by Zara Lisbon
“And what was that assessment based on?”
“Several factors. Primarily: She has had no history of violence or drug abuse, and despite a few brief and uncharacteristic weeks spent attending parties with Eva-Kate Kelly, she has zero experience living life as an adult. She relies on her parents for food and shelter, and she relies on her school friends and classmates for a sense of community. Being sixteen, her brain isn’t fully developed, nor is it capable of understanding reality on an adult level.”
“Thank you, Dr. Morton. No further questions, your honor.”
“Dr. Morton, you may step down,” said the judge. Dr. Morton stepped down.
That’s it? I thought as Judge Brandeis began jotting notes. That’s all there is to say to determine my fate? Neither of them was wrong, I realized, but neither was right either. I was eleven when I started wondering about my status as a child, twelve when I started doubting I could identify as one. But when you’re thirteen and your friends start hosting parties and ceremonies to mark the beginning of their “womanhood,” when you’re fourteen and Kyle Reed from fourth-period symphony orchestra puts his hand up your skirt and you don’t do anything to stop him, your doubt becomes a full-blown identity crisis. I’d spent so many nights in front of the mirror wondering who I was, who I’d become, now that I wasn’t a kid anymore. But one thing was for sure: I wouldn’t survive a week in the adult prison system. I shifted nervously in the dark depths of the unknown.
“All rise,” Judge Brandeis commanded. I felt wobbly on my legs and pressed my palms on the table to steady myself. “From what I’ve heard, Justine Childs is unfit to stand trial in juvenile court. She will be tried as an adult.”
I gasped.
District Attorney Warren smirked.
“Your honor—” Jack tried, but was interrupted.
“Mr. Willoughby, if your client is, in fact, innocent, she has a better chance of being proven so by a jury,” said Judge Brandeis. “She’s sixteen and of sound mind and body; there’s no reason to try her as a juvenile. Court adjourned.”
He banged his gavel and got up to leave. Jack’s shoulders sagged.
“See you in court.” Warren wiggled her fingers at us and strode out, the double doors swinging behind her as she left.
* * *
“What did he mean that I have a better chance being proven innocent by a jury?” I asked. It was a new day and I found myself back in Jack’s office. My mom had to ply me with Xanax and bribe me with ice cream to get me there, and once she had, she’d fled to tend to a patient, shaking Jack’s hand as if to say she’s your problem now.
“Even though the stakes are much lower in juvenile court, the chances that one judge will find you guilty are much higher than for twelve civilians who have to agree on a verdict. A jury will be less likely to agree on your guilt, and so you do have a better chance of getting an innocent verdict.”
“But if they do vote guilty, I could go to jail for … the rest of my life…” I had intended this to be a question, but it trailed off at the end as I saw myself behind bars, wrinkled and weathered and wasting away.
“And we’ll cross that bridge if we get to it, but in the meantime let’s just focus on winning, okay?”
“Mhm,” I mumbled. I tried to picture myself anywhere other than behind bars. I tried to picture myself free, on an island somewhere with a syrup-heavy mojito and a warm breeze and the sting of sand and sun and salt water where no one would ever find me.
“As I’ve said, I’m going to be arguing that there isn’t enough evidence to prove your guilt. Once I show how thin the prosecution’s case is, no way will the jury vote to convict. I mean, I can’t promise that. But I think it looks good. I want to start by filling in some blanks. The only real glitch here is the timeline.” The weight he put into these words unnerved me. It confirmed what I already feared: The timeline was more than just a glitch.
“The timeline,” I said, as if saying it could put off having to talk about it.
“According to the coroner’s report, Eva-Kate Kelly died between midnight and four in the morning. You weren’t at the Ace Hotel until five, which means technically you could have … you could have committed the crime.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You don’t need to convince me.”
“Don’t I?”
“No, Justine,” he said. “You really don’t, okay? You need to convince the jury. And in order to do that, we need to hear from you what happened and where you were leading up to your arrival at the Ace.”
