“Will they go to reform school?” I asked.
“They don’t call it that anymore,” Mr. Anderson said. “But if they’re convicted, they would serve time in a juvenile facility somewhere.”
“How long?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Theoretically, the state of Maryland has custody until they’re twenty-one years old.”
“Twenty-one?” Honestly, I was not sure that I heard right.
The lawyer reaffirmed my question with a nod.
Twenty-one years old?
Mr. Anderson was gathering up his papers. Dad was standing up.
I’d be through with school by the time I was twenty-one. Maybe even out of college…
Vaguely, I was aware of Mom’s hand on my back.
From there, we went to the police station, where I was told to step into a small, stark room that had nothing but a table, a couple chairs, and a computer in it. Dad, Mom, Mr. Anderson, a policewoman, and one detective came in after me, and once again I told my story. I was getting worn down by telling it over and over, but I plodded through it, the detective prodding me with questions: When did you find the drill? What did your friend Digger say when you confronted him? Who was the other boy?
The policewoman sucked on a butterscotch Life Saver—I could smell it—and typed everything I said into the computer. Neither she nor the detective showed much emotion. It was just a job to them, I guess. Get the kid’s confession and move on to the next thing.
When we were done, the policewoman made a printout, and we read it over. It appeared to be everything I had said.
“You need to sign off on it, then,” the detective said. He pointed with his stubby finger. “Your name here.”
“Go ahead, Brady,” Mr. Anderson told me, offering me his pen. “Your full name.”
I looked at the space they’d left for my signature and took his pen. Braden Duvall Parks, I wrote, feeling every loop and turn of the letters, and wishing, somehow, that I could detach myself from my name.
The detective took the paper, and he and the policewoman left.
Mr. Anderson stayed and sat on the edge of the desk to warn us that a story would undoubtedly appear in the newspaper. “There’s going to be a lot of press. Some big headlines.”
Sitting in the metal chair in front of him, I kept my hands folded and my head tilted down. It was bad enough already, but to think everyone in the community would know everything made it worse. My parents would be embarrassed. And all the kids at school would be shocked. How could I ever face them again?
My stomach started to knot up—even though I knew this was the deal.
“Police officers are going to go to each of your friends’ homes now,” Mr. Anderson went on. “They’ll ask the boys to come down to the station to talk. They’ll read them their Miranda rights, let them know they have a right to remain silent and get a lawyer. Then they’ll tell them we have the kayak. That we know what happened because you came forward.”
He waited a second, and I nodded my understanding.
“When they set a date for the trial, Brady, you’ll be subpoenaed to appear in court as a witness.”
I lifted my head and shot him a frightened look.
“I’m afraid so,” Mr. Anderson confirmed. “You’ll need to get up in front of them and repeat everything you told us.”
I closed my eyes. It felt like someone was squeezing my chest.
“You’ve got to be strong, Brady,” Mr. Anderson said.
He continued to explain the legal scenario. “Another officer will visit the DiAngelos, and tell them what’s going on.”
I sucked in my breath, unable to even imagine that. Poor Mrs. DiAngelo, I thought. She would have to relive it all over again. Only now she would know that I was behind it. That my very own friends sank the kayak and killed Ben. Maybe she would even think I was a murderer!
There was a pause when no one said anything. Mr. Anderson clicked his pen shut.
“You’re free to go home now,” he said quietly. “I need to take care of some paperwork with the state’s attorney’s office.” He turned to my parents. “I’ll, ah, need one of you to sign off on a couple things.”
Mom offered to go with him. I suspected there were some questions she wanted to ask him out of my earshot. When they opened the door to leave, we could hear telephones ringing and people talking in the outer office. Soon, I thought, the whole world would know.
The door closed again, and silence engulfed the small, cinder-block room. When I looked up, I saw it was just me in the chair and Dad standing by the door, waiting.
God, it was hard to get up out of that chair. It felt like I had hundred-pound weights strapped to my feet. When I did move, finally, I just stood there feeling numb, but very heavy—and completely lost.
