True Blue (12 page)

The next day, I was dropped from the group.

It was really something, the way they dropped me. I almost have to admire them for it, now. There was no pretense of niceness, no beating about the bush. Just a clear, unequivocal signal that I was persona non grata once again.

After school, I waited at my locker, where the restaurant gang picked me up on the way out of the school, since my locker was the closest one to the door we used. I saw them coming, shut my locker door, snapped the padlock closed, and turned to them with a smile on my face, like a great big grinning idiot.

They walked right by me. No greeting, no sign of recognition. I may as well have been one of those Caution-Wet-Floor signs for all the attention they paid to me.

I fell in behind the group anyway. They closed ranks, like a herd of musk ox protecting itself against intruders.

I followed them out of the school and down the street like a giant goof, saying things like, “Tough history quiz today, huh, Amber?” and “What got into Mr. Higgins?” But no one responded. They didn’t even laugh or shove me away. They all simply and completely ignored me. You have to admire that type of discipline.

Eventually, about a half mile from the school, I got the message. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and watched the group go on without me, feeling—well, you can imagine what I was feeling.

The plus side of it all was that I was able to start training with the cross-country team after school again. There’s nothing like vigorous physical activity to help you get over humiliation. Ms. Simms said nothing to me about my schedule change, other than, “I don’t want yo-yo’s on my team,” which I took to mean I’d better not switch again. No jolly fear of that. So now I could sleep a bit later in the mornings.

But my actions were to have more consequences. It took a few days, but I finally discovered why the restaurant gang had asked me to join them in the first place.

It first showed up on the Internet. I was in the library and passed some kids huddled over a Blackberry. I heard my voice coming out of it. I leaned in for a closer look.

There I was, sitting in The Cactus, talking about Casey.

They had filmed it, probably with some spy camera. I watched for a few minutes, not even feeling that surprised. Then the show stopped and some words appeared on the screen—to watch the whole interview, people needed to enter their credit card number.

I didn’t hang around to see if any of the students were pulling out their wallets.

You probably saw me on one of those scandal shows. The story ran on all the major networks.

After that, a full-page article appeared in the Saturday editions of all the city newspapers. “Friends With a Murderer” it was called, and it was written by none other than Amber Bradley of Galloway District High School.

There were direct quotes in the interview from our conversations at The Cactus, but Amber hadn’t stopped there. She’d talked to some of Casey’s old teachers, some who had known her since grade school. Miss Burke was quoted as saying Casey was the most promising student she’d ever taught, but this was followed by a paragraph describing Miss Burke’s police escort from the school, which weakened the value of her support.

Other kids in the article talked about Casey’s so-called weirdness, her obsession with insects, and her lack of boyfriends. But by far the most damning statement came from me. It was even featured in a bold-faced sub-headline:
“I think she killed Stephanie,” says Summer Camp Murderer’s Best Friend
.

They probably all divided up the money from the article. Amber may have gotten the lion’s share because she actually wrote it up. They saw an opportunity to make money, and they took it. If I were to object, they’d band together and insist I knew I was being taped.

I was furious, thinking of them sitting smugly in that restaurant, eating the French fries and drinking the Cokes that my stupidity helped them buy. In my anger, I saw myself storming into The Cactus and dumping those fries and drinks all over their scheming little heads. But of course I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything.

Mom was already wound up and crazy by this point, but she was still talking to me, sometimes endlessly. On and on she’d talk about loyalty and friendship and loneliness, often repeating herself as if to drive home the point. Frequently, I would leave the room while she was talking to me, and she’d keep right on talking. I’d go back into the room, and she wouldn’t even blink at my return. Or I’d go to bed and hear her talking to herself in the living room, late at night. That was normal. That was just Mom.

But when she saw the article, she gave me a long hard look as though I were someone she ought to recognize but didn’t, and stopped speaking to me. Dad wasn’t saying much even before that, so our house had become pretty quiet. So it actually took me a couple of days to realize that Mom had stopped talking altogether. I found it eerie. Dad was probably grateful for the silence. I don’t know. He never said.

There was silence at home and silence at school. Now and then, some kid would come up to me and say, “I don’t understand how you could do that to Casey. I thought she was your best friend.”

The very thing I was most afraid of was the very thing that happened. I was alone. I should have skipped all the intervening nonsense with The Cactus gang and gone straight to the alone part.

Dad and I went along for a few weeks without hearing a word from Mom. It was a relief not to have to listen to her lectures on friendship, but her silence was ominous. It meant she had given up on me. And it meant that she was going to a place where no one could reach her.

I continued to get up at my usual hour in the dead of night, and walk or jog around town until I could face going back to bed. I missed my bike but did nothing to get it back.

Mom was always up when I got back to the house from these night rambles. Sometimes she’d be pacing around the house, or trying to get a big chair out the front door to take to the Whites’. I’d take the chair or whatever it was from her and she’d turn away from me, leaving me to put the chair back beside the living-room sofa. Sometimes she’d just be sitting, staring at me as I came in through the back door. I could feel her eyes on me all the way upstairs until I closed my bedroom door to keep them out. She never said a word.

Dad and I waited for the inevitable crisis.

It came.