“Great. I’m ready. Now? Should I tell you now?”
He uncapped a Uni-ball. “Go slowly so I can get it all down.”
I sighed deeply. “We got home from San Luis Obispo at 9:00 P.M. Eva-Kate and I. While she was downstairs talking to Josie and London and Olivia, I went upstairs to put my stuff away. That’s when I heard the landline ringing. To my great surprise, and quite frankly, horror, the person calling was my own mom, letting Eva-Kate know that she’d be back in town soon and they could restart their sessions.”
“Your mom is Eva-Kate’s therapist?”
“She was. But I didn’t know it until that moment.”
“Eva-Kate never told you?”
“No.”
“And your mom never told you?”
“Also no.”
“Huh.” He chewed lightly on the pen cap. “That’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Thank you. It’s extremely strange.”
“But I don’t know what to make of it.”
“Me neither. It feels like it should be relevant, but I don’t know how.”
“We’ll get back to it. Go on.”
“So then I confronted Eva-Kate, and she acted like it wasn’t weird at all. She lied and said my mom had given her her blessing to buy the house basically across the street, which is just really creepy because I know for a fact my mom did not.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because if she had known Eva-Kate was moving in, my mom wouldn’t have left me alone there for the summer. I mean, sure, she wanted me to go stay with Aunt Jillian, but if she knew Eva-Kate was moving to Carroll Canal, she would have for sure lectured me about staying away from her. My mom is obsessed with me not getting into trouble. Or she was. That ship has kinda sailed now.”
“Then what happened?”
“I felt really freaked out. I don’t know exactly what I was scared of, I just knew something was really off. Like, really off. This girl had lied to me all summer, she’d known my mom was her therapist and hadn’t said anything about it, and she’d moved across the street from her therapist. Without telling her. That’s not a good sign. It’s not a sign of sanity, that’s for sure. I didn’t feel safe, so I had to leave. I had to figure out what the hell was going on. So I went home and broke into my mom’s file cabinets, which is when I learned that Eva-Kate had been seeing my mom for many years, and that she had this strange fixation with me and my life—”
“Wait, how did you get into the cabinets?”
“Trial and error,” I said. “I guessed the passcode. I got it wrong a few times, but eventually I guessed right. It was Eva-Kate’s birthday. 061300.”
“Eva-Kate’s birthday? Why? Have you asked your mom about it?”
“She said she set the code years and years ago when Eva-Kate was a kid, something about wanting to cheer her up.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“It could. Making the code to her cabinet Eva-Kate’s birthday is … intense. Is it possible … Well, I’m just wondering if—I’m sorry, there’s no delicate way to say this.”
“You can just say it. I really don’t mind.”
“I’m wondering if your mom had any kind of unhealthy fixation with Eva-Kate. And if she did, is it possible that she killed her?”
“Obviously I’ve thought about that,” I said, “but I can’t think of a motive. A fixation? Do people really kill out of fixation?
My mom is nuts, but I don’t see her as the type to be driven to murder by a teenager.”
“Okay, so you were saying”—he read from his notes—“you learned that Eva-Kate had been seeing your mom for many years and that she had this strange fixation with your life.”
“Right, which is utterly insane, because my life has never been at all interesting. Aside from Bellflower, but that was so brief. But she was intrigued by me being so normal—or so real—or something like that. She thought I was a real girl in a fake plastic world, and she needed to know me because of that. Which is so sad, I mean, that she was so deprived of down-to-earth people that she actually thought I was. And the thing is, I’m not, I’ve never been down to earth. I was just grounded compared to the flighty airheads that surrounded her. And I guess she was hungry for that. For substance. It’s just so sad how wrong she was. About me. And I guess how wrong I was about her.”
Jack Willoughby scribbled furiously as I talked. I peered at his sheet of paper and saw he had written down every single word I’d said. “So then what?” He came up for air.
