They told me not to register any reaction to his questions, but I can’t help shaking my head in disbelief. The photos were bad enough, pulled at random from our online profiles, ripped from any context or meaning, but this? I’d always thought trials were about evidence and witnesses, but those are somebody else’s words that I scrawled on my notebook during a boring class, and now he’s holding them up as some kind of proof for my “violent urges”. Why doesn’t he go further, and pull up my DVR records and all the horror movies I used to watch, curled tightly against Tate on the living room couch? Why not go through my bookcase for every crime novel he can find?
Wouldn’t we all look guilty, if someone searched hard enough?
“Relax.”
I feel a hand on my arm and look over to find Gates leaning over. “You’re scowling,” he murmurs, too quiet for anyone else to hear. “He’s grasping at straws. If he had any hard evidence, he’d be presenting it, but he doesn’t. Deep breaths, remember?”
Of course I remember, they’ve only drilled it into me every day for weeks now. But Gates is watching me intently, so I inhale a short breath and force my face into something I hope resembles a relaxed expression. I can’t let the judge see that I’m angry; I can’t let her see that I feel anything at all about Dekker’s lies.
“Or what about these submissions to the school literary magazine?” Dekker is still reading aloud from the snapshots of my binder covers and English class assignments.
“Objection!” Gates rises. “Does the prosecutor have any more questions for the witness, or is he just treating us to a public poetry reading?”
“Yes, please do stick to questioning,” Judge von Koppel agrees with an icy smile. “I believe we’ve heard enough of the graffiti.”
Dekker glares, then turns back to Chelsea. “On the days before the murder, did you notice any friction between Miss Warren and the defendant?”
“No,” Chelsea says. “They were great. Happy.”
“Are you sure? No fighting, disagreements?”
“I just said”—she glares back at him—“I don’t know why you’re even doing this. Anna loved Elise—we all did—she would never do anything to hurt her.”
She searches for me again in the courtroom. Our eyes meet, and I give her a tiny nod. It’s okay. I know she doesn’t want to be here, that Dekker’s forcing her up there, to try to slander me. She can’t help it any more than I can help the things he’s saying about me.
“So you never noticed any jealousy from the defendant?”
“No.”
“Never saw her act in any violent or uncontrollable ways?”
“No, nev—” Chelsea suddenly stops. She looks over at me, panicked. Dekker catches the gaze. He brightens.
“You did?”
“I . . .” Chelsea’s expression is conflicted.
Gates tugs my sleeve again.
“What’s going on?” he whispers.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
Dekker clears his throat. “Miss Day? Did you ever see the defendant have any violent or angry outbursts?”
Chelsea hesitates again, then nods.
“What happened?” Dekker’s whole body is alert, his face expectant.
“I . . .” Chelsea swallows, looking nervous. “It was during art class, at school. I went to get something from my locker, and I saw her in the hallway, with Elise.”
“With the victim?” Dekker’s voice is so gleeful, it turns my stomach.
She nods again. “Anna was . . . She was screaming, and yelling. Elise tried to calm her down, but Anna . . . She grabbed the display—I think it was something for Environment Week—she just grabbed the whole thing and began tearing it apart.”
I exhale. Now I know what this is about. I start scribbling a note to Gates as Dekker continues his victorious questions.
“Did you hear what they were saying, why they were fighting?”
“No, I didn’t think I should go over,” Chelsea looks awkward. “I mean, she was so mad.”
“In a violent rage.” Dekker draws the words out with satisfaction.
“I . . . Yes.”
“And what happened next?”
Chelsea shrugs. “Elise tried to calm her down, but Anna threw her off—”
“The defendant physically assaulted the victim?”
“No.” Chelsea stops. “I mean, it wasn’t like that. She just, pushed her away and took off.”
Dekker beams. “No further questions.”
He steps back to his table, and I pass the note to Gates. He glances over it, then nods, rising to approach the witness stand with a confident saunter.
“Miss Day, when was this altercation you witnessed?”
She pauses, thinking. “Um, before Christmas break.”
“Does December tenth sound about right?” Gates suggests.
“Yeah. I mean, I think so.
“Did you know about Anna’s mother?” he asks.
“You mean, that she was sick?” Chelsea nods. “She didn’t like to talk about it, but, yeah. Elise filled us in, so we wouldn’t say the wrong thing.”
“Objection, relevance?” Dekker yells.
Gates turns to the judge. “The defendant’s mother had breast cancer,” he explains, “that recurred in the fall of last year.”
She nods. “Continue.”
Gates turns back to Chelsea. “So you weren’t aware of the state of her mother’s disease or how Anna was coping.”
“No, not really.” Chelsea sends me a look. “She was pretty tough about that stuff. She didn’t like to bring us down.”
Gates nods. “So you had no way of knowing that on December tenth, the day you witnessed Anna having an emotional breakdown, she’d just been informed that her mother was refusing all further treatment, and was, in fact, preparing to die?”
Chelsea’s eyes widen, and I hear the intake of breath in the courtroom. “No. No, I had no idea.”
Gates turns back to Judge von Koppel with a frown. “Far from being a violent fight between Miss Chevalier and the victim—as Detective Dekker would have you believe—what Miss Day witnessed was the perfectly natural reaction of a girl facing the devastating loss of a parent. Any outburst was a result of grief, not violent rage.”
The judge nods. “Noted.”
I feel her eyes on me, all of the rest of them too. Watching, judging, speculating. Wondering what I felt and how I took the news. The truth is, I can’t remember, not clearly—it’s smudged with grief and rage and pure, dark disappointment, as if I’m staring at an out-of-focus photograph taken on a gray, rainy afternoon. There are only glimpses left now: the way my mother didn’t even have the courage to tell me; my father’s gaze sliding to look at the wall behind me when he broke the news.