Page 191 of Broken Pieces
Whispers.
Pages flipping.
The occasional fake cough from someone who’s only here because they want to see blood spilled without punches.
Rainer sits on my right, shoulders set, spine straight. He has said little since we walked in, but I can feel the tension rolling off him. His shirt’s white, crisp. Clean jeans. His hair is even combed. It’s the first time I’ve seen him without grease under his nails and oil smudged down his forearms. Guess this is one of those moments when you’ve got to clean yourself up to be taken seriously.
Cassie’s on my left, legs crossed tight, a crumpled tissue balled in her fist, which she hasn’t touched. Her eyes are red. Raw. She’s been crying for both of us. Guilt’s carved deep into her face, sharp at the edges.
She keeps blaming herself, whispering that she should’ve called the cops. That maybe if she had, none of this would be happening.
But I get it.
People like us don’t trust systems.
We don’t believe the cops or, even, in this case, judges will give a damn about our side.
We believe in each other. That’s all we’ve ever had.
I haven’t cried since the night they took him.
Not because it didn’t break me. Fuck, it did. But I’ve spent years teaching myself how to keep my tears locked down, how to bite down hard and breathe through it. Crying changes nothing. And if I cry now, I’m scared I won’t be able to stop.
The door at the side of the courtroom opens and everything stops.
Then, suddenly he’s there.
Zane.
The chain between his wrists rattles as the officer leads him in.
His hair’s messy, strands falling into his face. The bruising still shadows his jaw and cheekbone from the underground fight; it still looks ugly and raw. And I know what everyone else in this room is going to see.
They will see a kid who looks like trouble. The person their daughters shouldn’t talk to. The kind judges look at once and throw away.
But it’s his eyes that knock the air out of my lungs.
They don’t flick around the gallery searching for us; they don’t scan the benches.
They stare straight ahead. Blank and detached, as if he’s already accepted that no one in this room’s going to give him a way out.
The officer leads him to the table before Zane is forced into a chair. He sits there, eyes locked on the table in front of him. The lawyer Rainer organized for him leans in and whispers something, and still he doesn’t look up.
That’s when I catch it.
The murmurs.
Soft at first. Barely there whispers curling around the room, slithering between the rows. But they grow. Words crawl through the courtroom like insects. Ugly. Itchy.
All here to watch a boy burn.
They don’t even try to lower their voices.
My skin crawls. Heat rises under it, boiling up my spine.
I want to stand. I want to fucking scream.
Tell them all to shut the fuck up because they don’t know him.
