The First Stone (5 page)

Reef was about to offer his favorite comment when Elliott shook his head. “You know better than that, Peterson.”

The reporter sneered. “He can't hide behind the Youth Criminal Justice Act forever. How old are you, Kennedy?”

“And how old were
you
plannin' on gettin'?” growled Bigger, moving up the steps toward the reporter.

The lawyer stepped between Bigger and the reporter, whose bravado had disappeared in the face of Bigger's menacing bulk. He scowled at the group and shook his head, then took his equipment back inside.

Reef gave a low whistle of admiration as he high-lived Bigger. “How old were
you
plannin' on gettin'?” he echoed. “That was
premium
, man.”

Bigger grinned as Jink slapped him on the back. “I wish I'd decked the little prick,” he said.

Elliott stared at them, his face a mask of incredulity. “That would've been a
big
help,” he said. There was no mistaking the scorn in his voice.

Jink looked at Reef and nodded his head toward the lawyer. “What crawled up
his
ass?”

Elliott wheeled toward Jink, his eyes blazing. “What crawled up my ass, as you so elegantly put it, is your attitude that all this is just a joke. An inconvenience.”

“Take it easy, man,” Bigger said. “Reef's only seventeen. What can they do to him anyway?”

Elliott looked at the huge teenager' and shook his head. “They can do plenty. Haven't you seen all those reporters? What does it take for you to realize this case is very high-profile? You're just lucky that witnessdidn't get a good look at you, and that Reef didn't name you and your friend as accomplices in the truck vandalism. Otherwise, you'd both be sitting through your own hearings.”

“We been in courtrooms before,” Jink bragged.

“I'm sure,” Elliott remarked. “And I see it's done all of you a world of good.”

“Jesus, Reef,” Jink said. “Great to have
this
guy on your side.”

Elliott exploded. “Haven't any of you been listening to what was said in there?”

Reef, Jink and Bigger looked at him in stony silence. Only Scar nodded. “It doesn't look good?” she asked.

“It
never
looked good, which is why I advised Reef to plead guilty.” A pager in Elliott's pocket hummed, and the lawyer pulled it out, looked at the display and scowled. He clicked it off and returned it to his pocket. “The purpose of this hearing is to provide the judge with the relevant facts prior to sentencing. With eyewitness testimony like the kind we just heard, there was no defense. The best strategy was to admit the crime up front and hope for a lenient sentence.”

Bigger frowned. “You tell all your, clients to plead guilty?”

Elliott sighed. “This case was over the minute the details hit the papers. Why do you think this hearing was held so quickly?” He didn't wait for a reply.

“Pressure from the public. People have zero tolerance for youth crime.”

“Some shit-hot lawyer
you
turned out to be,” Jink said.

Elliott shook his head wearily. “I guess you get what you pay for,” he said, his Legal Aid status reflected in his sarcasm. He reached into another pocket and pulled out a cellphone. “Look, I have a couple calls to make, Reef. I'll see you back inside when this recess is over. Don't keep the judge waiting.” He turned and headed back up the steps and into the courthouse.

No one said anything for a moment. Bigger looked down at his shoes, size fourteen Nikes he'd lifted from a store display at the Halifax Shopping Center. Jink had his hands shoved deep in his pockets like he was checking for loose change. Reef stood motionless, staring at the courthouse as though seeing it for the first time, a tourist in downtown metro. Only Scar seemed capable of movement. She drifted over to Reef, stood in front of him as if waiting.

“Forget him,” Reef said. “This'll all be over in a day or two.” He pulled a pack of Rothmans out of his shirt pocket and tapped out a cigarette, then offered the smokes to the others. Both Jink and Bigger took one. Scar did not. She watched as they lit up, the three glowing ends of their cigarettes like punctuation in the air.

“You saw those pictures?” she said.

Twin contrails of smoke streamed from Reef's nostrils as he looked at the sky. “Hard not to when you're sittin' front row center.”

