Order in the Court (20 page)

“Do you really, though?” he sneered, and I did not flinch. I did not give him the satisfaction.

“I do. How did you know where we were?” A question that had been plaguing me, never addressed.

“Kate texted Mom to let her know where she was going,” Dustin said, and I felt a wave of nausea. “And to ask if Mom could bring her some pajamas. Mom was asleep on the couch. I was upstairs freaking out because I kept coming up short.” He tapped his temple again, once, twice. Not a third time. He wrapped the cord around his fingers.

Coming up short…?
“You were… what? Weighing your drugs?” I asked. He nodded.

“I’d been a little short here and there for weeks, never quite making quota. My bosses accused me of skimming, but I only ever took my cut.” He shifted on his seat, agitated. “But it was Kate.
She
was the one who’d been skimming. A little bit here and there for months. It added up.”

I closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing. I hadn’t known she’d kept using. It had only been that once for me, one isolated incident on my bathroom floor, where I’d kissed her for the first time. She hadn’t told me she’d kept using; maybe she’d been using before that night too, when she’d come to share.

“Do you really want to hear this?”

“
Yes
,” I said, opening my eyes. “I need to know.” My voice was very small.

“When Kate texted, I went into her room to grab her pajamas. I was going to drive them over because Mom was asleep. I was pretty high already, but I’d driven on more.”

He tapped his temple again, three times. I wanted to reach through the plexiglass and yank the receiver out of his hands.

“How did you know that she was taking it?”

“She had bloody Kleenex in her garbage, from the nosebleeds. It was pretty obvious. I went through her purse and found a baggie with a little left in it. I was so angry. She’d cost me a lot of money. She’d gotten my ass kicked for skimming.”

I wanted to hit him. I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek instead. “Where did you get the gun?”

“My neighbor’s shed. I knew he kept it there. He used to take me hunting sometimes. He bought it for cheap because it was altered, sawed off. It wasn’t accurate at all and we never killed anything.”

I flinched, couldn’t help it. “You did, though.” I met Dustin’s eyes through the plexiglass.

“I wanted to scare her.” Suddenly I saw a flicker of regret, the first I’d seen, pass through his eyes. He looked scared himself. “I didn’t go expecting to use it. I did an extra line in the parking lot to psych myself up. I wanted her to pay for stealing from me.”

“So you killed her.”

“I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t. I don’t even remember pulling the trigger. I had just walked in the door and she was there, in the first booth. And then she was on the floor, and the other two started screaming.”

Tap, tap, tap went the receiver against Dustin’s temple.

“I just wanted them to shut up. Someone was going to hear them.” Tap, tap, tap. I felt another wave of nausea, a shudder of disgust that ran through my entire system. “It was like
Grand Theft Auto
. It didn’t feel like it was really happening.”

“And Jake? What did he do?”

“I was standing over—over Jessa.” He stumbled over her name. “And I looked up and saw him, behind the counter. I thought he was going to call the police. So I reacted.”

There was something off about Dustin’s description of what happened. I couldn’t pinpoint it. “That’s not what happened,” I said. “You’re still lying.” Everyone was lying about everything. The truth didn’t matter to anyone. It was all just stories.

“I’m not. I didn’t mean to shoot Kate, but once I had, what choice did I have? I didn’t want to go to prison!”

“You’re lying. You
wanted
her dead! You were jealous of her!” Rage boiled under my skin, white-hot in my veins. My temples throbbed. “You
wanted
to get rid of her!”

Dustin seemed at a loss by my anger. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out of it except “No.”

Someone touched my shoulder. It was a guard. “Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to leave now.”

The rage disappeared as quickly as it had come. “Okay.” I wasn’t going to get what I wanted here, that much was clear. “Good-bye Dustin.” I hoped that “Rot in hell, you bastard” was implied by my tone.

Dustin was still talking, but I hung up the receiver, and he went silent behind the plexiglass. His mouth was still moving as he gestured to my receiver.

I followed the guard out of the jail, through buzzing doors that slammed behind me. Each one closed Dustin farther and farther off from the world; with each bang and buzz, he grew more distant from me. He was locked away where he could not hurt anyone else, though I doubted he ever would anyway.

