Nothing to Lose (26 page)

“The blood-spatter evidence,” Angela explained. “The experts try to figure out what happened by the way the blood spurted from the wounds. Your mother says she was fighting Walker off when it happened, and they’re trying to show that she snuck up behind him and killed him. But the way the blood spattered didn’t mesh with either story. She was covered in blood when the police arrived, and she shouldn’t have been if she did it—just like you weren’t. The state has ignored that evidence.”

“Blood spatter is a very inexact science,” the young assistant state attorney said defensively. “And we accepted her confession.”

“Even though you didn’t believe her about anything else?”

“Obviously we didn’t have all the facts before us.” He looked at me.

“So you thought he was going to kill her?” one of the older state attorneys, a woman who introduced herself as Toussaint, said.

I nod. “He had her against the fireplace. He was beating her head against the stone.”

“But he’d done that all before, according to what you said.”

“This time was different.” I remembered the screams, the ripped runner. “I’d been there a dozen times when he did this, but this time was different. I really thought he’d kill her. I wouldn’t… I mean, I never wanted to kill anyone. But I thought he was going to kill her.”

And something about my face must have persuaded her. She said, “And you would be willing to give a sworn statement to that effect?”

“Yes.”

For the first time in a year, I felt like I could breathe.

And so the next day I’m sitting in court. I watch Toussaint’s lips as she says, “In light of new evidence, which we’ve just received, the State will
nolle pros
this matter.”

Toussaint glances over at the reporters when she says this. There are gasps, and I see the reporter with the sketch pad switch his attention from my mother to Toussaint.

Me, I’m sitting in the back of the courtroom with Angela. We walked in with the state attorneys and the security guards. I still have the beard, but I borrowed some khakis and a blue jacket and tie from Karpe so I don’t look like a carny anymore, though I don’t look like Michael Daye anymore either, which is about right. The jail people brought my mother in separately, so I haven’t spoken to her. I don’t know whether she’s seen me yet.

I watch her from behind. With her brown hair and her navy blue suit, she doesn’t seem like what the reporters have been calling her. She sits quietly, her hands clasped before her face. I wish I could see her eyes, but she looks only at Toussaint.

“Newly acquired evidence?” the judge asks when the noise dies down. “Mind telling me what that is?”

Toussaint says, “We’re still sifting through it ourselves, Your Honor.”

“Can you tell me whether anyone else will be charged in this case?” The judge looks directly at me when he says that.

“No, Your Honor. We believe the new evidence will show that this is a case of justifiable homicide.”

My mother’s lawyer hugs her, but now my mother’s eyes look for me.

I still haven’t seen her. Angela and I sit in Angela’s car outside the jail, waiting for my mother to fill out the paperwork, which will release her forever. The top is up to escape the curious glances. But the windows are open. I feel the sun and breeze on my face.

“Happy?” Angela says.

I stare at the sun glinting off the barbed wire. “Happy isn’t exactly the right word. I mean, I’m relieved, but…”

“But what, Michael? Because I was thinking we did pretty good in there.”

“You did … but it’s hard to explain. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be happy again.”

She frowns. “You’re free to be happy, Michael, free to go on with your life, play football, go to college. It’s over now.”

I picture myself, walking into school and explaining that I want to be on next year’s football team. Then I think of the cheers the other side would make up about me.

“I guess,” I tell Angela. “But it’s different.
I’m
different. Most people, they go their whole lives thinking,
I could never do that. I could never kill another human being
, knowing they could never use their hands on someone and make the life go away. I used to know that about myself.”

Angela nods, understanding. “You thought you knew.”

“Right. But now I know I could do it. I
have
done it.” In my arm I can feel the motion of it, the tightness of my arm as I hit bone. “Sometimes, I can even feel the pressure of his skull before it cracked. And when I get mad at someone now and say, ‘I could kill him,’ I think maybe I’m not just exaggerating. Maybe I could. I wish I didn’t know all that about myself. I wish I could just feel like whether I make first team next year is important. And…”

I stop. I don’t know what else I wish, actually. That everything could go back to the way it was before, and we’d be trapped with Walker? That I’d run away with the fair when I said I would, and then maybe it would be my mother who died, and Walker who was charged with her murder? No.

I say, “The fair leaves town tomorrow.”

“Will you be with it?” Angela asks. “I guess they’d take you back now.”

“I don’t know if they would,” I say, thinking of the system of secrets and lies at the fair. Now that they all know, it changes everything. “But no, I’m not going back. I can’t keep running away. Wherever I go, this will always be part of me. Nothing will ever be the same.”

She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Listen to me. You lived with that bastard for—what?—two years?”

She means Walker. I nod.

“And now he’s dead, but he’s still beating you up.”

“It wasn’t me he beat up. It was—”

“Maybe he didn’t beat you up in a physical sense. But he beat you up. That’s what these guys do—they beat people up on the inside, where no one can see the bruises. I look at you and I see a kid who’s beat up, and who’s still being beat up.”

“I can’t do anything about that.”

“You can. You can let the bastard die. Whether you make first string
is
important, because that’s the future. That means you’ve moved on. And that’s what you need to do—move on. The state isn’t charging you with murder. They’ve ruled it a justifiable homicide. That means a killing that is justified. You took a life to save a life, Michael. They didn’t need to put you in jail for that.”

I shake my head. “I’m in jail now. In my head, where it matters.” I glance at her hand on my shoulder. “But thank you for doing this for me.”

