Authors: Sara Wolf
“I got in! I got into Stanford!” I shout at the ceiling. The letter shakes in my hand as I eagerly devour the rest of it. There’s something about a housing form, and a financial aid form, and at the very bottom is a mention of a grant. Grant? I never applied for a grant. Did Evans…?
And then my eyes widen at the amount on the attached paper. Thirty thousand dollars, for four years or until I get my bachelors, on the terms I keep a 4.0 average. It’s not a lot to Stanford, but it’ll put a huge dent in the tuition costs for me. I could actually keep afloat, if I got some more scholarships and worked. It’s doable. My heart squeezes and unsqueezes rapidly. I can do it. I can do something different, something wild and massive and incredible –
“Isis?” Mom’s voice filters up from downstairs. “Isis, are you home?”
I jump up and rush down the stairs, slipping on the bottom one but catching myself gracefully and launching into her chest.
“I got in!” I scream. “I got into Stanford!”
Mom’s eyes widen. “W-What? Stanford? How –”
I shove the letter in her hands and quiver on the edge of a knife for an entire ten seconds as she reads it. Her face lights up from the inside, like a candle through a frosted pane, glowing in all directions at once. She hugs me, harder than when I woke up in the hospital, harder than when I came home from the hospital, harder than when I arrived at the airport in Ohio from Florida.
“Oh sweetheart.
I’m – I’m so proud. This is
amazing
! When did you apply to Stanford? And without telling me?”
“I just…I just put it in for kicks. I didn’t expect anything to actually
happen
,” I lie. Mom’s joy is overshadowed by worry lines, but she’s trying hard to hide them for me. It’s then I notice her coat, and the new prescription pills sticking out of her purse.
“Let’s talk about this after dinner, alright? Call your father and tell him!” Mom insists.
Dad’s just as thrilled. He offers to help me with some of the costs, the pride in his voice unmistakable.
“Kelly! Kelly!” I hear him call to my stepmom. “Isis got into Stanford!”
“Stanford!” Kelly’s saccharine voice pierces through the phone. “Quick, give me the phone.”
I suck in a breath and brace myself for the inevitable showdown.
“Isis!” Kelly exclaims.
“Kelly!” I imitate. “It’s so nice to talk to you again. Once every two years isn’t enough.”
“I agree! Stanford…wow. That’s incredible. I hope Charlotte and Marissa can be as smart as you when they get older.”
“They can try,” I say sweetly. She laughs, but under that laugh is the obvious – we dislike each other. We’ve just never said it out loud.
“You should really come visit us this summer,” Kelly presses. “Your father and I are taking the
kids
–” She puts emphasis on kids, rubbing it in my face that I’m not included in that category. “- to Hawaii. We should all go together before you head off.”
“Aw, but I like you so much more when you are a generally enormous distance away from me.”
She laughs, short and biting. “Well, I’ll give the phone back to your father now. Congratulations again!”
Dad comes back on. “So, what’s the plan? Do we fill out the FAFSA? I’m coming to your graduation – I could drive you down there. A road trip, for just you and me! How would you like that?”
I smile at the floor. Yeah. That’d be great. If I was five years old. He’s trying to make up for lost time. It’s so obvious, and so ridiculous. I’m not a kid anymore. He missed out on his chance to raise me. At least Mom tried, even if it was at the very end of my time as a kid.
“I dunno, Dad. I’ll think about it.”
“Okay! Keep up the good grades, and we’ll talk more about it later. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The words are hollow. But that’s okay. Most things are, these days.
Mom bustles around the kitchen making a celebratory dinner. She’s forcing herself to be happy for me, but I know something’s wrong, and it’s not just the looming trial this time. She’s so wrapped up in her BLT making I can’t get a serious answer out of her, so I go upstairs and turn on my laptop and stare at pictures of Stanford. I do more research; there are amazing overseas programs. England, France, Italy, Belgium. The campus is something straight out of a magazine – perfect green lawns and white-washed buildings and the California sunshine turning everything golden. Their math program is incredible, with really famous professors I’d only read about in scientific journals. Not that I read that nerd shit. I just, uh, look at them while I’m pooping.
But still.
It’s everything I’ve never known I wanted.
