by Zara Lisbon
Then I got a call. “I want you to stay calm.” It was Jack’s voice on the phone. My mom had handed it to me, saying your lawyer with so much contempt, as if it were my fault that I needed a lawyer.
“Then you shouldn’t have said that,” I answered. Involuntarily, I started digging my teeth into my bottom lip, my heart fluttering up in my throat like I’d swallowed a bird.
“Your fitness hearing has been scheduled for next week. That will determine if your case can stay in juvenile court.”
I’d known this had to happen, but it had snuck up on me anyway like two hands closing around my neck from behind.
“Justine? You okay?”
“I’m calm,” I lied.
“Okay…” He didn’t believe me. “I’m going to need you to come downtown tomorrow for a psych evaluation.”
“Why?”
“Understanding your psychological state will help the judge make a decision. And it might help me argue the case for keeping you out of adult court.”
“So, what, I have to talk to a therapist?”
“It shouldn’t take long,” he assured me.
“Are they going to try to figure out if I’m crazy?”
“Your sanity will play a part, sure. But you seem like a stable girl to me. I’m guessing they’ll see that too.”
They’re going to need to know about Bellflower, I thought. Then my image as a “stable girl” would go right out the window.
“Jack,” I said. “I don’t want to go to jail.”
“Of course you don’t,” he said. “I’m doing everything in my power to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
I stared into a glass of water on my nightstand until it blurred.
“Justine, are you there?” he asked.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, and hung up before he could hear the tears and tightness in my voice. It’s not gonna happen, I told myself, reaching for the Hydro Flask, it’s not gonna happen. I pressed PLAY on Donnie Darko and Jake Gyllenhaal was saying, “I just hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to.” His face, the innocent sleepiness of it, was such a comfort, and for a second everything was okay.
CHAPTER 12
JUSTINE CHILDS EVALUATED BY CLINICAL PSYCHIATRIST
Dr. Morton was the forensic psychiatrist, and it was up to him to determine my psychological maturity. Did I have the mind of an adult or a child? I myself was eager to know the answer, but suspected it was neither. Dr. Morton wore a slate-gray suit and matching tie. He was youthful with a fresh haircut and looked like he’d just been flown in from some forensic psychiatrist factory where they crank them out on a conveyor belt, one by one.
I felt at ease sliding into the vinyl chair across from him. Therapists were people I understood, and myself was a topic I liked discussing.
“Justine, hi.” He smiled and the skin around his eyes crinkled. “I’m Dr. Morton. You can call me Daniel, if you want.”
“Okay, Daniel,” I said, glancing around the room and noticing a long horizontal mirror embedded into the cinder-block wall. “Are we being watched?”
“No,” he said, “but I am recording this.”
“Right,” I said, keeping an eye on the mirror.
“I’m just going to ask you a few questions and hopefully get to know you a little bit, okay?”
“Yep.”
“How old are you, Justine?”
“I’m sixteen.”
“You go to school?”
“No … I’m taking a break. I have to get ready for the trial.”
“But you used to go to school?”
“Of course. I finished tenth grade at Santa Monica High School this past summer. Hopefully if I don’t get sent to jail I’ll go back next semester.”
“So, you liked school, then?”
“Sometimes.”
“But … sometimes not?”
“I’m terrible at math and science. I did get an A in ninth-grade chemistry, but that’s only because I had sixth period free so I sat through every lecture twice.”
“Do you have friends at school?”
“I have three best friends. Maddie, Abbie, and Riley. They’ve been my best friends since … I don’t even know how long. We met in elementary school.”
“So you’re pretty tight with them, then.”
“You could say that, yes.”
“Did they meet Eva-Kate Kelly?”
“Um … no.”
“Why not?”
“I guess we had started to drift apart.”
“Hm, why’s that?” He pretended to pout.
Because they wouldn’t grow up, I thought, because they lacked imagination. Because I couldn’t confide in them anymore.
