Brandy Colbert - Pointe

THE COURTROOM IS FREEZING.

My parents sit in the second row, directly behind Donovan’s family. Their heads swivel as the heavy door thumps closed behind me. They have to wonder why I ran after McMillan, why we sat talking so long, and why he called in a couple of his colleagues after I’d told him everything there was to tell.

The thing is, as much as I know McMillan hates that I waited so late to tell him, it’s worth it. Because as soon as I told him Chris Fenner was my boyfriend, he got a gleam in his eyes. And I’m pretty sure that meant he had enough information to do some serious damage to the other side’s case.

“But what if they expect me to say something?” I asked when we were sitting in an empty room upstairs. It seemed like someone’s office—small and boring with a desk, a chair, and some filing cabinets. No windows. A lock on the door. My heart still wasn’t beating normally at that point, even after I’d gotten everything out. It would probably be the theme for the day.

“Well, there’s a chance he did tell his lawyers about your ‘relationship,’” McMillan said, scribbling something down on a yellow notepad. “But Theo, what did you tell me when you first described him?”

I looked at him, confused, but he didn’t wait for me to make the connection.

“You said you were in love with him and he knew it.” He paused, his pen hovering over the paper. “And since you didn’t go to anyone until now, he probably thinks you won’t tell.”

“Unless they think we’ve been hiding it this whole time on pur—”

“Don’t overthink it. Look.” McMillan leaned forward with the most solemn expression. His eyes were the biggest I’ve ever seen them, which isn’t very big at all. “This guy, he . . . he took a lot from you, a long time ago. And you didn’t tell anyone, not until the day you had to testify. He probably thinks he still has you wrapped around his finger. If he’s counting on Donovan not saying anything, he’s probably counting on the same from you.”

McMillan was right. Donovan and I used to believe everything Chris told us, do anything he said. If only to make sure we weren’t doing anything wrong, anything to make him stop liking us.

So now, as I walk from the back of the courtroom to the front, as my shoes make tiny clicking noises on the floor, I try to remember this. McMillan is right. My testimony is going to shock everyone—my parents, my friends, everyone in this town—but it will shock Chris most of all. And him thinking I’m not strong enough to go through with it, not strong enough to stand up for my friend and myself . . . well, I guess it’s typical Chris. But I’m not typical Theo.

I see the back of his head from the corner of my eye. His dark hair is cut short so it stops at a clean line above his collar. I wonder who paid for that haircut. His lawyer? Or maybe someone did it in prison? He’s been there this whole time, after all. I guess he doesn’t have any friends or family with a spare million dollars lying around for bail.

He cracks his knuckles at precisely the moment I walk by. I flinch. I hate myself for it, especially since he can see me. But the only thing to do is keep walking, so that’s what I do. I refuse to turn my head. And somehow, I make it up to the witness stand in one piece.

I hold up my hand as I’m sworn in.

. . . the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . . .

I sit down and breathe deeply to center myself, like I do before every dance performance. Take stock of what I’m about to do, think about how far I’ve come to get here. Then I glance at Judge Richey—a very tall woman with fluffy dark blond hair—and the jury, which is made up of a hodgepodge of people. Skinny and average and fat. College-age and senior citizens. Mostly white, but token minorities take up a few of the seats, one to check off each box: black, Latino, and Asian.

I force myself not to look at Chris. I can’t look at him until I start talking about him. I can’t lose my nerve. Not after what I’ve already put at stake, what I’ve put McMillan through this morning. Not after what I saw in Donovan’s eyes.

McMillan starts by asking standard questions: my age, where I live, where I go to school. I wish I didn’t know they got increasingly worse, that the most personal ones, the hardest questions to answer, are yet to come.

Take it one question at a time, McMillan told me only a few minutes ago, though it seems like days. Don’t worry so much about anticipating the next question that you lose your train of thought and get flustered. One at a time is all you can answer.

I take another breath.

“Ms. Cartwright, do you recognize this young man?”

McMillan steps aside so I have a clear view of the table behind him, sweeps his arm out just in case I missed Donovan sitting there. I look at him. He’s facing me, but he doesn’t make eye contact. He’s looking at a point beyond me. Anywhere but my face.

“Yes, sir,” I say, pushing through my dry throat. There’s a cup of water to my right but I’m too nervous to pick it up. Afraid I’ll knock it over on the table, or worse—spill it down my shirt.

“How do you know him?”

“He’s my neighbor. Donovan Pratt.”

How long have I known Donovan? How well did I know him? How much time did we spend together each week, if I had to guess? This goes on for a long time but when McMillan gets to the day in question, it’s so simple. Like he could be asking about the day I started junior year. He asks what I was doing the morning Donovan disappeared, but he doesn’t mention Chris’s name or the abduction.

I relay what happened when I stopped by Donovan’s house. Finding him upstairs and dressed for the day, listening to him tell me to go on without him because he had things to do. I relay our conversation to the best of my knowledge and I don’t look at Donovan because that makes it too real, like I’m walking down his stairs and out the front door without saying goodbye all over again.

I let out a breath when it’s over, but I’m not sure why. This is far from over. Our mock testimonies were thorough but not this detailed. He talked about the day Donovan went missing for so long that I thought he’d never get to the actual point. But then he does and for a moment, everything stops.