I rifle though my email, to thank them for my scholarship, and to tell Evans, and pause at one particular message. It’s new – sent just four hours ago, from a weird address. At first I think it’s spam, but then I read the title;
Isis, I know you’re there
Creepy-possible-serial-killer title aside, I click on it. What’s the worst that could happen? My firewalls are tight, and if it’s a phishing email I just won’t click on anything inside it. There’s a single line in the body;
Jack Hunter is evil.
It’s a joke. It has to be a crappy joke email from someone at school. I’ve heard these exact words from people at school – but in an email like this, it’s creepy. It’s somehow more threatening, and real. I try to trace the email by putting it in Google, but nothing comes up. It’s a jumble of letters and numbers that might as well be a spambot, but it’s not. It’s someone who knows my name, and someone who thinks Jack Hunter is evil. I’m conflicted about him for sure, but I don’t think he’s evil. He’s cruel, and callous. But evil? Really, truly evil? That’s going a little far.
And that’s when I see it.
There’s an image attached to the email.
I open it. It’s blurry, but I see trees, and the pine needles covering the ground. I see the dark lump that looks like it has limbs (a person?) lying on the ground, and I see the hand carrying a bat in the corner. A bat stained with something dark on the tip.
My mouth goes dry. I know that hand. Memories surge up like a rapid tide. I grabbed that hand, with its slight veins and long fingers. I held it, both of us sitting on a bed, and I confessed something. Something that meant a lot to me. Thumping music. The taste of booze. Dancing. A bed.
I know whose hand is holding that stained baseball bat.
It’s Jack’s.
Jack is looming over what looks like a dead body.
-5-
3 Years
26 Weeks
5 Days
Welcome to Hell. Population; me, some idiots, and my mother.
Justice is basically a costumed farce. You learn that when you’re three and your parents tell you sharing is caring when quite clearly sharing is
terrible
, and there is no caring at all involved because no matter how loud you cry no one seems to have sympathy for you and your doll which must not touch anybody else’s hands because everybody else is grimy and dumb.
A courthouse is essentially the same principal; a bunch of stuck-up, weary adults telling each other to share and care. With the added bonus of jailtime.
I sigh and re-button my hideous white blouse all the way up to my chin. At least Mom let me keep my jeans. I can’t morally support her when my butt is hanging out of tight black slacks for the world to see. I try to fix my hair – some big bun Mom made for me, but Kayla slaps my hands away.
“Stop it. You look good. For once.”
I smirk and look over at her. She sits beside me in the courtroom, a similar white blouse barely restraining her considerable chest. She wears a skirt and pearl earrings and actual pearls and looks totally the part of First Lady. If the First Lady was seventeen and Latina. The court isn’t exactly what I pictured – I was expecting CSI levels of crowded rooms and scowling judges and apprehensive jurors. But instead I get a room that looks straight out of the 80’s – weird geometric-patterned carpets and a flickering fluorescent bulb in one corner and a judge who looks like a smiley grandma with purpleish hair and bright red nails. The jury doesn’t even look serious – they talk and laugh among themselves. Mom sits two rows in front of us, her lawyer at her side. Leo, the scumbag, sits at the left table, his lawyer whispering to him. He’s got a cast on his arm and a bandaged nose.
“Ass,” I whisper to Kayla. “Leo’s nose is fine. He’s just wearing it for show.”
She sneers. “He’s so nasty. I hope he gets all that nasty delivered right back at him! Via FedEx! Express shipping!”
I keep my eyes on Mom as people filter in. I slept on the air mattress by her bed last night, because she wouldn’t stop crying. After the Stanford hullabaloo deflated, all that was left was a sad remnant of reality. Her shoulders are shaking under her two-piece suit, but she keeps her head high.
“Is Jack coming?” Kayla asks. I nod.
“Yeah.
Why?”
She shrugs. “Just…it might be hard for you. You know.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Kayla’s quiet, before she says; “It was hard for him, too.”
“What? Who?”
“Jack. When you were gone, he was so different. I know I said that the day you came back, but – but he really, really changed. I’ve never seen him look that bored. It was almost like he was dead.”
“No one to call you names does that to people.”