Not that he was incapable. No, he was capable. He was a psychopath. There was no other explanation how, after one accidental shot, he could kill three more people—and talk about it like it was a video game. Maybe that first shot had been an accident, and maybe it hadn’t. It really didn’t matter either way.

I was done with him. With all of it.

I HADN’T
been to the graves yet, despite living in town. The walk up the muddy path from the parking lot felt far too long—I had sprinted up the hill in heels, once, so long ago, chasing a Cincinnati Reds baseball cap and a nightmare. Brandon held my hand as we approached the first grave, which was Ricky’s. There were fresh flowers balanced on top of the smooth stone, and on her mother’s, just a few feet away.

“It’s hard to imagine them under there,” Brandon said, and I nodded, but it was a lie.

I could imagine her exactly as she would be now: sunken, slowly deteriorating in the pink sundress her father had picked from her closet. Rotting flesh flat over pointed bones, the body no longer bloated with intestinal gasses after a year in the ground. At least, that’s how I imagined it. Grotesque and unmentionable.

I had aced biology. The science behind decomposition was an undeniable facet of my knowledge.

But in some way, Brandon was right. It wasn’t Ricky under the fresh sod, not really. She was long gone, either into oblivion or maybe heaven, if she believed in that. So imagining her under there was impossible, because she was not. She was gone.

I reached out and ran my fingers over the carved letters of her name. Erica Rose O’Brien, loved and remembered. The date of her birth, seven months before mine, the date of her death, one year today.

I was older now than she had ever been.

I shivered, and Brandon unzipped his hoodie, draping it around my shoulders without prompting. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t cold, and so kept the heavy weight of it and the smell of him around me as we moved on, three graves down, to Kate.

There were no flowers on Kate’s grave. I should have brought some.

“Do you need a minute?” Brandon asked, and I nodded even as my legs collapsed beneath me. I sunk to my knees and then sat back on my muddy sneakers, not caring about the fate of my jeans. Brandon touched the top of the grave, a little sign of respect, like a pat on the shoulder as he walked to the Fuentes family plot to talk to Jessa.

He had done this before. He had braved the cold reality of hard stone and fresh-cut grass several times, alone. I was a coward and had avoided it, dreaded it. My nightmare was never-ending, but I still held on to a soul-consuming hope that I would wake in Kate’s arms, that this year had been a fever dream, that my friends weren’t dead.

“I miss you,” I said. “I love you.”

I wanted to cry, but there was nothing. I rubbed at my eyes, ashamed at my lack of tears. How could I not cry, now of all times? I had cried for days! Cried on lonely nights after good days, days without a panic attack, days where I thought maybe I could move on. But here? No. It was like cosmic punishment, that when I wanted to cry my eyes remained stubbornly dry.

I picked myself up, wrapped Brandon’s hoodie closer around me and breathed in deeply the smell of his skin, his soap. I wished I had something of Kate’s with her smell in it as I gave her headstone a few quick pats, the worst good-bye of almost-lovers.

Brandon was sitting at Jessa’s grave talking softly. I gave him a moment longer and then joined him, making lots of noise to announce my approach.

“Corey’s here,” he said when I grew closer. He was smiling. “She did so well in court, you wouldn’t believe it. She was so brave.” I sat down cross-legged across from him as he continued. I felt bemused, and maybe a little embarrassed, as if Jessa could actually hear him. “What am I saying? Of course you’d believe it! She always was a killer debater.”

“You weren’t even there for my testimony,” I pointed out. I couldn’t help but smile a little.

“I didn’t have to be! I know it was awesome because you’re awesome. Right, Jess?” A laugh escaped my throat before I could stop it. No one called Jessa “Jess.” No one. She would’ve hated it.

“You’re an idiot,” I said.

“Yeah, but you love me anyway.”

I didn’t have a rebuttal for that, so I sat back and listened to him recount the events of the past week to Jessa’s grave. I closed my eyes and let his voice wash over me. I was dead, and Brandon was visiting me. He was telling me about his day. I was at peace.

“Come on, I want to show you something.”

