by Zara Lisbon
How is she so sure I’m guilty? I wondered. If she really thought of me as a murderer, would she be afraid to meet me alone at night in a dark alley? Little old me? It was a ridiculous thought, that anybody at all could be afraid of someone as insignificant as I am. But I felt a little bit powerful just knowing it was possible.
“We’ve heard closing arguments from the prosecution,” said Judge Lucas. “Is the defense ready to deliver their closing argument?”
“Yes, your honor.” Jack stood up behind me, resting his hands on the back of my chair, and hovered there for a moment. Then he crossed in front of the table so that he was face-to-face with Judge Lucas. “This is a case,” he went on, “about friendship, fascination, and even obsession. It is unclear, however, who was the obsessed, and who was the object of that obsession. It is clear that Eva-Kate Kelly and Justine Childs had an intense relationship. It is unclear, however, why Justine would ever want to hurt Eva-Kate in any way whatsoever. Furthermore, there is no evidence to prove that she did! There is no evidence to prove, as Miss Warren claims, that Justine was obsessed with Eva-Kate. In fact, there is evidence that Eva-Kate was the one obsessed with Justine for many, many years. There is no evidence to back Miss Warren’s theory that Justine was painfully jealous of Eva-Kate. Miss Warren says that Eva-Kate had everything Justine always had to live without—money, beauty, fame—but my client is beautiful in her own right, and always has been. The Childs family may not be celebrity-level wealthy, they may not have a private jet or drive luxury cars, but they are in no way deprived. Here in Los Angeles, California, extreme wealth is very visible. We see excessive and even obscene levels of money being flaunted everywhere we look. Naturally plenty of people fantasize about what such a surreal and seemingly supernatural life would be like, but celebrity lifestyle envy is hardly a motive for murder. To claim so would be absolutely absurd. We all live in Los Angeles too, don’t we? Have any of us contemplated killing a neighbor simply because they might be richer or more famous?” Jack laughed at the idea, giving the jury a moment to do so as well. “I don’t think so. Furthermore, with Eva-Kate’s help, Justine had started making her own money, and in the short amount of time the two were friends, Justine’s Instagram following grew from thirty-five people to over a hundred thousand. Eva-Kate didn’t hold Justine back from achieving fame or from making money; in fact, she led her right to it! Why would Justine want to harm somebody who helped her get the very things she’d always wanted? Doesn’t make sense, does it? There were, however, other people in Eva-Kate’s life who would want to harm her. Miss Warren says that Eva-Kate had friends and family who loved her very much, but, sadly, that wasn’t the case. She was emancipated from her parents, who a court deemed unfit to raise her, estranged from her sister after a huge betrayal, and never felt that she could trust her friends. There were many people who had their reasons for wanting to hurt Eva-Kate, including her friends and family members. Her ex-boyfriend, her scorned assistant, even her own mother, just to name a few—but Justine Childs was not one of them. Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the evidence to convict my client does not exist. Justine didn’t have to testify, but she wanted to tell her story. She thought it was important to tell the court what happened, and she did so with grace and dignity. It’s the prosecution’s job to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, but that has not been done. Not even close. To convict Justine Childs would be to convict a truly innocent young woman and unnecessarily, unjustly ruin her otherwise bright future. It is my belief that anyone who has heard the evidence must understand this to be the truth.”
“Thank you to the prosecution and to the defense,” said Judge Lucas. “The bailiff will now take charge of the jurors. The jurors may deliberate until 4:30 P.M. If a verdict hasn’t been reached, deliberations will continue tomorrow at 9:00 A.M.”
* * *
Jack said this part could take a while, and that we should go home. My dad came over and brought vanilla ice cream cups with chocolate fudge, the kind you scoop with a flat wooden spoon. My mom put one of the cups in front of me and said, “Eat, Justine, you have to eat something.” So I took the spoon out of its paper wrapping and chewed on it until it was soggy and splintered. I liked the taste of wood. If they lock me up, I thought, I’ll chew on wooden spoons until I waste away. If they can’t see me, I won’t really be there.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” my mom asked. “I can put Bye Bye Birdie on in the bedroom and we can lie down.”
“Bye Bye Birdie?” I asked. Keeping my head upright was becoming a tremendous chore. “Why?”
“It’s your favorite. And it’s so fun. Come on, we’ll take our mind off things just for a bit.”
“Bye Bye Birdie hasn’t been my favorite movie since I was like seven,” I said. “I just want to go to sleep.”
“You shouldn’t sleep yet,” my dad said. “The jury could come back with a verdict any minute.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said my mom, swallowing a Xanax with Perrier. “I think this could take a while. Doubt we’ll be hearing until tomorrow.”
“Hey,” my dad said, spotting the near-empty cabinet. “Didn’t I have some liquor here? Where’d it go?”
“I drank it,” I said, and went to my room. When you’ve been accused of murder, you can’t get in much trouble for swiping a bit of your dad’s liquor, now can you?
