Dangerous Girls (16 page)

“Noted.” Judge von Koppel sounds bored. I wonder if that’s a good thing or not.

“Now, Miss Chevalier,” Dekker turns on me again, this time with renewed determination. “Would you say you’re a jealous person?”

“No.”

“You weren’t possessive at all, of your relationships with the victim, or Mr. Dempsey?”

I say it again, calm and collected. “No.” My hands are folded in my lap, my legs crossed at the ankles. They coached me for hours about how to sit, how to speak, even how to take a sip of water.

“Not even a little?” Dekker keeps digging. “After all, teenage relationships can be stressful things. A whirlwind of emotions and new feelings.”

I keep my gaze fixed on him. “Not really. It was all pretty simple.”

“Simple . . .” Dekker goes over to his table and flips through some paperwork. “But what about the incident of the fifteenth of October?”

“I’m sorry—” I pause. “I don’t know what that is.” I look over to my lawyer, but he just shrugs.

“Then let me refresh your memory.” Dekker smiles. “October fifteenth, last year. You were involved in an altercation with a classmate, Lindsay Shaw.”

Lindsay, the queen bitch herself. My stomach drops. This can’t be good.

“Here’s the incident report from the school,” Dekker continues, “and Miss Shaw’s sworn statement.” He passes the pages up to the judge before turning back to me. “Miss Shaw
says that you accosted her, during gym class, and accused her of flirting with Mr. Dempsey.”

This is what he looks so pleased about? I shake my head. “That’s not what happened. It was nothing.”

“Nothing? She says you threatened her, physically, and warned her to stay away from him.” Dekker continues, “Several witnesses confirm you attacked her, in a violent outburst, armed with a hockey stick.”

“It wasn’t like that,” I protest. “We were playing field hockey; we were on opposing teams. I tackled her, and then she tripped.”

“She tripped?” Dekker’s voice rises. “Miss Shaw was taken to the emergency room. She required six stitches to a wound on her cheek.”

I see the look on my lawyer’s face. “It was an accident,” I insist, my voice rising. “And I wasn’t jealous. She had it out for me, right from the start of school. Ask anyone, she was the one bullying me.”

“So she deserved it?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” I try to keep a grip, but Dekker keeps badgering me.

“So what really happened? You’ve said yourself, she was bullying you.”

“Yes, but—”

“She flirted with your boyfriend.” He doesn’t let me
finish. “She taunted you, publicly, until you just couldn’t take it anymore. You attacked her—”

“Objection!” My lawyer leaps up. “Relevance? This is a schoolyard argument from almost a year ago—”

“I’m establishing the defendant’s state of mind under pressure,” Dekker calls back, “and her habit of violent outbursts.”

Judge von Koppel pauses. “Overruled. Continue.”

Dekker approaches me, but just as I’m bracing myself for more questions about the hockey incident, he gives me a sly smile. “Let’s leave your attack on Miss Shaw for a moment, and talk about the victim. We’ve heard from several witnesses that you had an unusually close relationship.”

I pause, regrouping. He’s trying to throw me off balance, I can see that—making sure I’m worked up about the Lindsay thing, so I’m still angry and frustrated when I talk about Elise. But I won’t fall for that trick. I take a breath, making sure I’m calm again before answering. “We were friends. That’s not unusual.”

“But you spent all your time together, to the exclusion of Miss Warren’s other friends.”

“That was her choice.” I give a little shrug. “She just preferred hanging out with me.”

“And that’s what you did together—hang out?” Dekker’s got that smug expression again, the one that sends a chill through me. “Tell us about it.”

I look to my lawyer again. “I . . . don’t understand.”

“What did you do together?” Dekker asks. “How did you spend your time?”

“Usual things,” I say carefully. “We would go shopping, to cafés, just hang out together, after school . . .”

“You went to bars together,” Dekker adds. “Out drinking. And to college parties, with older men.”

“Yes,” I admit, “but it wasn’t just us. We were a group, all year. Chelsea, and Max, and AK—”

“Yes, but you preferred to be alone with Miss Warren, didn’t you?” Dekker meets my eyes with that sly look of his.

I stare back, trying to figure out his game. “No. I mean, we were close, but I liked being with everyone.”

Dekker goes back to his table to rustle some more papers. “In their statements, both Melanie Chang and Chelsea Day, and several of your other friends, said that you and the victim would often sleep over at each other’s houses.”