Dad came over.
We looked at each other, and Dad said, “You done the right thing today, Brady.”
I could have broke down and cried, but I pressed my lips together instead.
Then Dad put his arm around my shoulders, and we walked out together.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
J.T. and Digger had their initial appearance in juvenile court two days later. I didn’t have to go, but I wanted to be there.
Mom had to work because she’d just taken two days off, so it was just Dad and me, and Mr. Anderson, who explained what was happening. I knew that wasn’t required of him, and I was glad Carl had recommended him.
We sat in the back of the courtroom before the others arrived, and when Digger and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Griswald, came in, Mr. Anderson leaned over and asked, “Is that Michael?”
Michael? I looked at him blankly.
Dad said yes for me.
As I soon found out, no one in juvenile court would refer to Digger as Digger—nor even very often by his first name, Michael. Mostly, he was Mr. Griswald. Just as J.T. was Mr. Tyler. Oddly, I found this small slice of protocol comforting.It was as if a strange and alien part of each of my friends had been involved in sabotaging the kayak.
None of the Griswalds looked back as they took their seats. I’m not sure they knew we were there.
But when J.T. came in with his mother, he glanced our way and did a double take. Our eyes met briefly. J.T. stopped and pursed his lips—then quickly, just once, he nodded.
I sure would like to ask him why I got that nod. He knew I had gone to the police—and after I’d assured him everything would be all right! So why the nod? Was he glad I’d spoken up? Relieved?
Had he been as tortured by it as me?
The double doors at the side of the courtroom opened and closed once more, and a hush fell over the few of us who waited.
“All rise!” a court officer called out when the judge walked in. In juvenile court, the judge is called a master. We stood, and a man sitting in front of us took off his baseball cap as Master Williams in a black robe whooshed out of a little side door at the front of the courtroom, papers tucked under her arm, and strode to the front. She took a couple steps up to a large chair behind a desk built into a tall wooden podium.
Seeing Master Williams for the first time, I had the feeling she was a smart woman. I can’t say why. With her short, wavy blond hair tucked behind her ears and wire-rimmed glasses, she reminded me of my fourth-grade teacher. I don’t think that’s why I thought she was smart, but for some reason I had confidence in her right off.
Both J.T. and Digger stood up and faced her as she spoke.
“Jeremy Tyler, Michael Griswald,” Master Williams addressed my friends in a clear, direct voice that was neither harsh, nor sympathetic, but somewhere in between. “Do you understand that you are being charged with murder in the second degree in that you did feloniously and with malice aforethought kill and murder Benjamin DiAngelo?”
Murder. Man, it didn’t matter how much my parents and Mr. Anderson had prepared me for it, I still couldn’t believe they were being charged with murder! In my heart I’d hoped for manslaughter, and hearing the word murde
r sent a frozen rod piercing right through the top of my head down into my toes.
I kept watching, straining to see their faces, but I was shut out by their backs. Did they know this was going to be the charge? Neither one of them shook or broke down. Rigidly, they stood there—shocked, I supposed. Probably hating me forever for what I’d done. Maybe hating themselves, too.
“Do you understand you have a right to a lawyer?” Master Williams asked Digger.
When Digger didn’t reply, his father stood up behind him. Like Digger, he wore blue jeans and an untucked T-shirt and didn’t appear to have shaved or in any other way attempted to spruce up his appearance. “We can’t afford no lawyer,” he told Master Williams.
“If you cannot afford a lawyer, the court will provide one,” Master Williams said.
Mr. Griswald ran a hand over his bald head, but he didn’t argue.
Our attorney leaned over to whisper that the Griswalds would be assigned a public defender.
The same procedure happened for J.T., only his mother stood with him and told Master Williams that she would hire her own lawyer.
“That’s it, then,” Master Williams announced. “I’ll see you both back here in thirty days for your adjudication.”
Both Dad and I turned to Mr. Anderson.
