The smell was wrong. Someone had changed the sheets. Standard procedure when reopening, but it gave the room a sense of the uncanny when I went in. It would all look better when I got my stuff back in where it belonged.
Everything set just so, I jumped on the bed, letting myself bounce a couple of times to get used to it again.
“Looks nice.”
I leaped at Brenda with the dexterity of a panther. What my dad always called an ‘attack hug.’
“Nice to see you too, babe.”
“I missed you so much!”
I really did. Not quite realizing how much until that moment. It would have been so nice to have someone to talk to about what was happening with Nate. I didn’t think of it until it was too late. Better late than never though, so I found myself spilling my guts before I could stop myself.
“Wow,” Brenda said, after hearing my tale of love and woe.
“Weird, huh?”
“More like Shakespearean.”
“Comedy or tragedy?”
“Did he ever do anything that was both?”
“All of them, technically,” I said, taking a moment to think.
It was nice to get it all off my chest. Mom was too close, and I didn’t have class until tomorrow where I could see Amber and Thorne. Though, that didn’t mean I didn’t intend on filling them in anyway, and after a good night’s sleep in a bed that finally felt like mine again, that was just what I did.
The looks on their faces, when I told them about me and Nate, were priceless. Too bad my phone no longer had a camera.
“And hello to you to,” Amber laughed, as I attack hugged her outside the classroom.
“Do I get a hug too?” Thorne asked.
“Of course you do, you big goof.”
“What’s wrong?”
There was really no point in lying. Amber had a ridiculously strong bullshit detector. It would be little surprise if she already had an inkling as to my good heart’s oppression. Or, not that good as it turned out.
I went through the whole thing again for a new audience. The looks on their faces appropriately scandalized as I told them about my new connection with Nate Gattis, the scandal turning to horror and low-key disappointment when they heard the rest.
Amber and Thorne were in agreement. A state of affairs so rare as to demand attention. It also helped that they were absolutely right.
I had to make things right, and there was only one thing to do.
A few days later, the city scape rolled past like a screen in an old-fashioned movie. Feeling like Janet Leigh in Psycho. Both of us about to face the music, my fate hopefully a lot less bloody.
“Are you sure about this?” Mom asked.
“It’s what’s right, Mom.”
“Of course. You know, you really sound like your dad sometimes.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Oh, no, not at all, I like it. It reminds me of him.”
I hadn’t seen Nate since he left the kitchen and blockaded the hole. He even started working night shift, Hank’s truck gone every night at around supper time, not returning until breakfast the next day. Far from the type to think the world revolved around me, but it was pretty clear that he was avoiding us. Not that I could really blame him.
Each step up toward the courthouse brought up another argument against the plan, none of them quite getting through to make me change my mind. There is nothing but good that could come from my planned course of action.
Through security, Mom and I went to the courtroom, holding hands all the way. Drawing on each other for strength.
The time ticked by. Each side going through the motions, making their opening statements. It was almost funny the line of bullshit the prosecution managed to spin out of scant evidence. Even with Mom’s call, it sounded a bit weird. Basically, the only reason we were there at all was because some of the would-be ravers decided to fib about what went down that night. I wasn’t there, but even so, it just didn’t add up. There would have been much more of a ruckus for a start.
The predictable rouge’s gallery of witnesses and experts was called. Spinning their own particular shades of bullshit. Even if we were the only ones who told the truth, it would still be worth it. The truth must out.
“Defense calls Nathan Gattis to the stand.”
My heart skipped in my chest. He looked so different, and not just because of the lovely suit he was wearing. He looked good, but in a darker, more moody way. Like he’d given up on hope.
“You have something to tell the court, don’t you Nathan?” the defense lawyer asked, in a friendly way.
“Yes, sir.”
“It has something to do with the evidence, isn’t that right.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Could you specify the piece?”
“A3.”
“A3, the bloody clothes found under the bed of Mr. Gattis’s neighbor. The one whose mother made the initial call to police,” the defense clarified to the jury.