“Yes,” I reply slowly.

“And where did you sleep?” he asks.

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“When you slept over, with Miss Warren?” Dekker manages to keep his expression serious, as if he’s asking a deeply important legal matter and not just another of his sleazy suggestive questions. “You didn’t stay in the guest suite, did you? You would always sleep in the same room. In the same bed, in fact.”

I look across to my lawyer. “Objection!” He leaps up obediently. “This is completely irrelevant.”

“Yes, Detective Dekker.” Judge von Koppel stares over the top of her gold wire-rimmed glasses, her lips pursed. “I have to agree. This seems highly irregular.”

“My apologies.” Dekker gives her a smarmy smile. “I’m simply trying to establish motive. If Miss Chevalier was involved in a sexual relationship with the victim, it would surely add to her betrayal and anger on discovering—“

“Yes, yes.” The judge waves him on. “I understand. I’ll allow you to proceed, but please, be direct.”

“Of course.” Dekker turns back to me, grinning, as if he’s won this round. “So, Miss Chevalier, let me ask: Was yours and Miss Warren’s relationship sexual in nature?”

I stare back, stone-faced. “No.”

“Not ever?” he presses. “But these photos we’ve seen . . .” He clicks them up on display again: the shots from Halloween, and pictures of me and Elise going back all year. We’re draped over each other, hugging, affectionate and close. In one, we have bikinis on, and Elise is kissing my shoulder, her arms wrapped protectively around my bare stomach. In another, we’re snuggled on her couch with a blanket, wearing tiny pajama shorts and tank tops, our limbs intertwined. Dekker turns back. “Are you telling us these are purely platonic photos?”

“Yes,” I insist. “They don’t mean anything. There are photos
of all of us like that—me with Chelsea, or Lamar even. Elise and Mel—”

“I’m interested in you and the victim, Miss Chevalier,” Dekker interrupts again, but this time, I don’t stop.

“You’re not letting me finish!” I exclaim. I can see my lawyer’s face tense, but I can’t let Dekker keep doing this—keep flashing up pictures like they mean something, without showing the rest of them, and what it was really like. “You’re asking me all these questions, but you don’t care what I say; you just want to show off those photos and pretend like they mean more than they do!”

“Please calm down, Miss Chevalier.” Dekker looks smug, and I realize with a pang that this is what he wanted all along: for me to raise my voice, or cry out, or do anything that lets him say I’ve got a temper.

“Actually, I believe the defendant has a point.”

We both turn. It’s Judge von Koppel, gazing evenly at Dekker. “If you ask the defendant a question, please allow her to answer fully.”

There’s another pause. “Of course.” Dekker forces a smile, but before I can feel a small sense of victory, he rounds back on me.

“So you were never sexually involved with the victim?”

“I said, no.”

“You never kissed each other on the lips, perhaps?”

“No.”

“The two of you never experimented, with touching, or—”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.” Judge von Koppel glares at Dekker. “You’re out of line. I won’t tolerate this kind of salacious speculation in my courtroom, do you understand?” Her voice rings out, heavy with disapproval, and I see Dekker flush. “That was a question, counselor,” she continues. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.” He spits the word, resentful. “Now, if I could continue—”

“No.” The judge cuts him off, and I feel a wash of gratitude. “I think we’ve had enough of your questioning for the day. We’ll take a short recess, and then I’ll see you and Counselor Gates in my rooms to discuss the rules for appropriate lines of questioning. Since you so clearly need a reminder. Court adjourned.”

She bangs her gavel, and a ripple of fervent conversation spreads though the courtroom: lawyers and consultants and reporters all murmuring excitedly, but they’re a blur to me. I exhale slowly in relief, not moving from the witness seat.

“Are you all right, Miss Chevalier? Anna?”

I look up. It’s the judge, leaning toward me, her brow furrowed with concern. “I said, are you feeling all right?”

“I . . . yes.” I reply, shocked. It’s the first time she’s spoken to me like a human being for weeks. All during the trial, she’s
talked across me, to the lawyers, as if I don’t even exist, and the few times she has looked in my direction, it’s to press me to answer, or to tell me to be more precise. “I’m okay,” I tell her, recovering. “Thank you.”

She nods briskly. “We’ll continue your testimony in the morning.”

