Then, with a cry, the kid leaped from Jake and charged.
He charged straight at me. There was murderous rage in his eyes. He was charging, and I moved back, but he was so much faster, so wild and crazy, this monster that was once a boy.
He was almost on me.
His fingers scraped my shirt.
The gun fired.
chapter seventeen
I have no memory of pulling the trigger. It must have happened, but I simply don’t remember doing it. There was a loud bang, and my hand jerked back as if somebody had slammed into the front of the gun with a baseball bat. For a second I thought the gun had missed, because the kid kept charging. But in the next second I saw the burst of blood in the middle of the kid’s chest, and I saw his expression change from rage to stunned amazement. It was the first time he had actually looked human. He was still moving forward, but his legs gave out from under him, and he went down, bumping against my legs, throwing me against the wall. There was a haze in the air, and I smelled it, the bitter sting of gun smoke.
I was babbling, saying I didn’t mean to, it was an accident, but my voice wasn’t making any sound. Then I realized that I heard no sound at all, that the world had gone completely silent.
The kid lay facedown on the floor, half on the rug and half on the hardwood, the blood seeping out of him like a living thing, an ooze that was expanding, seeking, hungry. I might have screamed, but since I couldn’t hear it, I may have only imagined that I screamed.
Murderer.
The word leaped into my mind. It wasn’t my voice saying it. It was Dad. It was Dad calling me a murderer. I don’t know how long I stood there looking down at the body, but eventually I felt someone shaking me. I looked up and there was Jake, looking like a boxer after twelve rounds in the ring with a much tougher opponent, face puffy and red, one eye swollen shut. His bloodied lips were moving, but it took awhile to realize he was speaking, that there were words coming out of his mouth.
“. . . out of it, Charlie,” he said. “Snap out of it. Come on, give me the gun. Just give it to me. Easy now. Slowly. There you go.”
I felt him pry the gun from my fingers. The fingers didn’t feel like they were mine. They felt as if they were attached, but they didn’t belong to me.
“I shot him,” I said.
“I know,” Jake said.
“I shot him.”
“You had to. He was drugged up pretty good, out of his mind. Now come on, man. We’ll call an ambulance when we’re out of here.”
He turned to go, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to. I was a statue. My feet were glued to the ground.
“Charlie?” Jake said.
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Come on—”
“I can’t leave.”
“Charlie!”
I shook my head. “I can’t leave. Not now. Got to . . . call an ambulance. Stay here. Shot him. It’s—it’s my fault.” I started toward the other room, waking in a daze, wondering where a phone might be.
“Charlie, come on!” He grabbed at my shirt, trying to pull me after him, and I tore myself away.
“No, Jake!”
And for the first time, I heard a siren in the distance, closing. Jake’s eyes got wider, and his tone got more frantic.
“No good will come from staying here!” he shouted. “You’ll just end up in prison, ruining your life. Think!”
“No,” I said.
“There’s nothing you can do! If he’s still alive, they’ll help him. If he’s dead, he’s dead. Don’t throw your life away.”
“No, Jake.” While his voice had become shrill, my own sounded hollow and defeated. I didn’t feel any great moral certainty in what I was saying; I just knew I couldn’t leave. I had to stay.
The sirens became louder, a block away now, maybe two. Jake paced back and forth, shaking his head, and then looked at me. I’d never really seen him look scared, but now he did.
“All right, listen,” he said. “Listen to me. I have the gun. I’m going to say I shot him.”
“No,” I said, “you don’t have to—”
“Listen to me! Your life is going somewhere. Mine’s already in the toilet.”
“Jake—”
“Shut up!”
The sirens were much louder now, and there was more than one. I heard the screech of tires.
“We couldn’t run now if we wanted,” he said. “They’ll be here in a second. I shot him, okay? He was going to kill you, and I shot him. I shot him in self-defense.”
“It’ll never—”
“Just shut up!” he said. Amid all the blood and bruises, there were tears streaming down his face. “Just shut the hell up, okay! I’m going to do this! You’re going to go to college and have a life and do great stuff! I’m not taking that away from you. You just let me do this! I can do this thing!”
I heard the slamming of car doors. Shouts outside. Someone was banging on the front door.
“Why?” I said to Jake.
“Because—” he began, and swallowed hard. “Because I can. Because it’s something I can do.”
We stood looking at each other, and I should have said something, I should have argued, but then there was a crash and the police were in the house, a swarm of blue uniforms. Jake was disarmed and pushed to the floor. I was shoved against a wall. The handcuffs came out, snapped closed. The rights were read. A crackle of radios. Shouts. A tornado of activity closed in on us, but we were in the eye, Jake and me, and there was a moment, before we were hauled away, that our gazes locked. I wanted to say something right then. I wanted to shout out that I did it, I shot the kid, but Jake’s eyes stopped me.