“I don’t really want to talk about that,” I said. “Next question, please.”
“Okay … have you ever been involved in any gang activity?”
“What?” I laughed. “No.”
“What about a history of drug use?”
“I don’t use drugs recreationally, if that’s what you mean.”
“Are you prescribed anything by a psychiatrist?”
“Prozac for depression, Xanax as needed for anxiety.”
“How often would you say you need your anxiety medication?”
All the fucking time, I thought.
“Weekly,” I said. “Once a week. Maybe twice.”
“What happens if you don’t take it?”
“I could end up having a panic attack.”
“Can you describe what a panic attack feels like?”
“My heart races and my throat feels like it’s closing up. Sometimes I get dizzy. It’s pure dread, like the world is ending. If it gets bad enough I’ll have to scream into a pillow.”
“On a scale from one to ten, how bad was the worst panic attack you ever had?”
* * *
The worst panic attack I ever had? Well, that would have to be when I was thirteen and my panic got so bad the doctors called it psychotic. I’d been alone in my room one night watching Gossip Girl, happily enough, when I was suddenly hit by the idea that I should write out my entire life story up to that point. At first it felt like a good idea, then, as I kept writing, it felt like an absolute necessity, like I absolutely had to keep going until it was finished. The drive was intense. I stayed up all night writing frantically, filling a blue composition notebook with stories from my early childhood—catching frogs on East Coast summer vacations, horseback riding lessons with Riley in Topanga Canyon, a brief stint with ballet classes, my Beauty and the Beast–themed fourth birthday party—and when the sun rose and I had to go to school, I took the notebook with me and kept writing throughout the entire day.
I stayed up again that night, and the night after that, but the more I wrote the slipperier the words became—they’d pop into my head but slide away before I could get them down on paper—and so I had to write faster. My hand ached and started to cramp, but I kept going.
On the fourth night I paused for a moment and looked out my window. The streetlamps were off and the sky was black as ink. It was so dark I couldn’t imagine it ever being light again. That’s when the panic set in. Dread like a wall of scalding-hot water crashed over me. I felt in my heart that if I were to close my eyes, even for a second, the sun would never rise again. That would be the beginning of the end of the world as we knew it. The responsibility was astronomical, but I didn’t think I had a choice.
I stopped writing, but stayed awake for two more days and nights just trying to keep the sun rising each morning. My parents knew something was wrong—I was staring off into space and slurring my speech—but they didn’t say anything. At least not to me. They just watched me a little more closely.
The next night was when my mind really turned on me. That’s when the message switched. It told me I’d had it wrong all along: I wasn’t the solution, I was the problem, and if I wanted to save the world I’d have to kill myself. But I
couldn’t kill myself; I was too afraid to die. So instead I wrote about it, about the guilt I felt over being too afraid to do what had to be done to save the world. About how I couldn’t think of a way to die that didn’t terrify me.
My mom found the notebook. She packed my suitcase and drove me to Bellflower.
Bellflower was a place I could go to be safe from myself. Where professionals could make sure I took my meds and got enough rest to restore me to sanity. A place that would shield me from the pressures of the outside world. It was a good place, supposedly.
On day one I met Annabel. My roommate. Annabel was bipolar and a self-harmer, and had been there awhile by the time I showed up. She had earned the privilege of a CD player and one CD, Spiceworld. That first night when I started crying—how had I ended up somewhere so dismal? Would I ever get out?—she pressed PLAY. It wasn’t the Spice Girls that cheered me up, but the idea that there was someone in the world who wanted to cheer me. She had scars up and down her arms, but I didn’t see that. I just saw her big brown eyes and the dreamy, beguiled shine they got when she looked at me. Nobody had ever looked at me like that, like I was valid, like I was desirable, and it made me want to be around her all the time.
