Dangerous Girls

“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.

WAITING

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.