Don’t take this away from me, he was saying. Don’t you dare take this away from me.
chapter eighteen
We waited in the little room until my name was called, and then we filed into the courtroom, Mom on one side and Dad on the other. It was weird, because it felt like we were a family, even though I knew better. The last five months, the three of us had spent so much time together you’d think we were a family again, but we had never actually walked like this, the three of us together, a parent on each side. It seemed much more real that way. That’s what families did. They sometimes walked together. Of course, not many families walked together into a murder trial.
“Now just remember,” Mom said, squeezing my arm, “you just tell the truth and everything will be fine.”
She was dressed all in black, like maybe she thought she was going to a funeral. Dad wore a dark blue suit, similar to the suit I was wearing. He’d bought it for me. He’d said blue was a good color if you were testifying, because people were more likely to believe you if you were a man and you were wearing blue. I wondered how he knew such a thing was true, but not enough that I actually asked. There’d been a lot of stuff I’d wanted to say lately, but it was as if my mouth had been shut off and my body was running on autopilot. The real me was someplace else.
I couldn’t be here. If I was here, I’d have to think about what I’d done.
I was okay until they opened the paneled doors and I saw all the people sitting in the rows, and up front, behind that big wooden desk, the judge in black. My heart started pounding like crazy, and it got even worse when I saw Jake in the orange prison uniform at the table to the left. It was just the back of his head, but I knew it was him. He was the only one in the room who hadn’t turned to look at me.
Even in a big city like Denver, the story of our break-in and the shooting was front-page stuff, mostly because we were juveniles so far from home. And of course, the Rexton Times back home had been running articles regularly on it since it had happened, or so Mom had said. I hadn’t actually left Denver since I was released on bail.
So far, they were only charging me with breaking and entering, and there was a deal in place that as long as I testified that Jake had shot the kid, they wouldn’t charge me with anything else. Dad’s expensive lawyer had he
lped a bunch on that account. I would probably serve a couple of months in juvie when it was all said and done, but that would be it. I’d already spent a few days in jail right after it had happened. Somehow I could get through a few months without losing my mind.
My parents took their seats on the aisle, and I walked alone to the front, where an officer of the court asked me to put my hand on the Bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God. I heard my own voice saying the words back, and it sounded like it was coming back to me from the end of a long tunnel.
The whole truth.
As much as I had tried to put the shooting out of my mind, it was all I could think about the last few months, as the case went from advisement, to hearing, to arraignment, and finally to trial, the district attorney pushing it through as fast as possible, me learning more than I had ever wanted to know about our justice system. The truth. I’d gone over and over what had happened that day in my mind, trying to see some way to stop what had happened. I never should have gone into the house, but if I hadn’t gone in, Jake might be dead instead of the kid. Wayne Tolley. He had a name. I didn’t want to use his name, because it hurt to even think it. He’d been in and out of drug rehabs since he was fourteen, his dad a widowed importer who spent a lot of time abroad. They’d found more than twenty ounces of cocaine in the kid’s room. Jake had been right. The kid had been drugged out of his mind.
He hadn’t deserved to die, though, no matter what kind of state of mind he had been in, and I was the one who’d shot him. Me, Charlie Hill, a killer. There was no getting over it. I was the one who had shot him and Jake was going to pay for it. He’d said he wanted to take the fall, that I should let him do it, but then why hadn’t he confessed? He’d pleaded not guilty. Maybe he thought he could get off on a technicality, but I didn’t see how he could prove he wasn’t guilty. They had him standing over a dead body with the weapon in his hand. Like the prosecutor had said in the paper, it was a slam dunk. They were even trying him as an adult, which they could do in Colorado. It was going to be brutal.
I took my seat on the witness stand. Elevated, and surrounded by wooden walls, I felt like I was on a ship, and all the people sitting out there were just faces bobbing in the sea. The people in the jury box were staring at me as if they were trying to read my thoughts. I glanced up at the judge, who was small and weaselly, his glasses so heavy it seemed his nose might break from the weight of them, not at all the way I imagined a judge should look. A judge should look like God.
“. . . confirm for the jury that you were with the defendant, Jonathon Tucker, at the time Wayne Tolley was shot and killed?”
It took me a moment to realize that the prosecutor—a tall man with thin brown slicked-back hair, the kind of guy who looked like he should be selling Oldsmobiles with bad tires instead of putting kids behind bars—was speaking to me. My throat felt scratchy, and I swallowed several times.
“Yes sir,” I said.
“Can you point to Jonathon Tucker, please?”
I raised my finger and pointed. Jake still wasn’t looking at me, his gaze fixed on the blank yellow legal pad in front of him. Strangely, he looked more clean-cut and presentable as a prisoner than he ever had before, his hair short and neatly trimmed, his face clean and free of stubble. However, he did look even thinner, if that was possible, and his eyes had recessed into deep sockets. I could only imagine the hell he’d been through the past few months. His foster parents hadn’t even come for him. He was totally on his own.
The whole truth.
The prosecutor was talking now, reminding the jury of what had happened, and my supposed part in it, and I was sure this was all a lead-up to asking me the big question. He would ask me if I had seen Jake shoot the kid. It was the question I’d been waiting months to answer. I’d written down what I was going to say, word for word, spending hours memorizing it, knowing that there was a good chance I’d blow it all if I tried to make it up on the spot. The first few times I recited it (quietly in my room at Dad’s house, late, when everyone was asleep), I’d felt like throwing up, but it had gotten easier the more times I’d said it.
