr Pepper they gave me and I just feel zonked. I’m still turning the empty bottle over and over in my hands. The wrapper is all loose and saggy and I start to tug it down, like I’m taking off the bottle’s clothes. I want to curl up into a ball and sleep for a million years. I sleep a lot these days. It’s the easiest way to keep my mom off my case, and to keep from having to explain all of this to my brothers. Like there’s any way to explain it to anyone.