by Sara Wolf
Isis, I know you’re there
Creepy-possible-serial-killer title aside, I click on it. What’s the worst that could happen? My firewalls are tight, and if it’s a phishing email I just won’t click on anything inside it. There’s a single line in the body;
Jack Hunter is evil.
It’s a joke. It has to be a crappy joke email from someone at school. I’ve heard these exact words from people at school – but in an email like this, it’s creepy. It’s somehow more threatening, and real. I try to trace the email by putting it in Google, but nothing comes up. It’s a jumble of letters and numbers that might as well be a spambot, but it’s not. It’s someone who knows my name, and someone who thinks Jack Hunter is evil. I’m conflicted about him for sure, but I don’t think he’s evil. He’s cruel, and callous. But evil? Really, truly evil? That’s going a little far.
And that’s when I see it.
There’s an image attached to the email.
I open it. It’s blurry, but I see trees, and the pine needles covering the ground. I see the dark lump that looks like it has limbs (a person?) lying on the ground, and I see the hand carrying a bat in the corner. A bat stained with something dark on the tip.
My mouth goes dry. I know that hand. Memories surge up like a rapid tide. I grabbed that hand, with its slight veins and long fingers. I held it, both of us sitting on a bed, and I confessed something. Something that meant a lot to me. Thumping music. The taste of booze. Dancing. A bed.
I know whose hand is holding that stained baseball bat.
It’s Jack’s.
Jack is looming over what looks like a dead body.
-5-
3 Years
26 Weeks
5 Days
Welcome to Hell. Population; me, some idiots, and my mother.
Justice is basically a costumed farce. You learn that when you’re three and your parents tell you sharing is caring when quite clearly sharing is terrible, and there is no caring at all involved because no matter how loud you cry no one seems to have sympathy for you and your doll which must not touch anybody else’s hands because everybody else is grimy and dumb.
A courthouse is essentially the same principal; a bunch of stuck-up, weary adults telling each other to share and care. With the added bonus of jailtime.
I sigh and re-button my hideous white blouse all the way up to my chin. At least Mom let me keep my jeans. I can’t morally support her when my butt is hanging out of tight black slacks for the world to see. I try to fix my hair – some big bun Mom made for me, but Kayla slaps my hands away.
“Stop it. You look good. For once.”
I smirk and look over at her. She sits beside me in the courtroom, a similar white blouse barely restraining her considerable chest. She wears a skirt and pearl earrings and actual pearls and looks totally the part of First Lady. If the First Lady was seventeen and Latina. The court isn’t exactly what I pictured – I was expecting CSI levels of crowded rooms and scowling judges and apprehensive jurors. But instead I get a room that looks straight out of the 80’s – weird geometric-patterned carpets and a flickering fluorescent bulb in one corner and a judge who looks like a smiley grandma with purpleish hair and bright red nails. The jury doesn’t even look serious – they talk and laugh among themselves. Mom sits two rows in front of us, her lawyer at her side. Leo, the scumbag, sits at the left table, his lawyer whispering to him. He’s got a cast on his arm and a bandaged nose.
“Ass,” I whisper to Kayla. “Leo’s nose is fine. He’s just wearing it for show.”
She sneers. “He’s so nasty. I hope he gets all that nasty delivered right back at him! Via FedEx! Express shipping!”
I keep my eyes on Mom as people filter in. I slept on the air mattress by her bed last night, because she wouldn’t stop crying. After the Stanford hullabaloo deflated, all that was left was a sad remnant of reality. Her shoulders are shaking under her two-piece suit, but she keeps her head high.
“Is Jack coming?” Kayla asks. I nod.
“Yeah. Why?”
She shrugs. “Just…it might be hard for you. You know.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Kayla’s quiet, before she says; “It was hard for him, too.”
“What? Who?”
“Jack. When you were gone, he was so different. I know I said that the day you came back, but – but he really, really changed. I’ve never seen him look that bored. It was almost like he was dead.”
“No one to call you names does that to people.”