“Jeez, man,” said Bigger. “That Subaru was shredded.”

Jink snorted. “Sounds like some kinda cereal. Subaru Shreddies.”

Bigger cackled and punched Jink's shoulder. Grinning, Reef turned to see Scar's wooden face.

“She's still in a coma, Reef,” she said softly. “The newspapers—”

“Fuck the newspapers!” he hissed, then regretted it. The look on Scar's face told him she'd noticed more than the mangled metal and shattered glass. She'd seen what was all over the inside. Not red, though, like you'd expect. Everything was covered in black, pools and streaks of it like motor oil thrown from a bad piston. From farther back in the courtroom, it probably looked like shadows. But Scar had known what it was. Who knew a person had so much of it to lose?

Scar's fingers brushed Reef's arm. “They don't know when she'll come out of it.”

He looked at Jink and Bigger, who were trying to one-up each other with more grisly breakfast foods. Obvious choices like Captain Crash and Ram Flakes were giving way to more gruesome names like Shredded Meat.

“She's our age, Reef.”

“Which is a
good
thing,” he said, refusing to look at her. He watched Jink and Bigger escalate their cereal competition. “We heal fast.”

“But what if—?”

He wheeled on her.
“Jesus
, Scar, whaddya want me to do? Visit her? Hold her hand? What's done is done, for fuck's sake. Ain't nothin' I can do about it now. Even if I wanted to. Which I don't.”

He turned away, but not before he saw the look in her eyes. Something between frustration and outright anger, that save-the-world shit he'd never understood about her. Strangers meeting her for the first time—hell, even people who got to know her a bit—would miss that about Scar, her need to protect the underdog, to make everything right. They'd see a cool, hard-edged teenager whose slim frame emphasized her bluntness, telegraphed her refusal to take crap off anyone. He'd certainly seen
that
side of her the first time they'd met.

Two years ago, Reef and Jink and Bigger had been sitting in the school bleachers making fun of the kids trying out for the junior girls' soccer team—a bunch of Barbie dolls trying to impress Ken, a.k.a. Glen Whidden, Reef's phys ed teacher the previous year. He'd had more than one run-in with the athletic asshole that year over what he called Reef's “undisciplined and unsportsmanlike behavior,” and Reef still enjoyed any opportunity to make Whidden's life miserable. Like watching his tryouts. He and Bigger had been laughing and jeering every time someone missed a kick or fumbled a block, and Jink had been prancing back and forth along the sideline, imitating the girls' awkward movements, his socks balled up and stuffedunder his T-shirt like adolescent breasts. Twice Whidden had called over to them to take a hike, and both times they'd ignored him.

But it had been hard to ignore the redhead who'd appeared from nowhere and told them to shut the fuck up.

At the sound of her voice, Reef had turned expecting to see an annoyed parent or a disgruntled preseason fan. She was neither. He'd seen her around the school a few times, usually alone. Kept to herself. He'd heard she was into some heavy shit, that her dad had done some time for dealing drugs and now she was muling for him. Oddly though, she was in the accelerated program, so they shared no classes. He looked her up and down, appreciating the curves in all the right places, grinning at the nerve of the bitch. “Hoo, baby, ain't you a fireball,” he breathed.

“Goes with the hair,” said Jink.

He and Bigger began to laugh again, but Reef silenced them with a wave of his hand. He smiled broadly, but his eyes were ice. “You don't wanna mess with me, Red,” he warned.

She smiled back. “The last guy who called me that found his nuts up his ass.”

Reef casually got to his feet, swung down off the bleachers and stood in front of her, his chest scant inches from her face. Staring down at her, he waited for her to flinch. She didn't.

It hadn't taken long for them to become friends.

And then lovers, although that was off more than it was on. There were things about her that made him crazy. Like that day on the soccer field, standing up for Whidden. Couldn't she see what a jerk he was? Like they all were?