In my room I started Donnie Darko from the beginning and wondered how I’d ever be able to be the same again once the trial was over. Whatever the verdict, would I ever be okay again? In “All Too Well” when Taylor Swift says, “I’d like to be my old self again, but I’m still trying to find it,” she’s talking about trauma. When you experience trauma, you lose yourself and your sense of reality. The song is about relocating your lost self and recentering yourself in what is real. Which implies, of course, that dating Jake Gyllenhaal was a trauma. He’s the exact combination of handsome and irrevocably weird that I could see wreaking psychological havoc on the female mind. I found myself wanting to know him.
As it turned out, neither of my parents was right. It was more than minutes and sooner than tomorrow. It was two and a half hours before we were called back to court.
“This seems like it happened really fast,” my mom said in the car. “I don’t like this, Elliot. They’re going to find her guilty, aren’t they?”
“We have no way of knowing. We have to prepare for all possible outcomes.”
“I’m not preparing for my daughter to go to prison, Elliot.”
“We have to be realistic.”
“We could leave,” she said then. “We could go to South America. I know someone with a plane, I could call—”
“Your ex-boyfriend the drug smuggler? No, Nancy, you’re not doing that.”
“If they find her guilty, they’ll send her to jail, Elliot, probably for a very long time. I can’t let that happen. We need to get out of here.”
“You need to calm down,” my dad said. “Pull over.”
Reluctantly, my mom pulled over and let him take the wheel. She sat in the passenger seat, sweaty and pale. I closed my eyes and told myself I’d be okay in prison. I’d make friends, I’d write my memoir and sell a million copies. There’d be a TV show. I’d be remembered. It was a nice story, a lullaby I’d sing myself to sleep with every night, if it came down to that.
The cameras followed us up to the courthouse, reporters biting out their questions. Was I looking forward to all of this being over, they wanted to know. What did I think it meant that the jury had come to such a quick decision, they wanted to know. But, most of all, Justine, did you do it? They wanted to know.
In the lobby, a guard scanned me head to toe with a metal detector and I saw I was being filmed through the window. Unable to resist, I smiled at the camera.
“Feeling pretty confident about the verdict, are we?” Melinda said, strolling through the stationary metal detector.
“Not especially,” I told her, wiping the smile off
my face.
“I wouldn’t be if I were you,” she said, lifting her watch from the tray and securing it back around her wrist. “If I were you I’d prepare for the worst.”
* * *
Back in the courtroom, sweating, I took my blazer off. Then I was freezing, shivering, goose bumps ravaging my arms, so I put it back on and rubbed my hands together. I imagined I could rub them so hard and so fast they’d catch fire and I’d go up in flames. That, I thought, would be better than the waiting.
“All rise for the honorable Judge Lucas,” the bailiff boomed. We rose, the shuffling of feet and chair legs filling the room, and Judge Lucas climbed up onto her bench.
“Thank you all for returning so promptly. I am somewhat surprised at how quickly we’re finding ourselves back here, but I trust the jury took all the facts into consideration and used their greatest judgment in deliberation. So, folks”—she turned to the jury—“have you reached a verdict?”
“We have, your honor.” The foreman stood.
“Will the defendant rise,” Judge Victoria Lucas said. A command, not a request.
I stood up, knees quaking.
“You may proceed, Mr. Foreman,” she told him.
“On the count of murder in the second degree, we find the defendant, Justine Childs…”
CHAPTER 22
JUSTINE CHILDS, THE VERDICT PART 2
“Not guilty.”
My knees buckled and I fell to the chair. I cupped my face in my hands and stared dumbly in disbelief. A wall of sound erupted all around me, everything slow and surreal and safe.
“Justine.” I could hear Jack’s voice somewhere near me, but my vision had tunneled and all I could see was the table and my hands as I laid them flat before me. “Justine, we did it. You did it!”
“Justine! Justine!” My mom ran up to me and flung her arms around me, hauling me up onto my feet. “My baby, oh my God, my baby! You’re free!” She kissed my face over and over but I couldn’t feel it. My body felt as pliable as putty, like I’d lost control of my muscles, and my temples throbbed willfully, threatening to break my skull apart. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. The nightmare was over.
More faces and noises bounded toward me, and I felt myself being swept away from them, a team of guards helping me and Jack and my parents out of the courthouse and into the soft flecks of rain that filled the sky like static, falling one by one onto my arms, my collarbones, my face, feeling like a million tiny kisses. The falling drizzle lit up with flashbulbs and I didn’t even flinch. I held my head high.
Justine, how do you feel? FLASH! Justine, who killed Eva-Kate Kelly? FLASH! Justine, what do you have to say to the folks who doubted you? FLASH! Justine, will you ever forgive your accusers? FLASH! Do you believe the LAPD owe you an apology? FLASH! FLASH! Justine! Justine, over here! FLASH! Can you give us a smile, Justine? FLASH! Justine, do you think you were framed? FLASH! Justine, what do you have to say to everyone who believed in you? FLASH! FLASH! Justine, what comes next? FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!