She shakes her head and sighs. Leo’s eyes catch mine once, and I mime cutting my own throat to get the point across. He doesn’t look at me again.
“For once, your threats are deserved.”
The voice belongs to Jack, who slides into the seat next to me. He’s wearing a midnight suit – crisp, with a porcelain blue tie that matches his eyes. His hair’s slicked back with gel, cheekbones defiant and profile haughty and regal as ever.
Kayla gives him a cursory glance. “Hey, Jack.”
“Kayla.” He nods at her. Their exchange two months ago would’ve been so different, but now it’s almost…mature? I shudder. Gross.
The image of his hand in the email picture won’t fade from my mind. He might’ve killed someone! Like, dead! Like, not-breathing or eating! Not-eating sucks because A. food is fantastic and B. food is fantastic! And here I am talking normally to a guy who made people unable to eat. He could be a regular Ted Bundy for all I know, because I don’t know. I don’t know anything about him, except what my fragmented memories tell me. And it makes me feel like screaming. Or puking. Preferably not both at the same time.
“Your mother looks better,” Jack leans in and murmurs. “She was wasting away when you were gone.”
“From the sound of things, so were you.”
He tenses minutely, his suit straining in the corners. Before he can open his mouth, the guard calls out “All rise”, and everyone in the courtroom stands. The grandma-y judge settles in her chair, and tells us to be seated.
“The honorable judge Violet Diego will be presiding over case 109487, Blake vs. Cassidy, on this Friday the 7th of February, 2012,” The guard reads from a clipboard. “Mr. Gregory Pearson and Mrs. Hannah Roth will be representing their respective clients. Mr. William Fitzgerald is acting court stenographer. Your honor.”
The guard nods to Judge Diego, and retreats to the corner. Diego clears her throat.
“It is my understanding this trial is to address Mr. Leo Cassidy’s alleged breaking and entering and assault and battery of Mrs. Patricia Blake and her daughter Isis Blake, on the 4th of January, 2011. Prosecutor, if you’d like to make your opening statement now.”
Mom’s lawyer, a pretty blonde lady, stands and takes the center of the room. She makes a speech about Leo’s ruthlessness, about Mom’s history with him and how she left Florida to escape him. She presents the restraining order Mom got against him before she left, my cranial x-rays, and the photos the police took of the ransacked house. Our house. Shattered glass and a blood smear on the wall and –
I flinch. A metal baseball bat. Kayla grabs my hand and squeezes.
The defense attorney argues Leo was in a fugue state, and suffering from the effects of PTSD from his time in Vietnam as a medic. I lean into Jack.
“You’re a nerd, right? You know big words.”
He snorts. “Verily, forsooth.”
“What’s a fugue state?”
“It’s similar to the dissociative amnesia you have for me,” he murmurs.
“Aw, stalking my medical records? You shouldn’t have.”
“I don’t stalk, I understand basic psychiatric indications. Regardless, the argument of a fugue state in his defense is idiotic. It’s a rare occurrence, and he showed no symptoms of another outward personality. If the judge buys it, I’ll be very surprised.”
“Aren’t you a witness?”
He nods. “They’ll call for me shortly.”
The defense sudde
nly asks for Mom to take the stand. She looks back at me, once, and I smile as encouragingly as I can and give her a thumbs up. She grins, wanly, and walks to the stand. The guard swears her in on the bible, and the defense attorney starts to grill her – where she was that night, what she was wearing, where I was, what Leo looked like, what he sounded like. Mom’s resolve wavers – her hands shaking and her lip bitten – but she doesn’t break. She keeps talking even though she looks like glass is ripping up her stomach from the inside out. When the defense is done, her own lawyer comes up, and Mom gives a full account of the story with the lawyer’s urging. I gnaw my mouth to stay calm and think about unicorns, but even rainbow-pooping horned horses can’t distract me from the way Mom’s voice trembles as she describes the attack. I want to clap my hands over my ears, or leave, but she needs me. She’s looking at me the entire time she’s talking, so I keep eye contact with her. I’m her anchor.
