AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"One wasted second, and we fall like dry leaves from a dead tree. How often do we take the time to think about that?"
Quiet Darren leans forward, looking at the clock. "We'll pick this up tomorrow."
+++
I can't listen to modern music. I don't want to hear any overrated Grunge or Metal with its' thousands of sub-genres or trendy bands. I'm most comfortable with the music I grew up on. The stuff Jake hated.
Heaven isn't too far away . . . The sound of Warrant hums from my little clock radio. The irony of the song clenches my chest and even though I have spent the better part a decade lamenting, I can't help but break when Janie Lane says that no one really cares.
He's right. Everyone's gone. But unlike the song says, I will not keep trying. I decided before I ever got here that this case evaluation would be my last. The moment my testimony is over, I will be, too.
But I'm not done yet. I took too long today, went too slow to finish. So, for now, I must keep breathing and close my eyes . . .
I'm still seventeen, slow dancing with Jake inside his dark living room, in between the glass encased stereo and the wooden coffee table.
I feel the ghost of his lips skimming their way up my neck as he talks about what heaven is really like. "It's nothing," kiss, "like what you think." Kiss, "It's better," kiss, "than you," kiss, "can imagine."
+++
It's after twelve when I finally get into the room with my idiot lawyer, Tight Bun Tara, and Quiet Darren. They're all waiting for me in their matching jackets. Today's color is white. Again. The lawyer is supposed to be here for me, playing on my team. So why the hell does he look so dang comfortable with opposing council?
There's a sweating Diet Coke waiting for me, opened and waiting with a bendy straw. Right next to that is a bottle of water. I take the drinks because they help. Taking my meds without food isn't getting any easier. Makes me so dizzy I want to puke. Sometimes, I do.
After I'm cuffed to my chair and take a few long sips of soda, I start in on my declaration, reminding everyone, once again, that what I am telling them is the way things looked to me. It is my picture, the one my mind drew up while I was navigating the maze.
I remind them of my leaving Carlisle in early June. "I'd expected to have my first taste of real freedom. I was graduating from that shithole high school. I was turning eighteen in September. I was in love and had just gotten engaged." My eyes swell. "Before June was over, Jake was gone. By July, so was I. I don't remember September. Someone said it rained." The vague memory of a weather report whispers to me.
It took months to get to court, but I don't remember most of it because the stress and depression had taken its' toll; I was having near-constant migraines and was literally scared shitless. I couldn't eat, sleep, or shit. That time was just a haze; with the general feeling that I didn't care. I didn't want to hold myself together. Nothing mattered.
But one thought kept sticking to me: there was no news about Avery.
"You've stated on several occasions that you do not recall the details of your arrest or the charges against you." Darren asks, looking to my lawyer who clears his throat. "Why do you think that is?"
Why do they continually ask questions they know the answers to? "My memory has always had holes in it."
Darren nods his head. "Yes, and that is often the case with persons having your diagnoses. What I'm curious about is how you can recall the most minute details of every moment you spent with Mister Haddon, but not recall the very important details of the crimes the state of Arizona saw fit to charge you with."
My back straightens. "Ever heard of selective amnesia? Maybe I don't want to remember."
Tight Bun Tara stretches her hand across the table, getting my attention. "We're veering off-topic. If we could continue?"
I turn to her. "My next clear memories are the handcuffs."
+++
I came out of my constant daze with sudden clarity. As if I had passed through a fog that cut through time. I simply appeared there, on my feet, in a white jumpsuit.
I found myself standing between two guards in the midst of a large, plain room filled with small round tables and caged windows high up on the cement walls. Just like a cafeteria, but smaller and less smelly. An empty visiting area, it looked like. But no one was going to visit me. Everyone hated me.
"What's happening?"
The guard at my left didn't meet my eyes so I turned to the one on my right and asked again. Right-side Guard removed his arm from mine only to replace it with another set of handcuffs that latched my chains to a loop molded on the underside of a table, and directed me to sit.
"You've got a visitor," the guard said.
Before I could get my hopes up, a grey-haired man walked into view, passing through a different doorway on the opposite side of the large room. A doorway that let the visitors come and go-not like the tricky door that I'd come through-which led me in but would never let me out.
The guards posted behind me as the gray-haired man, who was a little taller and a little more plump than he looked from across the room, sat down on the opposing bench. He set a briefcase in the space beside him, then popped it open. He rested a thick accordion file on the table, and then set both his laced hands on top.