So we spent as much time together as possible, pulled and stuck like magnets. She was so pretty, with curly, honey-brown hair, and deep dimples in her tan cheeks. We watched Veronica Mars reruns in the community room, snuck cigarettes from the older kids out in the courtyard, stayed up late reading tarot cards and giving them our own meanings. We never discussed where we’d come from or where we wanted to go. We were in the moment. We were the moment. We made sure to never kiss or even touch in public; if they found us out they’d put us in separate rooms.
You have to have lost touch with reality to get admitted into Bellflower, but once you’re there, reality gets further away. You have psychiatrists tinkering with your medications and no interactions with the outside world. You get very little sunlight and way too much sleep. You have nurses and orderlies forcing you to fall in line with rules that feel arbitrary, telling you you’re not well enough to make your own decisions, that your free will has been taken away from you for a good reason. Lights out at eight even if you’re not tired, wake up at five even if you are.
They watch you playing checkers like you plan on filing down one of the pieces to slit your throat; they peer under your tongue, under your bed, checking for any stowed-away relics of your freedom. You ask when you’ll be able to go home, but they won’t tell you. You forget your family. They’re not coming to visit. Especially Annabel’s, as it turned out. They were dead.
The Plan was born out of desperation. Living in the moment, it turns out, can start to feel like hell. If you’re always in the moment and the moment is distinguished by browns and grays of all shades, food that tastes like nothing, beds that are more wire than mattress, with papery sheets they only wash once a month, it becomes somewhere you want to escape.
The security was high at Bellflower, so we knew we couldn’t just slip out. And we felt we wanted to preserve ourselves, be together forever on another plane of reality. I’d heard somewhere that death isn’t real. It’s like, we’re all on channel four, and when someone dies they go to channel five. It’s not that they stop existing, we just can’t see them because they’re on another channel. I said this to Annabel and she said, “Wanna change the channel?”
And so we had a plan. And it felt good to have a plan, to store the pills away until we had enough for both of us. It brought us even closer, this teamwork, and I felt more and more committed to it every day. I honestly had no idea that I’d change my mind.
* * *
“Justine?” Dr. Morton asked again. “Are you paying attention?”
“Sorry, what was the question?”
“On a scale from one to ten, how high would you rate your worst panic attack?”
I remembered my last night with Annabel and said, “Ten.”
* * *
I’d imagined court would be this regal, sort of majestic place. Marble hallways and Grecian columns, mahogany tables and podiums and balconies, even. Like Atticus Finch could appear any minute and throw an apple or whatever at the defendant, thus restoring justice and peace and balance to civilization itself. But it was nothing like that.
The airport courthouse is called that because it’s right next to Los Angeles International Airport. You can see planes taking off and landing so close it looks like you could reach out and touch them, people going places, people returning home safely, the radical heat of jet fuel rippling from the engines looking like a mirage, like wormholes in the sky. From the ninth floor you can see cars down on the freeway below veering from their lanes just slightly as they round the bends. I stood near the windows—unreasonably large, braced with diagonal iron beams—daydreaming about the airplanes, pretending to be a passenger on my way to a normal life. On my way to college, maybe, on the East Coast, where nobody knew my name. What was so bad about being anonymous? Why had I gnawed my way out of that life?
My mom sat on a bench somewhere behind me, making phone call after phone call. I couldn’t imagine who she was speaking to, but each call sounded just as much a matter of life and death as the last. The hallway we waited in was goose-bump cold and generically carpeted in smooth, dense gray. I watched a digital clock hung up on a sunburned-looking wall climbing in slow motion from eight to eight thirty to almost nine before a door finally opened and Jack ushered us into the courtroom.
The ceilings were low and paneled and perforated with tiny holes, fluorescent lights embedded throughout, buzzing. The seats were plastic and folded up like in a movie theater, and completely unoccupied. Nobody was here to see this movie. This bland, uninspired movie of my life, where District Attorney Melinda Warren would try to claim I should be tried, not just for a crime I didn’t commit, but as an adult. This bitch actually wanted me to take adult responsibility for something she had no real proof I was guilty of.