“I did it for a reason, Michael—because I knew you did it, but I also knew you were innocent. I hope someday, you’ll realize it too.”

Then she nods toward the jailhouse door, and I see my mother coming out. I open the door and run toward her.

SUMMER BEFORE SENIOR YEAR

Last night I dreamed I was playing football. In my dream I finally made first string. It’s the last game of the season. The scores tied. We’re lined up at the ten. The center snaps the ball. I fade back, looking for my receiver. Tristan. I pass it to him, and I’m watching the ball soar toward the end zone, when suddenly something in the stands catches my eye, a bit of green mixed in with all the crimson and gray.

It’s Kirstie. The green is the same green T-shirt she wore the first time I saw her. She stands in the middle of the screaming, cheering crowd, calm and alone. But when she sees me, she waves.

Her eyes meet mine, then travel downward. I follow them in time to see Tristan catch the pass, scoring the winning TD. When I look back into the stands, Kirstie is gone.

I awake to Kenny and Footy, screaming on Y-100’s morning show. I’d set the alarm for early this morning, five thirty
A.M
. Today Coach will post the rosters for this year’s teams. If all goes as planned, part of last night’s dream will be reality. I should finally make starting QB this year.

But I won’t be throwing any passes to Tristan. All my friends graduated back in June. They’ve gone away to college, mostly. Julian Karpe, who’s staying in town to attend U of M’s six-year medical program, says he’ll see me around. But probably he’ll move on with his life like everyone else.

Me, I’ll be a year behind them. I finished my sophomore year in summer school, then started last fall as a junior. The year off doesn’t affect my eligibility for high school or college football, and—as Coach says—that’s the important thing.

But there are other things. It was weird going back to school at first, with everyone knowing what happened. Some people avoided me. Others went out of their way to be nice. A couple of girls I’d never met slipped love letters through the slats of my locker, but I got some hate mail, too. I pretty much deal with it, because that’s all you
can
do really. After a while, it died down. Sometimes I’ll be at the mall or on the beach and I’ll see someone looking at me but, you know, trying
not
to look at me. It happens less often than it used to, though.

I take the world’s fastest shower and head downstairs for breakfast. My mother’s already in the kitchen when I get down.

We never went back to Walker’s house. In all the uncertainty that followed the trial and our awkward reunion, that was one thing we were both sure of. We rented a town house in the Grove, far enough from the beach so as not to stir up memories, but close enough to stay in the same school district. I figured everyone would know about me, no matter where I went, so I might as well go where I had some friends.

Some woman from a battered-women’s advocacy group helped my mother find a job at a law firm. Her boss has been in trial the past few weeks, so she’s been going in early and staying late. I haven’t seen much of her lately. It’s okay. Things are still awkward between us. I don’t know whether I’ve forgiven her for being weak. I do know I want to be stronger.

When she sees me, she smiles. “You’re up early.”

“Roster’s today.” I pour myself a bowl of Smart Start with milk, slopping some of it onto the counter.

“Don’t forget to clean that up,” she says.

“In a minute.” I slide the bowl onto the table across from her.

“Well, good luck today,” she says.

“I don’t believe in luck,” I say.

“Neither do I, actually. But I hope you get what you deserve.”

I hear the apology in her voice. I hear it a lot. Since my mother got out of jail, our lives have been spent pretty much in counseling. Individual counseling, family counseling, battered-women’s support group—all to tell us it wasn’t our fault, like Kirstie said. I’m trying to believe that, and I
say
I do. I’m not sure Mom believes it yet either. It’s like I told Angela. I didn’t think I’d be able to forget. But now I wonder if maybe I don’t need to forget. Maybe everyone you meet—people at school, people you wouldn’t suspect—has something in the back of their lives, something bad they don’t talk about and just know is there. Maybe we’re all like the carnies, but maybe we don’t all run. Maybe some people stay there and deal with it. Like Karpe did. And Angela. I like to think that’s true, because then I could deal with it too.

I finish my cereal and see my mother sponging up the mess on the counter.

“I said I’d do it,” I say.

“I don’t mind. I like it neat.”

I make sure to rinse out the bowl and put it in the dishwasher before I head to school.

I went to see Kirstie last summer, in Louisiana. I met her sister, Erica, who I was picturing as a little kid, but who’s really about my age, and also this guy named Casey, who Kirstie met at night school. She said he wasn’t her boyfriend, but I got the idea he wouldn’t have minded being. It was good seeing her, seeing she was okay. But it was different than at the fair. Not as real, somehow. We kept in touch by e-mail for a few months after that. But last time, the Mailer Daemon sent my e-mail back, addressee unknown.

I haven’t heard from her since, but I think about her sometimes. And I dream about her. In the dream she’s always like she was that first day at the fair. I think that’s how I’ll always see her. I like to think of her that way, in her green T-shirt, someplace where it’s always sunny—a beautiful part of the past.

I’m in front of Coach’s office now. It’s swarming with guys from the team and guys who hope to make the team. They’re the younger players, the ones who used to look up to me, and a couple who I know think it isn’t fair they have to compete with someone a year older. All around, they’re high-fiving, slapping backs, and generally getting more up close and personal than guys usually get. I see one skinny freshman walking away, trying not to cry. A couple of guys try to talk to me, but I push through. In a minute I know I’ll be part of that whooping, back-patting mob, but somehow, it’s important for me to see the roster for myself, rather than get the information secondhand.