Apparently not.

Much later, she would tell him it was Whidden who had encouraged her to try the accelerated program. Besides teaching phys ed and coaching soccer, he administered the Canadian Mathematics Competition at the school each year, and she had entered. Not from any desire to win, or even because she liked math that much, although she was good at it. She'd nearly flunked one of her math courses, but that was because she'd missed so much time, not because she couldn't do it. She'd told Reef there was something in her head that made problems unfold, helped her see inside them. He couldn't understand any of it—for him, math was a puzzle with a hundred goddamn missing pieces—but he understood what drew her to Whidden's math group. It was the opportunity to stay after school twice each week for the month prior to the competition. Scar was a loner who would never try out for a team, but extracurricular activity had its advantages. After-school practice meant two afternoons each week she wouldn't have to make a drop for her father.

And she'd surprised everyone when she'd placed first in the school and third in the province. Certainly Glen Whidden. who suddenly took a big interest in Scar. He told her it'd be a crime for her not to challenge the math mark that had kept her out of the accelerated program. In fact, he'd helped her do it. Reef knew the asshole just wanted to play the big hero and maybe cop a feel for his trouble, but Scar couldn't see it. There were so many things Scar couldn't see that were Windex-clear for Reef.

Like this shit about the accident.

“So what d'you think's gonna happen?” she asked him now.

Bigger looked over at them. “Aww, she'll be outta the hospital in no time,” he offered. “You wait ‘n' see.”

Scar frowned. “No. About the sentence. What d'you think the judge will decide?”

Reef's face twisted. “What's the worst she can do? Send me to Riverview? I been to that corrections center before. Put me on probation? I ain't finished my last one yet. Move me to another foster home? Like
that
ain't gonna happen anyways. I already heard the Barkers talkin' about it. They're just waitin' till after the hearin' to move me out.”

Jink took a final drag on his cigarette, then flicked the butt into the street. It danced in the wake of a passing car, throwing off a brief shower of sparks. “No need to worry, Reef. Remember the time they got Zeus for bashin' that guy with the baseball bat? Slap on the wrist.”

“I ain't worried,” Reef replied. “Just sick ‘n' tired ‘a sittin' in that courtroom. Not like the movies, huh?”

Bigger snorted. “You got that right, man. How's that judge keep from noddin' off?”

Scar frowned, opened her mouth as if to say something, but at that moment the door swung open and a court clerk beckoned Reef back inside. The recess was over.

She was in the forest again, cool green reaching up on either side of her as she lay facing the white expanse of sky above. She was alone, as she had been so many times before when she'd found herself here. Off to her right, a bird called incessantly, its high-pitched chirp continually punctuating the emerald stillness. She'd heard that bird before. She turned toward it, or tried to turn, but pain sledgehammered through her body and she cried out, her exclamation a muted gasp. The bird chirped more rapidly until its call became a shrill, insistent whine that made her teeth vibrate. She cried out again, her voice breaking in a series of sobs.

“There, there, Leeza,” came a voice beside her. A woman in white leaned over her and suddenly the chirping ceased. Everything was still, except the sledgehammer that continued to pummel her. “I turned off the monitor, dear. We won't need it now that you're awake.”

“Where …?” It was all she could manage. There wasn't room for both language and that sledgehammer inside her.

“You're in the hospital, dear. Acute Care Unit. I'm Joyce. I've been here nearly every day since they brought you in.”

“When …?” Like the five Ws of a news story:
Where, When
…

“Almost three weeks now. You've been unconscious most of that time.”

Leeza's voice was little more than a croak. “Why …?” The third
W
.

The nurse looked at her watch and made a notation on a chart. “I'll let the doctor tell you all you want to know. She'll be along in a bit.” She inserted a needle into a vial and drew a colorless liquid into the syringe, checked the amount, then injected it into a clear plastic tube that hung over Leeza's bed. “This will help. You get some rest now.”