Being escorted into my mom’s Land Rover, I thought again of the day four years ago when I’d had my wisdom teeth taken out. I’d woken up after what felt like only a moment with the taste of cotton and blood in my mouth, wads of gauze tucked in between my gums and my cheeks. My eyes creaked open to a room that was golden and glowing, an opalescent aura humming off the walls, making a ring around the head of the nurse standing over me. The room and everything in it was so exquisitely beautiful it made my eyes water. There was a joy and an ease and a relief nestled deep in my muscles and in my bones. My blood was a warm, slick stream of rosy silver. I’d found heaven. I’d simply stumbled upon it.
“Angel?” my mom had asked, holding my hand. “How are you feeling?”
I’d surveyed the room once more, blinking, taking it all in. I’d sighed, smiled, and said, “This is the best day of my life.”
* * *
At home I collapsed onto my bed and nuzzled my cheek against the down pillows. My phone rang off the hook—Riley, my dad, Aunt Jillian, Maddie, Abbie, my grandma, dozens of numbers I didn’t know. I let it all go to voice mail. On Instagram, the comments flooded in, kind words of praise and congratulations peppered with the occasional malicious epithet.
@Christian_Williams: Congratulations, sweetheart, you deserve only the best!
@Michelle1225: ALL HAIL QUEEN JUSTINE. She walks among us again!
@YourBlueValentine: What an ordeal. I’m so happy it’s over. Go enjoy life and don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise!
@WhatsUpCourtney: 100% innocent and I knew it all along!
@LexiLexi99: You’re beautiful and we love you!
@Piper.Precious: Get it, girl.
@TravelGirl04: You’re all tripping, this girl is guilty AF. Go home and kill yourself, bitch!
@ToniThaTyger: Congratulations, angel!!! @TravelGirl04 STFU.
@R33LDeal: I’m so happy a bunch of jealous losers didn’t take you down!
@GirlieEllie: I <3 this verdict, right?!
@JennieJenny97: You’re a killer and you’re disgusting. Eva-Kate is gone because of you. Burn in hell, evil whore.
That’s enough of that, I thought, tossing my phone aside. I picked Princess Leia up from the floor and let her bite excitedly at my wrists while I felt myself get hypnotized by the rain quietly thrumming against my window. When I closed my eyes I still saw splotches of white camera flash. I wondered if they’d ever go away.
What comes next? a reporter had asked outside the courthouse. The question reverberated now, a tiny pebble rattling through the hallways of my mind. What comes next? What happens now?
There was a knock at my door.
“Hello?” I asked, one eyelid popping open.
“It’s me,” said my mom.
“You can come in,” I told her. She opened the door slowly—small groans unfolding from the hinges one by one—and just stood there, hovering. I shut my eyes again and went back to listening to the rain. It was the only sound I wanted to hear for the rest of my life.
“Justine,” she said finally, sitting down at the foot of the bed, resting her hand on my ankle. “Listen. A lot has happened, and I know we haven’t, you know, had time—or energy, really—to … discuss everything, but I just wanted to say that I’m going to put the ball in your court, okay? We can talk whenever you’re ready, or, if you’d prefer, we don’t ever have to talk about it. We can leave it all in the past and move on. Just … I know I failed you, and I’m sorry.”
I opened my eyes and sat up to face her.
“You didn’t fail me,” I said. “Your testimony helped free me.”
“Oh.” She seemed taken aback by this, tilting her head like a quizzical puppy. “You’re not upset? About…? I just feel that if I were you and—”
“No,” I assured her. “I’m not upset.”
She sighed deeply.
“That’s good to hear, Justine. I’m glad.” She squeezed my foot and stood up. “I’ll let you rest, but come get me if there’s anything you need.”
“Actually,” I said. “There is one thing.”
CHAPTER 23
WHO KILLED EVA-KATE KELLY? THE WORLD WANTS TO KNOW
If I had told my mom that I was upset, that I did actually resent her with every fiber of my being, she wouldn’t have let me go. And I had to go. I had to get out of there, even if just for a few days. I still had some money left from my Hot Toxic sponsorship deal and I used some of the cash to rent myself a room at the Ojai Valley Inn.
My mom had lent me her Land Rover for the trip and I was packing a few things into it, getting ready to go, when I got an unexpected voice mail.
“Hello, Miss Childs, my name is Kenny Kaufman. I’m Eva-Kate Kelly’s attorney. If you have the time, I’d like you to come to my office to sign a few things so that you can take possession of what Miss Kelly left to you.”
Left to me? I hung up the phone feeling giddy and wide-eyed. Me? In
Eva-Kate Kelly’s will?
After everything. For a glimmer of a moment, I hoped. Maybe she really did care about me.
* * *
The offices of Kaufman & Kaufman were located in Pacific Palisades, right off the PCH, and conveniently on my way to Ojai. I pulled up in the Land Rover listening to “Teardrops on My Guitar (Pop Version)” from Taylor Swift’s debut album, blown away and deeply touched by the fact that one person could be so innocent and so brilliant at the same time. God, I wanted to be her. I wanted to be somebody who could get knocked down over and over and over but never stop standing right the fuck back up.