“And then Jack –” Mom inhales. “Isis’ friend from school, Jack, came in. I saw him over Leo’s shoulder.”
“Did Jack have a weapon on him that you could see?” The lawyer asks.
“Objection, your honor, visual confirmation of the weapon at the moment isn’t relevant –” The defense starts. Judge Diego shoots him a sharp look.
“Overruled. Continue, Ms. Roth.”
“Thank you, your honor.” Mom’s lawyer nods. “Mrs. Blake, did he have a weapon you could see?”
“Yes. A baseball bat, the one we keep in the closet downstairs.”
“And then what happened?”
“Jack hit him, and Leo tumbled off me and onto the floor,” Mom’s voice gets stronger. She looks at Jack, and he nods, staring back at her with those icy eyes. “And Leo got furious, and swung at him. He tried to punch him, but Jack hit him again.”
“How many times would you say Jack hit him?”
“Four. Five, maybe. Each time Leo tried to get up, Jack would keep him down, on the floor.”
“And then what happened?”
“Jack held me. I was crying, and shaking, and Jack held me and told me it was going to be alright.” She smiles. “And I believed it.”
I look over at Jack. He’s looking at Mom, his gaze fixed, but something about it is softer than normal.
“And then he went downstairs, to where Isis was, and I went with him, and I started crying again when I saw her body so still. I was afraid. Terrified. You don’t know how – oh god –” Mom cuts off, and the lawyer looks to Judge Diego.
“That’s all, your honor.”
I get up to help Mom to her chair, but Kayla pulls me back down and I watch the guard do it instead. Mom smiles a watery smile at me once she’s seated at the table, and gives me a thumbs up. She’s isn’t okay. But she’s not afraid. I can see that much.
They call Jack to the stand next. The defense attorney is startled at his lack of expression – it unnerves him. I smother a laugh. Welcome to the club, bucko.
“Did you, or did you not, break into the Blake’s house without permission?” The attorney asks.
“Yes,” Jack says in a monotone. “I broke in. Through the open door your client left.”
A murmur goes around the courtroom. Kayla pumps her fist and squeals.
“Oh, he’s gonna kill this guy so bad.”
I twist my mouth shut. She has no idea.
“And what did you witness when you walked in?”
“I saw Isis Blake collapsed on the floor. There was a bloody smear on the wall, and blood on the back of her head.”
“Did you see my client anywhere in the room?”
Jack narrows his eyes. “No. But I could hear him thumping around upstairs.”
“So you did not witness my client ‘assaulting’ Isis Blake?”
“No.”
The attorney smirks, and paces. “And did you, or did you not, grab an aluminum baseball bat and head upstairs to confront my client?”
“I did.”
“And was my client armed?”
“No. But that didn’t seem to stop him from trying to rape a terrified woman.”
I flinch. Mom is completely still, focused on Jack. The court rustles again, and the judge bangs her gavel.
“Order! Order in the court.”
When the murmurs die down, the defense attorney straightens.
“How do you know the Blake family, Jack?”
“Isis is an –” There’s the briefest pause as Jack thinks. “ – acquaintance. From school.”
“I’d like to present exhibit A,” The attorney walks up, holding a tape recorder and placing it on the table. “A recorded conversation with your Principal, Mr. Evans, who confirms you and Isis were antagonizing each other at school with outlandish pranks months prior to this event. You weren’t friends. According to Evans, you were quite the opposite. So why were you at her house? Was it to do her harm?”
“Objection!” Mom’s lawyer shouts. “Your honor, what does this have to do with the case?”
Judge Diego sighs. “Dismissed. Pearson, try to stay on topic.”
The attorney nods. “No need. The defense rests, your honor.”
Jack looks to me. If I strain hard enough to poop myself, I can barely discern the tiniest sliver of worry in his eyes. The jury is looking at Jack like they’re suddenly suspicious.