“That means their trial,” he explained, “except there won’t be a jury in juvenile court, remember. Master Williams will listen to everyone present their sides then she’ll decide the sentence—their disposition.”
Adjudication. Disposition. Master. I guess the juvenile court didn’t want kids feeling like they were real criminals with a trial and a sentencing by someone called a judge. Even if what got them here in the first place was a criminal act. I didn’t laugh, but I shook my head; if you were this deep into it, none of these labels made a lick of difference.
We waited while J.T. and Digger and their families filed out of the courtroom. None of them looked back again. When the room was empty, we stood up and left.
The newspaper reporter, Craig somebody, the guy who interviewed me after I had rescued Ben, called again, but I wouldn’t talk to him. He wrote a story anyway. In fact, there were several newspaper stories, including one in the Washington paper, but I didn’t read a single one. My parents did. I heard them shuffling the papers and talking. “It’s like a nightmare,” Mom complained when she didn’t think I was listening.
My mother also cooked up a storm in the first few days after the hearing. All my favorite things: creamed chicken, steak on the grill, fried rockfish, chocolate chip cookies. It wasn’t a reward. She was just trying to bolster my mood and keep my spirits up—and maybe my courage, too. But I wasn’t very hungry.
Here’s the surprising thing: Dad came into my room to talk with me every evening after dinner. “Are you doin’ okay?” he’d ask. Or, “Is there anythin’ we can do?”
One night, I gathered my strength and asked Dad, “Will you ever forgive me for what I did?”
“Ain’t nothin’ to forgive,” Dad replied. “You didn’t do anythin’ wrong, Brady. Everybody says things they don’t mean. And in the end, you done the right thing, like I tole you.”
He took a seat on the end of my bed, where I was already sitting cross-legged, and rubbed his hand over his chin the way he does. “You know, your mother once asked me the same thing, Brady. After she left us that time. I said, ‘They ain’t nothin’ to forgive. Losin’ a baby that way—’” He shook his head. “It ain’t written down anywhere how to respond to a thing like that. I tole Dee, I said, ‘You needed to get away for a while, and then you come back.’ Brady, I couldn’t fault your mother for that; my love for her runs too deep. Just like it does for you.”
My eyes were filling up. “I’m so sorry, Dad.”
“I know you are.” Dad reached over and touched my knee.
“And I didn’t mean for you to have to pay all this money for a lawyer either. I’ll bet he’s cost a lot, too.”
“It’s not important, Brady,” he tried to put me off.
“Tell me, Dad. How much? I feel like I have a right to know.”
He sighed. “Well, he said a flat fee of a thousand dollars. But you know, the money ain’t important—”
“The money is important,” I objected as I reached behind me, under my pillow, for an envelope with $1,200 in it. Carl had driven me to the bank so I could withdraw the money from my account. It was everything I had earned from Mrs. DiAngelo that summer.
“Please, Dad. Take it,” I said, offering the envelope.
“No, Brady, I—”
“Please.”
I knew the money was gratefully received. My parents needed that money. Why should they suffer because of what my friends and I had done?
But see, even that gesture drove a dilemma through my heart. Because I also felt that I should have given all that money back to Mrs. DiAngelo. True, I wasn’t the one who drilled those holes, but I still suffered from the question: How could I keep anything from Mrs. DiAngelo, after what had been taken from her?
The weeks between the hearing and the next court date dragged by slower than any doldrums I’d ever encountered. I forced myself through a couple more books for school and shot a lot of baskets in the side yard. Tried to anyway. Then my cousins from Rhode Island came down with Auntie Janet for a few days. We went into D.C. one afternoon, to the Smithsonian. And Mom took us down to Ocean City for a day at the beach, where we built a sand castle with Emily and jumped around in the waves. At the boardwalk amusement park, Kevin and I rode a few rides and ate funnel cake, but the upcoming court date hung over my head like a dark cloud. And none of the rest of that summer was any fun.