For a moment, I’m still just plain old Theo Cartwright. Seventeen. A girl who lives and breathes ballet, who loved Trent Ryan Miller. Former best friend of Donovan Pratt. Daughter of the man and woman with the very kind faces sitting in the second row of the gallery—the people whose names will forever be connected with my shameful story after I speak.

“Ms. Cartwright, are you acquainted with the defendant?” McMillan asks, and when I look at him, his face has changed. It’s harder but his voice is the same. Even. Affable. If you couldn’t see his eyes you’d hardly know he was gearing up for anything special.

“Yes, sir,” I say, and my mouth instantly fills with sand.

I can’t fight it anymore. I reach for the cup, pick it up with an unsteady hand. But not so unsteady I can’t lift it. I wet my lips and the tip of my tongue before I set it back down. I don’t trust myself to do more than that.

“And how do you know Mr. Fenner?”

Take it one question at a time.

“He worked at the convenience store that was on Cloverdale.” I bite my lip. Now? No, not yet.

“Big Red’s Gas n’More on Cloverdale?” McMillan asks, threading his fingers in front of his chest.

“Yes, sir.” Not yet, not yet. I train my eyes on McMillan’s face, don’t dare glance at anyone in the jury. Certainly not in the gallery.

“And how did you meet Mr. Fenner?”

“Donovan and I would go there sometimes after school. To Big Red’s.”

“And Mr. Fenner talked to you while he was working?”

“Yes, sir.” I clear my throat. “Sometimes.”

McMillan starts pacing again. He takes long strides for such a short guy. It makes him look taller than he is. “What did you talk about?”

“A lot of things.” I practically whisper. I need to speak up but I can barely hear myself, can hardly make out my own words over the sickly pounding of my heart in my throat. “School, our friends, my dance lessons. What it was like working at the store. What high school would be like.”

“Were you aware of the defendant’s age at the time you met?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how old did you think he was?”

“He—he told me he was eighteen.”

There it is. A shift in the air. Rustles in the gallery. A few people breathe in sharply. I can’t peg who it is, but I’m not looking out there. I’ll never be able to go on if I watch the disappointment and disgust make its way across their faces like the world’s fastest epidemic.

Jurors lean forward to make sure they can hear every word out of my mouth from this point on. There’s movement at the defense table, but I only see it from my peripheral vision because not yet.

“Ms. Cartwright, how would you describe the nature of your acquaintance with Mr. Fenner?”

I get the feeling that when McMillan recounts this part of the story to his wife, to his colleagues and his friends, he’ll say this is the point where the defense knew he had them by the balls.

“We were friends,” I say. “We’d hang out while he was working and on his breaks and sometimes on his days off. And then . . .”

McMillan nods at me to go on, but I can’t. My throat has closed up. I can’t swallow. My tongue is this big, dry lump parked in my mouth like a useless ball of dough and how will I speak if it can’t move? I don’t know what to do. I look at McMillan again. His eyes shift to the cup of water.

Right. I reach for it with grateful hands, force myself to take an actual drink. A long one, and then another. I set down the cup and look at McMillan again. He gives another short, simple nod. Continue.

Now. Now I look across the room to the defense side. I look right at Christopher Fenner. Lock my eyes on his face to let him know I’m not scared anymore. I’m not scared of getting him in trouble and I’m not scared of how many ways he can break my heart.

What we had was never special. He used me to get to my friend.

“We were friends first, and then he said . . . he said if we had sex, we’d be boyfriend and girlfriend.” I swallow hard around the lump in my throat. Water won’t help this.

McMillan’s voice softens. Just a bit, but enough to make a difference. “Ms. Cartwright, did you have sexual intercourse with Mr. Fenner?”

Every corner of the room is silent. So silent I hear Judge Richey’s quiet, even breaths to the right of me. Even the stenographer is still, his fingers poised over the keys as he waits for me to speak.

“Yes, sir. I wanted him to be my boyfriend. I loved him.” I pause. “I’d never had a boyfriend before. I was only thirteen.”

THE DAY I MET CHRIS SEEMED MEANT TO BE.

It was the winter of our seventh-grade year and school had been shitty that day. No, shitty didn’t begin to describe it. I’d gotten a C-minus on my math quiz—which I’d skipped lunch to study for, so I was starving. I was late to my class after lunch because I’d gotten so wrapped up in studying, I didn’t hear the bell in the library and was loudly informed by Ms. Batson that this was my “final warning.”

Earlier, I’d been in a bathroom stall where I overheard Trisha Dove debating whether or not to invite me to her birthday sleepover. She and Livvy Franklin were standing in front of the sinks, basically listing my pros and cons as they refreshed their lip gloss. As nonchalant as if they were discussing the weather; they didn’t even check under the stall doors. The consensus was that I was nice and had never done anything to piss them off, but I didn’t have a lot of girls for friends and I was a little too obsessed with “that dance thing.” God. I had known both of them since kindergarten. It’s not like I was a new girl they had to feel out. Just because I spent most of my free time at the dance studio or with Donovan and Phil didn’t mean I was a weirdo.

By the time I met Donovan at the bus lines after school, I was fuming inside my parka. I wanted to get home because I had the night off from dance and it meant I could spend the evening curled up on the couch in front of the TV. My parents would make a fire and we’d watch mindless sitcoms and the intense hospital dramas they loved and I’d forget about every shitty part of my shitty day.