Mom’s lawyer grills Jack in a more positive direction – highlighting how Jack called 911 immediately when he found me, and how brave he had to be to face down a full-grown, furious man. Jack shrugs it off, but I can see what she’s trying to do – paint him in a sympathetic, hero light. And it’s working. Mildly. The jury isn’t staring at him like he has three heads anymore, anyway.
Jack comes back. His fists are tight on his knees, and he looks paler.
“You…you alright?” I try. “I mean, other than the fact you have a fat arrogant tumor on your neck you call a head.”
“I’m fine,” He says softly. There’s a beat.
“I didn’t, uh, mean it. The tumor thing. It’s my instinct to be mean to you.”
A wisp of a crooked smile pulls on his mouth.
“I know.”
And then they call for Leo. The defense attorney builds his case up – that he fought in Vietnam thirty years ago, that he got a head injury there, that the army shrink had diagnosed him with PTSD. And with every little half-baked story, the fury in my guts burns hotter, and hotter. It makes my stomach want to evacuate lunch onto his shoes. But I can’t do anything about it. They won’t even let me testify because of my head. I’m helpless. And being helpless is the worst thing in the known universe.
“Is it correct that you received a call from Mrs. Blake earlier that day, asking you to visit her at her home?” The attorney asks. Leo adjusts his cast and with a mock-serious face, nods.
“Yes.”
“That’s fucking bullshit!” I shout, standing and jabbing my finger at him. “That’s bullshit and you know it!”
“Order!” The judge bangs her gavel. “Miss Blake, be seated!”
“He’s lying, your honor! He’s a lying scumbag who ruined my Mom’s life –”
“Order!” She shouts. “You either sit down right now young lady, or I’ll have you escorted out.”
I’m breathing heavy, and my blood sings hot in my veins. I’m ready to punch, to fight, to kick and bite and scream. But I can’t do that here. Mom’s counting on me, on this trial, to give her some peace of mind. I push through the row and storm out the door. The marble halls of the courtroom are too pristine. They mock me, clean and shiny when my insides are dirty and filled with caked hate.
“Hey!”
I ignore the voice and stride down the hall.
“Hey!”
“AGHH!” I kick a bench with the flat of my sole. “Pathetic shithead! Fucking lying monkey-anus-faced bastard –”
“Isis –”
“If I ever get within five feet of him, there will be blood. Of the not-fake kind.”
“Isis, listen –”
&n
bsp; “I’m sure they make pitchforks that can fit inside a human mouth. And down the throat.”
“Isis!”
Someone grabs my hand. I whirl around and pull it away. Jack stands there, slightly panting.
“Listen to me; you need to calm down.”
“Calm!” I laugh. “I’m perfectly calm!”
“What are you doing with your hands?”
“Practicing.” I wiggle my fingers.
“For what?”
“For when I get my hands inside his guts.”
“He’s not going to get away with it. Even a moron Freshman in law school could see that. So don’t get worked up like this. It’s not helping anyone, and it’s certainly not helping you.”
“Oh, you wanna help me now? That’s weird, because last time we talked you basically told me you’re going to make my life hell.”
“Do I? Make your life hell?”
His voice pitches down, low and deep and cracked through. The sudden change startles me.
“No,” I inhale. “You just make it a little harder.”
“Your mom needs you,” he presses.
“I can’t – can’t go back in there. Not for a while. If I see that Neanderthal’s face again, I’ll –”
Jack quirks a brow. “A word more than four letters long. I’m impressed.”
“You should be. I spent an entire year of middle school studying them. And their hairy crotches. But mostly them.”
“Would punching me again help ease your fury?”
I scoff. “Maybe. Probably not. It’s him I want to hurt, not you.”
Jack looks outside the courthouse window, to the playground across the street.
“There’s two things that calm you down – violence, and sugar. Ice cream.” He points to an ice cream cart on the sidewalk. “C’mon. My treat.”
“Ohhh no. I know how this works. First it’s ice cream, then it’s marriage.”
“Marriage, huh? Tell me,” he says coolly as we both walk towards the cart anyway. “Who’s the lucky sea slug?”