I had just gotten back into a sound sleep after one of my rambles when a loud thud woke me up. I was out of bed and down the stairs before my brain even knew I was awake. Dad met up with me in the kitchen. For a long, horrible moment, all we could do was stare.

Mom was on the floor. The refrigerator was on top of her, pinning her down.

I grabbed a corner of the fridge and tried to raise it. My feet swam in a sea of broken eggs, orange juice and other stuff that had spilled out. The refrigerator wouldn’t budge.

“Don’t,” my father said, reaching for the phone.

“Dad, help me!” I urged, but he turned his back on Mom and me and talked into the phone. I knew he was calling the hospital. I knew he was calling to get some one to come and take Mom away.

I tore upstairs and grabbed a pillow from my bed. I bent down to put it under Mom’s head.

“Don’t,” Dad said again, his hand restraining my wrist. “Her spine could be hurt. Don’t move her.”

I wiped her face with a warm cloth and smoothed the hair out of her eyes.

“Where do you go at night, my Jude?” she asked in a thin voice. “Why don’t you ever take me with you?”

I had no answer for her. I just sat on the floor beside her until the paramedics burst into the kitchen.

Dad took me to the other side of the kitchen to give the medics room to work. Their loud, clear, emotionless voices were a comfort. They knew what to do.

“I’ll give the fridge to the Whites,” Mom said, more to herself than to any of the rest of us.

“This will calm you down, Mrs. Harris,” one of the medics said, plunging a needle into her arm. Dad helped them lift the fridge off her. When I saw the state of her legs, I screamed. I couldn’t help it.

Dad took me into the living room and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders while the medics got Mom ready for transport. It took a long time. He made me some instant hot chocolate. I didn’t drink it, but the warmth of the mug felt good.

Finally, they had her on the stretcher. They took her out of the house and down the front steps.

“I’m gong to follow them to the hospital,” Dad said. “Do you want to come with me or will you be okay here?”

In response, I dashed out of the house and caught up with the medics just as they were lifting Mom into the ambulance.

“Mom!” I cried out.

“Judie? My Judie?” Mom’s voice was weak through the pain and the sedative. She reached out and grabbed my hand. “Get out of here, my Jude. Get out of this town. Don’t let it do to you what it did to me!”

She appeared to pass out then, her hand suddenly limp in mine. The medics slid her stretcher into place, and I backed away from the ambulance just as the doors were slammed shut.

Dad pulled out of the driveway to follow the ambulance to the hospital, and I went back inside the house. I turned on the television, and I just sat.

Mom’s legs were badly hurt. The damage would not be permanent but she had a long road to recovery ahead of her.

“Tissue can mend,” the doctor said when Dad and I went to see him. “The bigger worry is her mental state. Don’t expect her home anytime soon.”

Mom was usually in the hospital for three or four weeks. I couldn’t guess how long it would be this time.

Somehow, Dad and I got through Christmas. We avoided it, really. We went to see Mom on Christmas Day, but she wouldn’t respond to us, and the false cheeriness of the hospital ward depressed us both. I tried to get caught up on my studying. I rented a lot of old war movies from the video store and spent the holidays watching people get blown up. Dad went to see Mom every night after work, but I never went back.

“Her legs are healing,” the doctor said early in January, “but I’m worried about her not speaking. As soon as she’s strong enough, we’ll start on electroconvulsive therapy again.”

It was a relief to be left alone at school. I was glad to be free of The Cactus gang. Trying to keep up with their conversations about nothing would have been a terrible strain.

I missed Mom. I didn’t exactly need her for anything. I could look after the house and myself, but I missed somebody taking an interest in whether I’d had a decent breakfast, or whether that shirt was clean enough for one more day. And she was always doing something interesting and trying to drag me into it with her. It used to bug me, but now I missed it.

The craziness around the murder had died down over the holidays, except for a few stories about Stephanie’s mom spending Christmas alone. It started up again in the middle of January, as the date for Casey’s trial got closer.

On the Thursday before the trial started, I received a letter from Casey.

Dear Dragonfly,

My trial is coming up soon. Mela keeps telling me everything will be fine, but I know it won’t be. She had no luck getting the trial moved to another town, but I don’t think that would have made much of a difference anyway. A lot of issues are tearing this country apart, but there’s one thing everyone agrees on—they all hate me! Do you think I could get a National Unity Award?

Your letters still aren’t getting through. I don’t understand it. Miss Burke’s letters get in. So do Mrs. Keefer’s and your mom’s. I don’t know why they won’t let me have your letters.

Sometimes I think horrible things. I think why couldn’t I have gone to the hospital with Deanna? Then you would be in here instead of me. I hate myself for thinking such a horrible thing.

I don’t know how Stephanie ended up dead, stuffed in that hollow tree, but I don’t have an alibi and there are no other suspects, so I don’t have much of a chance. I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a cage.

Sorry, this is not a cheerful letter. I heard that your mom is in the hospital again. Please give her my best. Let me know if I can do anything.

Keep sending me letters. Eventually they’ll let me read them.

Casey

The next day, I received another letter. This one was a subpoena. I was ordered to be a witness for the prosecution at the trial of my best friend.