She shakes her head and sighs. Leo’s eyes catch mine once, and I mime cutting my own throat to get the point across. He doesn’t look at me again.
“For once, your threats are deserved.”
The voice belongs to Jack, who slides into the seat next to me. He’s wearing a midnight suit – crisp, with a porcelain blue tie that matches his eyes. His hair’s slicked back with gel, cheekbones defiant and profile haughty and regal as ever.
Kayla gives him a cursory glance. “Hey, Jack.”
“Kayla.” He nods at her. Their exchange two months ago would’ve been so different, but now it’s almost…
mature
? I shudder. Gross.
The image of his hand in the email picture won’t fade from my mind. He might’ve killed someone! Like, dead! Like, not-breathing or eating! Not-eating sucks because A. food is fantastic and B. food is fantastic! And here I am talking normally to a guy who made people unable to eat. He could be a regular Ted Bundy for all I know, because I
don’t
know. I don’t know anything about him, except what my fragmented memories tell me. And it makes me feel like screaming. Or puking. Preferably not both at the same time.
“Your mother looks better,” Jack leans in and murmurs. “She was wasting away when you were gone.”
“From the sound of things, so were you.”
He tenses minutely, his suit straining in the corners. Before he can open his mouth, the guard calls out “All rise”, and everyone in the courtroom stands. The grandma-y judge settles in her chair, and tells us to be seated.
“The honorable judge Violet Diego will be presiding over case 109487, Blake vs. Cassidy, on this Friday the 7th of February, 2012,” The guard reads from a clipboard. “Mr. Gregory Pearson and Mrs. Hannah Roth will be representing their respective clients. Mr. William Fitzgerald is acting court stenographer. Your honor.”
The guard nods to Judge Diego, and retreats to the corner. Diego clears her throat.
“It is my understanding this trial is to address Mr. Leo Cassidy’s alleged breaking and entering and assault and battery of Mrs. Patricia Blake and her daughter Isis Blake, on the 4
th
of January, 2011. Prosecutor, if you’d like to make your opening statement now.”
Mom’s lawyer, a pretty blonde lady, stands and takes the center of the room. She makes a speech about Leo’s ruthlessness, about Mom’s history with him and how she left Florida to escape him. She presents the restraining order Mom got against him before she left, my cranial x-rays, and the photos the police took of the ransacked house. Our house. Shattered glass and a blood smear on the wall and –
I flinch. A metal baseball bat. Kayla grabs my hand and squeezes.
The defense attorney argues Leo was in a fugue state, and suffering from the effects of PTSD from his time in Vietnam as a medic. I lean into Jack.
“You’re a nerd, right? You know big words.”
He snorts. “Verily, forsooth.”
“What’s a fugue state?”
“It’s similar to the dissociative amnesia you have for me,” he murmurs.
“Aw, stalking my medical records? You shouldn’t have.”
“I don’t stalk, I understand basic psychiatric indications. Regardless, the argument of a fugue state in his defense is idiotic. It’s a rare occurrence, and he showed no symptoms of another outward personality. If the judge buys it, I’ll be very surprised.”
“Aren’t you a witness?”
He nods. “They’ll call for me shortly.”
The defense suddenly asks for Mom to take the stand. She looks back at me, once, and I smile as encouragingly as I can and give her a thumbs up. She grins, wanly, and walks to the stand. The guard swears her in on the bible, and the defense attorney starts to grill her – where she was that night, what she was wearing, where I was, what Leo looked like, what he sounded like. Mom’s resolve wavers – her hands shaking and her lip bitten – but she doesn’t break. She keeps talking even though she looks like glass is ripping up her stomach from the inside out. When the defense is done, her own lawyer comes up, and Mom gives a full account of the story with the lawyer’s urging. I gnaw my mouth to stay calm and think about unicorns, but even rainbow-pooping horned horses can’t distract me from the way Mom’s voice trembles as she describes the attack. I want to clap my hands over my ears, or leave, but she needs me. She’s looking at me the entire time she’s talking, so I keep eye contact with her. I’m her anchor.
“And then Jack –” Mom inhales. “Isis’ friend from school, Jack, came in. I saw him over Leo’s shoulder.”
“Did Jack have a weapon on him that you could see?” The lawyer asks.