Melinda Warren was tall, poised, young. She wore a tan pantsuit, her honey-blond hair in a chignon. She was so beautiful. Plump lips and arched eyebrows, pastel-blue eyes, subtle dimples, and a beauty mark resting on the upper right quadrant of her left cheek. Dime-sized pearls in her ears. She crossed her arms and held my gaze. One way or another—I swallowed—this woman is going to end me.
“Well,” she said when she saw me enter, “look who it is. Whiplash girl child in the flesh.”
“Justine, this is Assistant District Attorney Melinda Warren. She’s prosecuting the case. Melinda, this is my client, Justine Childs.”
“Oh, I know who you are,” she said, not so much to me as at me. “You slayed your best friend in cold blood.”
“All right, that’s enough, Melinda.” Jack held up a hand. “Let’s not, okay?”
The judge—a rubbery, bland-looking man with black-rimmed glasses—entered and took a seat at his podium. A placard in black-and-gold read: Judge Marshall Brandeis. “All rise,” he said. We rose. “Fitness hearing number 7715,” he read, a little too drowsily for my liking. “We’ll be determining if Justine Childs is fit to be tried as an adult for the crime of murder in the second degree. You may be seated.”
We sat. Coffee sloshed back and forth in my empty stomach. I wondered if I’d ever have an appetite again. Murder in the second degree. Probably not.
“I’m ready to hear from the people,” he said. “DA Warren?”
“Yes, your honor.” Melinda stood. “The crime committed here was no accident, nor was it the act of a child. Eva-Kate Kelly was stabbed with a dagger and left to bleed to death. Justine Childs is sixteen years of age, fully old enough to be tried as an adult. She spent the summer without parental supervision, taking care of herself, party hopping with socialites and celebrities. The life she’s been living is hardly that of a child. The people ask that this case be moved to adult court, where it belongs.”
She sat down and crossed her long legs. I fixed my eyes on Judge Brandeis, lookin
g for a hint of what he was thinking. Had she swayed him? He kept a poker face and extended an open hand in Jack’s direction. “Mr. Willoughby?”
“Thank you, your honor.” Jack stood, and I relaxed immediately. “I’d like to start by pointing out that my client is being completely misrepresented both by the tabloids and by Miss Warren. Yes, she spent a week or two without supervision, but that is only because she has a reputation for being well behaved and trustworthy. She’s a straight-A student without any record of delinquent behavior whatsoever. She plays cello in her school’s symphony orchestra, and is known in her neighborhood as a friendly and reliable dog walker. She has her own dog, Princess Leia, with whom she has a loving bond. Everything we know about Justine points to her being a compassionate and harmless person. She’s a good kid, your honor, but more importantly she is a kid, and trying her as an adult would be inappropriate and a huge mistake.” He sat down and gave me a confident nod.
“Would the defense or prosecution like to call forth any witnesses?”
“Your honor.” Jack stood again. “I’d like to call Dr. Daniel Morton, the psychiatrist who assessed Miss Childs’s fitness for juvenile court.”
This will be good, I thought, I did a perfect job convincing him.
When Dr. Morton took the stand, I looked up at him with wide doe eyes, praying he’d see me for what I really was, or at least for what I really wanted to be: a kid. In that moment nothing seemed as gruesome or as tragic as crossing over into adulthood.
“Dr. Morton,” Jack questioned, “did you get the opportunity to interview Miss Childs and come up with an assessment as to whether or not she’s fit to be tried in adult court?”
“I did, yes.”
“And what did you find?”
“I found that though Miss Childs is highly intelligent, and although the crime she’s accused of is quite severe in nature, she lacks both the mental and emotional maturity to be tried as an adult. Additionally, she would be benefitted greatly by the rehabilitation programs offered to those convicted in juvenile court.”
