Tease(82)

“Okay, guys,” she says to my brothers. “Maggie’s waiting for you outside. She’ll pick you up, too.”

“I thought I was dropping them off?” I say, startled. I’d really been looking forward to the twenty minutes of alone time between Tommy’s school and the courthouse.

“No, I asked M—”

Dad cuts Mom’s explanation off with, “There’s no way you’re showing up there by yourself. How would that look? We’re going together.”

I look back at Mom and she nods.

Together. Why couldn’t that make me feel supported? The way Dad says it, it sounds like punishment.

And it is. The drive feels like a lifetime. I sit in the back of my dad’s rental car, holding my statement. It’s folded in half, pressed between my sweaty hands. None of us speak. There’s traffic, but not enough to actually slow us down. So while I feel trapped in the car for eternity, we also get to the court building way too fast.

There are news vans everywhere, dozens of them. Dad has to slow to a crawl, waiting for the cop who’s directing traffic to guide the cars ahead of us into the parking lot. A reporter from the channel we always watch jogs past our car. For a split second I think, Oh!, like I’ve just seen a celebrity. Then I remember.

God, I hate those split seconds. I wish I could stop forgetting, even for a moment. Being scared and sad and tired all the time sucks, but it’s so much harder when I think, even for the blink of an eye, that things are normal.

Even for the brief moment on Saturday night, when Carmichael drove me home and pressed his lips so quickly, so gently, to mine. I close my eyes and remember that, hold on to it. We talked on Sunday and I saw him at school yesterday, of course, and we both acted like nothing happened. But in the dark of his dad’s truck, at the end of such a nice but long night, that instant was perfect. It was relief.

The car jerks forward and I open my eyes again. There’s a spot right next to the building and Dad pulls in, yanking the gearshift over to park. We all sit there for one more quiet moment, and then, like we’ve choreographed it, my parents and I each open our doors and let the flood of noise hit us.

I hurry around the car and they stand on either side of me, and we walk, trying not to run, past the screaming reporters and the blinding lights. I’m that girl now. I’m that girl walking into a courtroom, not looking at the cameras. Suddenly Natalie is there, but I don’t even know how I see her, because I keep my eyes down, on the sidewalk. Foot foot foot foot. Don’t trip.

The doors are held open by security guards and we rush in, the relative silence of the building swallowing us whole. I suck air into my lungs, realizing I’ve been holding my breath, but I don’t stop. Natalie hasn’t stopped, she’s still leading us ahead, so we all trot down a hallway, and then another, and then finally there’s a bench, and she stops, turning back to us.

“Okay!” she says brightly. “That was the hard part.” She gives us all a warm smile, but I guess we don’t look like we believe her, because she adds, “Really. Everything is going to be fine from here on out. We’ll have to see them again when it’s all over, of course, but you don’t have to talk to them. In fact, I really recommend that you don’t. We’ll meet tomorrow to talk about media interaction, but they’ll lose interest pretty quickly, don’t worry. This time next month, no one will remember your names.”

“Excellent,” my dad says.

My mom puts a hand on my shoulder, so lightly I almost can’t feel it. “That will be nice,” she murmurs. I nod. It will be nice. For them. I, on the other hand, still have to go back to school.

“And now we wait,” Natalie says. “My new intern should be here in a minute, and she can get us some coffee, if you’d like. But just have a seat. Sara, you all set? Is that your statement there?”

I nod again, trying to loosen my fingers from the page. It’s a crumpled mess at this point.

“I have another copy if you need it,” Natalie says, her voice a little lower, sympathetic. “Do you want to go over anything again?”

Dad heaves a big sigh, like he’s sick of talking about all of this, and sits down heavily on the bench. Mom wavers. I know she’s dying to see my statement, which I haven’t let her read. I know why she’s pausing now, that she wants to be here if I tell Natalie, Yes, let’s talk about this stupid piece of paper I’m holding, even though we just went over it yesterday, but I stay silent, so finally she sits down on the bench too.

Now that Mom’s hand is gone from my shoulder, Natalie moves to my side and puts her whole arm around me. “You’ve done really great,” she says, her head close to mine, speaking even more softly, just to me. “I’m proud of you. I know this hasn’t been easy or fun or—or what you thought it would be. But you really toughed it out. You wrote an excellent letter, too. Things are going to start getting better now, I promise.”

I look down at the paper in my hands. It’s still folded, blank side up, but the shadows of the typed words are just visible through the white. The dark truth, just on the other side of the thin—paper-thin—wall.

I nod yet again, but only because Natalie wants me to. I think about saying Thank you or I appreciate all your help or something. I would mean it. But I just can’t make myself talk at all. I stare at the faint outline of all those words I have to say—now, any minute now—and think about how I’ll never be able to unsay them. And I think about all the things I’ve already said, and written, that can never be unsaid, unwritten.