This is the time I’d normally be listening to Jesmyn practice. In brighter days. It’s funny (and by “funny,” I mean “horrendously sad”)—to refer to the period when you were only dealing with the deaths of your three best friends, the hatred of their loved ones, and the prospect of incarceration as “brighter days.”
I hear my mom answer her phone from my bedroom, where I sit, trying to read Slaughterhouse-Five for AP English lit.
Something in the formality of her tone pricks my ears and I strain to listen.
“Okay…so at five? What channel? Okay. And—okay. Should we call you afterward? Okay. I’ll tell him. Thank you so much.”
My mom hurries down the hallway to my dad’s study, and he stops playing his acoustic guitar.
Please don’t both of you come this way. Please.
I hear them both coming my way. Surely at some point, my recently overworked adrenal glands will simply explode with a little popping sound.
“Carver?” my dad says, knocking on my doorframe, my mom beside him. They’re not smiling.
I turn but say nothing.
“We just got a call from Mr. Krantz. He said that in an hour, the district attorney’s office is holding a press conference to talk about your case. He expects them to announce some decision.”
“Okay,” I say finally, my blood howling, turning every muscle to mush.
“Meet in the living room in an hour to watch?” my mom asks.
“Okay.” My intestines feel like a steamroller is slowly ironing them flat.
My parents leave. I settle in for what will surely be one of the longest hours of my life. I want to text Jesmyn so badly. And I don’t even know what I’d say. First I’d have to apologize. Once I cleared that barrier, if she even wanted to hear more, all I’d have to say would be: Somewhere, someone has the answer to this question: Will Carver Briggs’s life be ruined? (Correction: more ruined). And I have to wait an hour to learn the answer.
The hour passes. I sit in the living room, one parent on each side of me.
“All right, Kimberly,” the newscaster says. “I understand we’re going live now to the Davidson County Courthouse, where the Davidson County district attorney, Karen Walker, will be making an announcement?”
“That’s right, Peter. They’re going to announce what course of action they’re planning to take with regard to the car accident that claimed the lives of three teenage boys on August first. Some of our viewers will recall that this accident was linked to texting.”
My mom is shaking next to me. I take a ragged breath; it feels like my lungs are full of wet cement. My pulse hammers in my temples, a headache brewing at the base of my skull.
The camera cuts to an empty podium with several microphones. The district attorney steps up to it.
“Thank you all for coming today. The accident that claimed the lives of Thurgood Edwards, Blake Lloyd, and Elias Bauer on August first, was a tragedy by any definition. The remaining question, though, was whether it was a crime as well. Over the past nearly three months, our office, in conjunction with the Nashville Metro Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, has diligently investigated this question. We have concluded that…”
My vision narrows to a laser pinpoint.
“…this tragic accident was…”
I wonder what I’ll do when they say it. When they tell me I’m finished. I wonder if I’ll cry. If I’ll scream. If I’ll have a panic attack. If I’ll just pass out.
“…not the result of criminal conduct, and our office will not be seeking an indictment against the fourth surviving juvenile involved….”
My mom explodes in sobs. My dad exhales and buries his face in his palms, weeping. I sit completely still and mute. I’m not sure I’ve heard what I think I’ve heard, like when you watch TV half-asleep and you have to chew on each sentence to make sure you didn’t imagine it.
“…We extend our condolences once more to the Edwards, Bauer, and Lloyd families. We take this opportunity to warn young people against the dangers of texting and driving. Even when it does not rise to the level of criminal conduct, it has terrible consequences, as we’ve seen. Our office will continue to—”
My mom grabs me in a hug from one side. “Oh, praise Jesus,” she murmurs over and over. Her Mississippi shows most at times of great emotional duress. My dad hugs me from the other side. I stare dazed at the television.
My mom’s phone rings. “Hello? Oh, my goodness, yes, you have no idea. Yes. Yes, he is, I’ll give you to him. And thank you so, so much. All right. All right, bye.”
My mom hands the phone to me. “Mr. Krantz,” she whispers.
“Hello?”
“Carver! Well? Looks like you’re off the hook, son.”
“Um, yeah, that’s great.” I try to mirror his enthusiasm.
“I knew it’d be a stretch to try to charge you. They made the right choice.”