Brandon took my hand and pulled me upward. I allowed it, moving as he directed. I let him lead me, my eyes still closed, around the graves of strangers. It felt like sleepwalking. Finally he stopped and said, “Open your eyes.”

I did. We had wandered to the northmost corner of the cemetery, where there were only a few old graves protruding crookedly from the earth. The names on them had mostly worn away, leaving unclear indents that once were someone’s loved ones.

Someone had erected a picnic table there, so long ago that it had been partially reclaimed by nature. Tall grass had grown between the seats and table. Brandon used the seat as a step up to sit on the tabletop and motioned for me to do the same.

“Jessa brought me here, a million years ago,” he said. His voice sounded more reverent here than at her grave.

He held his hand out, and I took it to climb up onto the table. In its center the dirty outer layer of wood had been scratched away to reveal the light color it had once been, dug out in the shape of a heart. “B&J 4ever” it read in clumsy letters.

“Yours?” I asked playfully.

“Of course!”

Brandon touched the edge of the heart and began to trace it with his fingers. “Jessa did it, actually. It’s where we promised we’d be together for the rest of our lives.” At my raised eyebrows he added, “I would have proposed right here, but we were sixteen, and I figured our parents wouldn’t approve. Not to mention I had no money for a ring.”

“You could have used a Ring Pop, and she’d still have said yes,” I said. I was entirely serious.

“I know. It was scary, how in love we were. We promised each other: ’til death do us part. We had little promise ceremonies, like weddings, with vows and everything. Private weddings, just for us, and for God.”

“That’s intense,” I said, because it was crazy, but you can’t call young love crazy. I couldn’t imagine knowing I’d love somebody for long enough to promise them forever.

“It
was
… intense,” Brandon agreed. “But so were we. And I’m scared I’m never going to find that again. She was my soul mate.”

“Maybe we have more than one soul mate. Like you can have more than one best friend,” I said, and his shoulders slumped with relief.

“You think so?”

“I know you can have more than one best friend. I had three really good ones, and now I’ve got you.” It was meant playfully, not in scorn. Brandon smiled. He understood my humor.

“You’re my best friend too, Cor.” He paused to sit up a little straighter and turn his body to face me directly. “Can I be frank with you right now? And maybe a little inappropriate?”

“I guess so?”

Brandon’s mouth opened and then closed. He looked away, as if embarrassed, and I was suddenly worried about what he wanted to say.

“I kissed you, at the funeral,” he said finally, and I nodded.

“That was definitely inappropriate!”

I laughed. It was something we could laugh about now that time had passed. He had been grieving, out of his mind after losing Jessa. I had forgiven him long ago for the transgression. Brandon didn’t laugh. He had a determined look on his face.

“I know. It was bad timing and bad… everything. But I want you to know that I—that the reason I haven’t been able to date in Pennsylvania is because none of the girls I met were the right girl. Because none of them were
you
.”

I swallowed, hard. It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it. It felt like a dirty, incestuous thought whenever it had popped into my head. Brandon was Jessa’s, and Jessa was like my sister; he was off-limits, even after she was gone.

But he was handsome and safe and kind and loyal. I would never have gotten through the trial without him, without knowing he would be there at the end of it.

“You don’t have to say anything right now. You can even forget I said anything, if you want. I just wanted to be honest. I have feelings for you. No one will ever replace Jessa, or what we had—”

I thought about Kate. Our first kiss on the bathroom floor. Her foot in my hand at the beach, bandaging her cut. Her hands all over me in the coatroom at prom. And I knew for a fact that no one would ever replace her, either.

“—but if you’re interested, and only if you’re sure, I think I might want to try to move on. Jessa would have wanted me to be happy, I know that. And it hurts, but I know I need somebody or else I’m going to self-destruct. I want that person to be someone I trust, not just some girl—”

“Yes.”

We both fell silent for a long moment. My heart was racing.

“Or maybe. I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.” A lump formed in my throat. This isn’t a betrayal, I thought. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

“You aren’t.” His arms were around me, pulling me to his chest before I could take another breath. “You will never be alone, even if we really are just best friends.”