“I knew my mom was going to be home soon, and I didn’t want to see her or talk to her. It was just so insanely creepy knowing that the two of them had known each other since I was a kid. This whole time, I just kept thinking, this whole time. I took it too personally. I thought maybe they were, like, conspiring against me, which I know sounds crazy, but I hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep and I, well, I wasn’t like completely up to date on my meds, and after all they were both keeping a secret from me, so in a way I had reason to be paranoid. I think. Maybe.”
“Go on…”
“I realized I had all this money from my Hot Toxic hair dye contract so I took an Uber to the Ace.”
“Why the Ace?”
“I’ve just always wanted to go.” I shrugged.
“How long were you at your mom’s? From when to when?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “I know I left around four thirty in the morning. And I guess I must have gotten there around 10:00 P.M. Six and a half hours? I was definitely there at my mom’s during the window where they say Eva-Kate, you know, died.”
“Can you think of anyone, anyone at all, who can vouch for that?”
“No.” I closed my eyes. My neck fought to keep the enormous weight of my head upright. “Nobody was home and nobody was around. Nobody saw me.”
“Okay, so run me through it one more time. I know, I know, it’s tedious, but bear with me for just a second. You got back to Eva-Kate’s around nine, so you confronted her about the voice mail around when, nine thirty?”
“Sure. Yeah. Nine thirty-ish. Look, Jack, what good is any of this if we can’t give the jury … I mean, I know for a fact I’d feel much better if we had a working alternative theory … something that doesn’t just plant some doubt in the jury’s mind, but something that makes them fully confident in my innocence.”
“Well—”
“In the Bianchi sisters’ case that you won, you were able to prove that somebody else was in the house and it unraveled the whole thing! I know there were other people at Eva-Kate’s that night, people who were there long after I left, even.”
“And you think one of them could be the guilty party.”
“Of course. Dr. Silver, her plastic surgeon, came by that night, did you know that? London saw him. I’m sure you can check the surveillance footage. I mean, why in God’s name would a doctor show up at—”
“But his fingerprints weren’t on the weapon.”
“Okay, but maybe … maybe he wore gloves! He’s a doctor, after all.”
“Possible,” said Jack. “But if we’re narrowing it down to realistic suspects, we should focus on people who did leave fingerprints on the athame.”
“You mean besides mine? They found matches?” I almost jumped out of my chair but dug my nails into the leather arms to restrain myself.
“Yep.” Jack opened a manila folder and read from its contents. “Rob Donovan, Liza McKelvoy, Olivia Law, and Josie Bishop.”
“Are you kidding me?” I pulled my cheeks down with my palms. “Then it could have been any one of them. God, I’m so stupid. I believed them when they said they didn’t do it.”
“Who said they didn’t do it? Who did you talk to?”
“All of them,” I said. “You know, Rob and Liza are missing. Nobody knows where they are. Isn’t that suspicious? And they had motive. Eva-Kate was blackmailing—”
“Hold on. It would look suspicious, yes, but their alibis check out. The doorman at Rob’s building says they were there all night.”
“Then it was Josie,” I said. “It had to be Josie.”
CHAPTER 13
JUSTINE CHILDS WRITES A POEM
It had to be Josie, but I couldn’t prove it. I spent weeks trying to figure it out as preparations for trial continued around me. It was April when I stopped trying. I just didn’t have any energy left. My fate closed in around me, black and blotchy and cold. The fright of it was oppressive, paralyzing. Most days I didn’t bother to get out of bed.
I woke every morning feeling steamrolled. My eyes sagged and stung, lids heavy and drooping, sinuses swollen. Eating became a laborious chore, and I lost seven pounds. Showering felt utterly inconceivable, so I dragged myself into the bath and lay there for hours wasting the day, wasting away. I hoped to stay in the water so long my skin and bones would dissolve and disappear down the drain, but eventually I always got interrupted. My mom would knock, saying she needed the bathroom, so I’d wrap myself in a towel, throw myself onto the bed, and lovingly examine the deep, waterlogged grooves in my fingertips.