But now that I was looking at Jake, all the shame and regret came rushing right back, just as it had right after I’d shot the kid. My stomach churned and the acid burned in my throat. I’d shot the kid. I’d shot someone. After I had pulled that trigger, the world was different, I was different, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to get back to living a somewhat normal life. Even if everyone else could get past this, I didn’t know if I ever would. It would forever define me, just like being left-handed or a Taurus defined you. I didn’t want to throw away my life. I didn’t want to go to jail. But how could I let Jake take the fall for me?
It was right then, sitting in that courtroom, that I finally realized something. I realized that Jake was a better person than me.
He may have been a smoker, a troublemaker, a dropout, and even a lawbreaker when it suited him, but he was a better person. He was a good person. What he’d done with Anju and her mom, what he’d done to help me see Dad, those were good things. They were things that mattered, that made a difference. He’d done more good stuff in one week than I’d done in my entire life. He was a good person, and what was I? I was a nothing. I’d never risked myself in any way for other people. Here I was doing it again, taking the cowardly path. I was letting Jake take the fall for me because it saved me. I’d lobbed the water balloon that had done the most damage, and now Jake was going to take credit for it to save my ass.
I’d been trying to convince myself that maybe it was all right for Jake to take the fall because of the type of person he was, that maybe this sort of thing would have caught up to him eventually, but looking at him now, so alone at that table, I couldn’t buy it anymore. Jake was not only a better person than me, I was hardly a person at all. I was hardly even there.
“. . . you tell me, Charlie, did you see Mr. Tucker shoot the victim?”
I looked at the lawyer. So the moment had finally arrived. His mouth was open, as if he expected me to answer with a simple yes, and then he would proceed directly to the next question.
I may not have learned much in my sixteen years, but I have learned this: Life can turn on a wheel. It can. There are moments that come along that can change how things will play out for the rest of your life. But here’s the thing. Here’s the thing I’ve learned. Those moments come again and again. You may blow it once, but you almost always get another chance. The wheel just keeps on spinning. It’s never too late to see if you might make something of yourself.
“I did it,” I said.
The lawyer blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I did it,” I said, louder, more sure of myself now. “I shot him.”
“Damn it, Charlie!” Jake cried from where he was sitting.
“I SHOT HIM!” I shouted again, and it was like the cage doors opened and I was setting myself free. “IT’S MY FAULT!”
Pandemonium broke out in the courtroom, some shouts, a few gasps. The judge banged his gavel and yelled for order. I just went on saying, I did it! I went on saying it and saying it, afraid that if I stopped, they’d pretend they hadn’t heard me, and I didn’t want people ignoring me, not this time, not now.
I was changing things, and nobody was going to stop me.
chapter nineteen
It was one of the hottest days of the summer, cracking a hundred degrees for the third straight day. Augusts in Rexton were usually hot and dry, but this was worse. This was like trying to live inside an oven.
Most of the students at Rexton Community College had taken refuge inside the air-conditioned brick buildings, leaving the campus deserted. I sat in the shade of a dogwood tree on the South Lawn, my drawing pad in my lap, a tin container of colored pencils on the grass next to me. The assignment was open-ended, just do something in color and something fast, so I could have done it indoors, but I wanted to tackle the Pioneer Fountain. In the eight
months I’d been going to school, I’d already drawn it three times, but I still hadn’t gotten it right.
It’d been over a year since I’d gotten out of prison back in Denver. The four years I’d spent in there hadn’t been total hell, but they had been pretty close, especially when they had transferred me to the adult prison when I had turned eighteen. It had been a minimum-security-type work farm out in the flat farmlands, but it was still a prison even if there weren’t any bars. You always knew there were bars even if you couldn’t see them.
But I didn’t get life in prison. I didn’t get anything even close to that. It turned out that Dad’s expensive lawyer had been worth the money. Even though the prosecutor was out for blood, the jury believed my story, that I had gone into the house to stop Jake, and that I had shot mostly in self-defense. It was still second-degree murder, but I only got seven years, and I got three years shaved off because of good behavior. At twenty-one, I was still older than most of the freshman community college students, but not by that much, not so much that anyone could tell.
“Hey there,” a voice said behind me.
I knew the voice even before I turned. I knew the voice belonged to Jake Tucker, a voice I hadn’t actually heard since he yelled, “Damn it, Charlie!” at the trial. What I hadn’t expected was how he looked—trim and tan, thin but in a good way, a muscular way, his hair short, his blue polo shirt and tan slacks bright and clean. He stood there looking down at me, his hands shoved into his pockets, a gold watch glittering on his wrist. If it weren’t for the crooked smirk, I wouldn’t have known it was him. In fact, of the two of us, I was the one who looked more out there, having grown my hair long and taken to wearing paint-stained T-shirts and jeans with holes in them.
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