When my relatives were packing up to leave, I asked Auntie Janet if I could give Tiny Tim to Emily. She okayed it right away, and Emily was thrilled. She loved that hamster, while for me, it was just a sad reminder.
During that same time, the juvenile services staff made reports to the court on Digger and J.T. The three of us weren’t allowed to see or talk to one another—not that we would have. So, I don’t really know what they did those four weeks. I do know that they were both on home detention, which meant they couldn’t go anywhere except to a doctor’s appointment or their lawyer’s office. An electronic bracelet on their ankle monitored their moves. If they went outside a certain radius of their telephone, or tried to take the ankle thing off, the authorities would immediately be notified, and they’d be picked up and put in jail. From what Mr. Anderson said, they even had to shower with that ankle thing on.
But I knew they wouldn’t take it off. Mr. Griswald and Mr.
Tyler might have considered removing that ankle bracelet, but not Digger or J.T. And the darnedest thing: I kept remembering something Ben said and I could not get it out of my head.
He said it the afternoon I had baby-sat for him and we watched The Lion King. If you’ve ever seen that movie, you know that toward the end the hyenas turn against the villain, Scar, and attack him. When this happened in the film, Ben had looked up at me and asked, “Why they doing that, Bwady?” I had a mouth full of popcorn, but I told him, “Because he’s bad.” Well. Ben must have gone on to think about it for a full thirty seconds. “No,” he had disagreed, screwing up his little face and shaking his blond hair. I almost forgot what we’d been talking about. “Scaw’s not bad,” Ben said. “He’s just being mean.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Shoes
Soccer cleats
Office Depot
Haircut
I stared at the list Mom had left under the seagull magnet on our refrigerator. She could scratch the haircut. I’d already had one so I’d look respectable when I raised my right hand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If I were like every other kid in the county, I could have focused on new shoes and school supplies. But three days before I started ninth grade, I went to juvenile court to testify against my two best friends, who had been charged with second-degree murder.
&n
bsp; Mom, Dad, and Carl came with me. Mr. Anderson met us at the county courthouse.
It was really hot and humid that day. Stifling. And we were all encased in formal clothes—Mom in a dress, me in long pants and a sports jacket, with a new tie carefully knotted at my neck. My dad squeezed into a suit that was too tight, and even Carl tucked in a collared shirt. Because the air-conditioning in the old brick courthouse wasn’t on or didn’t work very well, we all kind of stuck to those wooden benches in the hall where we waited, fanning ourselves with copies of a take-out menu someone had left behind.
But what I remember most about that wait is not the heat and how I was still mustering the courage to stand up in front of everyone and testify without breaking down. No. Mostly I remember feeling scared for J.T. and Digger. Scared and worried about what was going to happen to them.
We were scheduled to start at 9 A.M. At ten minutes of nine someone opened the doors for air, and I could see Digger and J.T. standing on the front steps with their families.
If they saw me, I wouldn’t have known. As soon as I spotted them, I kept my eyes averted and spent the rest of the time moving one foot back and forth and staring at a crack in the tile floor. I must have opened and closed my hands and wiped my sweaty palms on my pants a hundred times.
When the courtroom doors inside were unlocked, we went in right away and sat toward the back.
The Griswalds came in after us, and it really struck me how they had spiffed themselves up. Digger wore a nice polo shirt tucked into a pair of clean, belted jeans. Even his father had a suit on, and I know for a fact that was a first for me. Their public defender was a young-looking man with thinning red hair. “I know this guy,” Mr. Anderson leaned close to tell us. “He’ll do a good job defending Michael.”
J.T. came in a minute later wearing a sports coat and a tie, but I’d seen him dressed up before, like on mornings when he’d been to church and we ran into him at the 7-Eleven afterward. His mother was with him, but not his dad. After J.T. took a seat in the front row, I stared at his back. He had a fresh, close-trimmed haircut, which made his ears stick out. I wondered what he was thinking, and if he was scared. I wondered if someday, J.T. and I would ever be friends again.
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