“Yeah.”
“Now, you may not be completely out of the woods yet. The DA could still reconsider, so don’t go talking about the accident. Also, Edwards could still file a civil lawsuit seeking monetary damages. And it would be easier for him to win that without a criminal acquittal. Anyway, I gotta run; I have a client. Congratulations and take care, all right?”
“Okay.”
I hang up and draw a deep breath. I’m exhausted. I want to be alone.
“I need to go lie down,” I say.
“That’s fine, sweetie,” my mom says, hugging me again. “I’m going to go pick up some hot chicken from Hattie B’s to celebrate.”
In another life, that news alone would have made my night.
I go to my room and collapse on my bed and stare at the ceiling. I cry until warm tears enter my earholes, muting sound as if I’m underwater.
I have no idea why I’m crying. I think I’m happy but I’m not sure. Happiness would be not dealing with any of this. I guess I’m relieved, but an odd disappointment tempers any relief. It’s like I’ve been tied to a stake for days, the ropes rubbing my wrists and ankles raw; my tongue bloated and cracked from thirst. And the guy in the black hood coming with a torch to light the kindling under me turns and walks away, leaving the torch burning on the ground. And I’m still tied to the stake.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Jesmyn! She saw the news. She’s calling to congratulate me, to tell me that if the DA doesn’t consider it worthwhile to punish me, neither does she.
It’s a number I don’t recognize. A reporter? Did the police give out my number while they had my phone?
“Hello?”
“Carver Briggs?” asks the crisp, starchy female voice on the other end.
I really hate hearing people say my first and last names on the phone these days. I stand and pace. “Yes. This is me—he.”
“Please hold for Judge Frederick Edwards.”
And she’s gone before I can say, No, please, no. Anybody but him.
I sit; my legs have turned into octopus tentacles.
I hear the other end pick up and a long breath. “Do you know the means by which I obtained this number?” Judge Edwards’s voice sounds carved from granite.
“Um. No, sir. Your Honor. I don’t.” My voice is high and tight, like an overwound guitar string. I know I sound guilty.
“Venture a guess.” Not an invitation. A command.
It feels like a bone is stuck in my throat. “From the police?”
“After Thurgood was killed, the police turned over his personal effects to me. His phone was among them. Getting your number was a matter of looking at the last number to contact my son before his death.”
He lets the silence breathe, the way Dr. Mendez does. But it breathes differently: someone gathering his strength to run me through with a sword.
“Oh.” What do you say to that? Nice, good work.
“I suppose you’ve heard the news.”
“Yes. Your Honor. I did.”
“I suppose you feel pretty lucky.”
“I—I—”
And then he cuts me off, which is great, because I didn’t have a good answer to that statement. “Well, you were not lucky. If you repeat what I’m about to tell you to anyone else, I will be very displeased. Are we clear?”
My mouth is parched. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“I personally asked the district attorney not to pursue charges.”
I’m dumbfounded. “Thank you, sir,” I say finally. “I promise—”
He laughs bitterly. “Thank you? This was not a personal favor to you. Nevertheless, you are greatly in my debt, and I intend to collect.”
“Okay.” Here comes the hammer. I brace myself.
“I’m told that you’ve embarked on a series of ‘goodbye days,’ during which, if I understand correctly, you spend a day with the victim’s family and have a final day of remembrance?”
“Right.” Victim’s.
“Right what?”
“Right, Your Honor.”
“And you’ve done them so far with the Lloyd family and the Bauer family.”
“Yes, Your Honor. How did Your Honor—”
“Find out? Adair Bauer contacted my office, the police, and the district attorney’s office about them. She thought we should investigate whether you’d said anything self-incriminatory. She wanted us to talk to her parents. Not a bad idea.”
That’s why she was so adamant that her parents do it. “Oh.” And then I hastily add, “Your Honor.”
“Now I want my goodbye day for Thurgood.”
“Your Honor, I—”
“This Sunday you will be at my home at five-thirty a.m. You will dress for vigorous physical activity. You will also bring clothes appropriate for church. This is not a throw-on-your-T-shirt, Starbucks church. You dress the way you did for my son’s funeral. Understood?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
The line goes dead.