Tease(58)

But I think of my little brothers, and what I said to Tommy the other day. I think of the reporters that have started calling again. The reporters who will almost definitely be at the hearing, and the articles that will end up online alongside the “Poor Emma Putnam was so abused by her classmates she just couldn’t go on” articles. At least I’ll get to say something. At least something I say will be heard, maybe, and maybe even written down.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Good. I should read it first, you know.”

“Really?” I ask her. “Why?”

She lets out a little chuckle. “Because, Sara, I’m your lawyer. Remember?”

I sigh. “Fine.”

“Great. How’s the end of the week? You can just email it over. Now, I’m sorry to have dragged you in here, I keep thinking your mom will be coming too and we can get some things done . . . but it’s fine, I’ll be in touch with her.”

She turns back to her papers, glasses forgotten as usual, sitting on the table beside her. I hesitate for a second before I realize this means we’re done. Basically I came all this way to accidentally run into Brielle and her parents. And get a lecture about my statement.

Whatever. I guess I wasn’t doing anything today, anyway.

“Here, why don’t you try writing something down now? We can talk about what comes up.”

“It’s fine, I’ll just do it at home.”

“No, no trouble, I have a whole stack of notebooks. . . . Ah ha! Here you go. Use this.”

Teresa hands me a legal pad and a pen. She smiles but I just stare at her for a second, wishing this wasn’t happening. I know I have to do this, but now? Here?

The notepad sits sideways on my knees and the pen is still capped, in my left hand. I feel frozen like this, like I’m a doll someone wants to pretend is doing her homework.

“Now. What is it you think you’d like to say?” Teresa asks.

I look at her.

“You don’t have anything to say?”

“Besides that I wish Emma hadn’t killed herself?”

“Good! That’s an excellent place to start.” Teresa smiles and sweeps her hands toward me and the notepad, as if she can bring me to life, set this whole story in motion.

“But, I mean—no one wants someone to kill themselves. It’s not, like, some big revelation.”

Teresa tilts her head to the side. She’s wearing a sort of normal peasant-y blouse today, but it’s in this intense shade of orange. I feel like I’m squinting back at her.

“Do you think Emma’s parents feel that you wanted her to commit suicide?”

I pause. My mouth opens, then shuts again, without any words getting out.

Usually Teresa would just wait me out, but today she leans forward and adds, “I can see that it might look that way to you. Just as it might seem obvious that you did not intend for Emma to do such a thing. This letter is your chance to clarify all these feelings, Sara.”

I look down at the pen in my hand and blink. The orange of Teresa’s shirt stays behind my eyelids, making me tear up.

“You can write a dozen drafts of this, a hundred—you can tell them how angry you are, how hurt by what Emma has done.”

I let the pen drop to my lap, resting on the notepad. “No, I can’t,” I say. My voice is soft but bitter.

“Of course you can. Why can’t you?”

“That’s not—that’s not the point, is it? That’ll make the judge hate me. And everyone else. I mean, they already hate me, I guess, but I’m supposed to . . . Like, Natalie says this will maybe make sentencing easier and everything . . .” I trail off, suddenly unsure what I’d been meaning to say when I started.

“Well, I think everyone agrees that a suicide is a tragic thing,” Teresa says.

“Yeah, but for them,” I say, a wave of anger bringing my voice back up. “No one cares about me—or Brielle or the guys.”

“Don’t they?”

Carmichael’s face pops into my mind, then—his messy hair and his black T-shirt, leaning over towards me in his dad’s truck. And his words—what was it he said? That I could finally say how sorry I am?

“I just don’t see why I’m the one apologizing!” I blurt. “I’m not the one who ruined everything! Emma did that, and she did it all by herself. She killed herself!”

Teresa’s gaze doesn’t shift. She looks at me steadily, like I’m a fixed point on the horizon. I can’t look back at her for more than a second before I need to look away again, back at the blank paper on my lap. There’s a long moment of silence.

“We all make mistakes, though, right?”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I just shrug.

“Believe me, we’ve all done things we wish we could undo. If there’s anything you wish could be undone”—she waves a hand at the paper and pen again—“this is a very good opportunity to say so. Don’t add silence to your list of regrets.”

I look down and see my hands uncapping the pen, turning the notepad right-side up on my knees. My mouth is dry, my stomach is in knots, my life is over, my heart is broken.

I start to write.

There’s about thirty seconds, sometimes a little more, every morning, when I forget. Or I don’t remember yet. I’m just a little bit awake and my brain is just listening, I guess—wondering if it’s time to get up, wondering if it’s Saturday yet.