The guard approaches to lead me back to the holding room, but even as he snaps the handcuffs back around my wrists, I let myself feel the victory, the smallest triumph in weeks of wretched defeat.

I won this round. Dekker went too far.

Then I look across the courtroom, and my brief joy fades. Elise’s mom is staring at me from her usual seat behind Dekker’s table. The hatred in her eyes takes my breath away.

I stop, holding her gaze for as long as I can. Pleading. But the guard hustles me on, not stopping, and Elise’s mom turns away.

The days pass slowly in
prison, a repeating parade of early-morning wake-up calls, bland meals on plastic trays, and those few precious hours out in the exercise yard, pacing under the endless blue skies. I feel every moment of it at first, trapped and claustrophobic, like the cell walls are closing in on me, about to smother and crush me for good. I find it hard to sleep, or eat, and every time I hear footsteps approaching, I can’t stop my heart from leaping, a fierce flutter of hope in my chest. They’ve come for me. I can go home. It’s all over.

But it never is.

In the end, I can’t take the heartbreak of disappointment anymore, I decide. Nobody’s coming to save me. Although Dad tells me to stay positive, and keep hope alive, I know the
truth he can’t bring himself to tell me yet: There will be no late breakthrough miracle, no last-minute reprieve. I’m going to stand trial for Elise’s murder, and now there’s nothing I can do but wait.

In a way, it’s easier once I let go of that daydream. I’m not suspended in hopeful limbo, waking up every day rich with the possibility of freedom—and the hollow weight of disappointment when the lights-out buzzer goes off, and the cell doors slam shut again each night. I have the trial to hold onto now: my light on the horizon. When we’re in court, when we can shut down whatever evidence Dekker thinks he has—the blood smears, and the knife, and the necklace—then this will all be over. I’ll be found innocent. I can go home.

Until then, I just have to stay strong, and wait.

So the days pass. One hundred. One hundred and sixteen. A hundred and forty seven. Mostly, I remember—lying on the narrow bunk in my cell, letting the time drift by as I sink beneath the cool surface of the past. I start at the beginning, the day I met Elise in gym class, and slowly work forward, through school and Tate and the arrival of Chelsea and the others. I play out every conversation, every kiss, like a scene from the movie of somebody else’s life. Except I feel it. Hard, and sharp, and slicing with the deep ache of nostalgia, a longing for the time that’s gone now and I’ll never get back. All the brief moments I took for granted—the afternoons spent
slouched, bored, doodling song lyrics in her notebook in the back of history class; the coffee breaks we spent hunched over mocha whip lattes at Luna, and idle free periods window-shopping on Newbury Street. Elise and I, arms linked, limbs intertwined. Dyed streaks in our hair, matching pendants at our necks. Laughter in our souls.

I look for reasons, and answers, for hints and warning signs. I take our final moments on the island apart and spread them flat, like a prospector hunting for the glint of gold in the murky dust of the riverbed. Sometimes, I think I see something: a glance, a worried note in her voice. A hug that lingers too long, the buzz of a text message she doesn’t check. But the vision blurs; details mix. Memory and imagination are only a knife edge apart, and I wonder if I’m making it all up: slipping false memories in among the real ones, just to have something to hold on to. Fool’s gold.

They argue over trial dates. The days pass, and I wait.

I wake in Tate’s arms
, sunlight falling through the open drapes to where we lie, tangled in the crisp white sheets. It’s our third day in Aruba; the window is open, and I can hear the distant crash of the ocean and feel the gentle breeze on my skin.

Bliss.

I yawn, rolling to snuggle against him, cheek against his bare chest. He’s a restless sleeper, and the covers are kicked to the floor, his limbs sprawled as if he finally gave up an epic battle and fell into unconsciousness, exhausted. I smile, tracing the line of his jaw down to his collarbone and ribs.

Tate murmurs, still half-asleep, a faint smile on his lips.

I kiss him, my mouth replacing the slow sleep of my
fingertips, along the ridge of sinew and bone, down to the taut muscles of his stomach. I feel him laugh against my mouth, awake now. He pulls me back up, kissing me hard as he rolls over and crushes me in his embrace.

I stay there a moment, kissing back slowly, savoring the weight of him. Then the kiss deepens, his hands reaching impatiently for the flesh of my thighs, easing them apart. I feel him harden against me.