Taylor Swift started teasing the world with clues about her new album and I started losing my mind trying to crack the code. I wrote about it in an attempt to regain my sanity.
It is uncomfortable waiting with the masses, feeling
like a sheep, watching the clock count down until
God knows what.
You want to say:
YOUR SOLAR FLARES ARE FAKE, YOUR PASTELS ARE MANIPULATIVE, but
there’s a too-sweet pulse thwacking in your veins, pooling in your gut telling you
it’s all as real
and as genuine
as the moment you wake up in the morning
and know that one of these days it’ll be for the last time.
All day you’re thinking about me.
Not the me that is you, but the me
that is Taylor Swift. The real me. Owning a decadent collection of flaws
and calling them gems. Asking
for the spotlight and wearing it comfortably
like a second skin.
That me is buried somewhere under backlot cobblestone pastel
and years of shedding snakeskin
turned to butterflies
turned to dust.
At the stroke of midnight Eastern
you sneak away in search of reception and find it outside
in the Los Angeles concept of cold
by a congregation of valet-parked Maseratis
packed in tight, perched and silken
like a murder of crows. You hold the phone to your ear
and you shiver as you listen for the First Time thinking
where, God, please tell me where, does this confidence come from?
And how does one find a place in this world among
the warring colors of a rainbow and the
nonstop
nonchalance
of all the cool chicks out there?
You think why is Taylor Swift 29 and still fighting in the rain? which really means:
Why have I never fought in the rain? Why have I never kissed
in the rain?
A flower doesn’t compare itself
to the flower standing next to it, it just grows. What a lovely sentiment, you say to nobody, but
do I look like a fucking flower to you?
You go home and watch the Music Video on repeat, looking for
a sign
that Taylor Swift is the all-knowing,
the unmoved mover, the puppet master who pulled
the strings of these cosmos together once upon a time.
A sign that you should pledge allegiance, swallow a handful of
Easter eggs and sidewalk chalk
and feel it feel so good, warming the neon passageways to your heart
and feel it feel like home.
I hate when people talk about “real love.” As if there is fake love. My thesis: All love is real.
There are so many different ways to love. But right now there are two types on my mind: the kind that is pure and the kind that is obsession. There is love that is pure obsession. Someone else might try to tell you otherwise, but ask me and I’ll tell you that obsession is a kind of love. This is how I love Taylor Swift, in obsession form. And this form comes from curiosity that can’t possibly be satisfied. When curiosity can’t be satisfied it grows until it becomes obsession. I want to know what Taylor thinks about—what does she think of herself, for starters? Does she see herself as a poet, or as a commodity? Does she feel larger than life? Does she get to experience that larger than life-ness? What does it feel like when you can’t leave your home without a swarm of paparazzi and fans who have come from all over the world to get a look at you? Does that feel good? Do you come to understand yourself as special? What does being a real, true, breathing human being become when impacted by the intricate pressures of mass superstardom? What happens to the inside of that brain? I want to climb in, wander through the periwinkle mechanisms and make sense of it all. But I can’t.
I can try to understand Taylor Swift—what it means to be sensitive yet brave, vulnerable yet powerful—but I’ll never understand. The good people at Bellflower would say, “If you can’t change it, you might as well accept it.” Accept the things you cannot change. But I can’t accept. And so I obsess.
This, too, is the way I love Eva-Kate. I stay up late with wind chime ruminations. If she had lived, if she were alive right now, would I be able to figure her out? Understand the hallways, the ballrooms, the spiral staircases of her mind? Would I have ever been able to untangle her? See the world the way she saw the world, see me the way she saw me? I’ll never know. Because she’s gone, understanding Eva-Kate Kelly is even more impossible than understanding Taylor Swift. I’ll never know. Sometimes I’ll think about it long enough that it feels as though I’m getting close to some kind of answer, but just as I go to reach it, it becomes vapor, and I plummet. My curiosity, unsatisfied, becomes a fire.