Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

“There is ample evidence—” the judge began, but the stirrings in the congregation-like crowd made it hard to hear. He reached for his gavel and banged the wooden puck on his dais so hard, it leapt up in the air.

“Order,” he demanded. “Settle down or I’ll clear every last one of you from my court.”

Cole watched the scene from the stand, his hands clasping the ledge before him as if the room itself might start spinning.

“The jury deserves an answer if they are to take this witness seriously,” the lawyer said. He approached the judge’s bench, his hands raised and his shoulders up by his neck.

The judge pointed the gavel at him. “I’ll allow you to proceed, but do so carefully.”

“Your honor—” Cole’s lawyer began.

“He may establish the witness’ reliability as long as he does not ask the boy to indict himself.”

The lawyer in the black suit grinned.

“Proceed,” the judge said.

The male lawyer cleared his throat. He walked up to the side of Cole’s witness box and rested his elbows on its ledge. He leaned toward Cole’s microphone and looked out over the audience and the jury box.

“Please tell us,” the lawyer said, his voice slow and amplified by the microphone. “Tell us why we should trust you, when you admitted to the cops that you killed this other boy, this Marco.”

“Objection, your Honor!”

The gavel rang out like a gunshot.

“Why did you kill him?” the lawyer shouted into the mic.

Another gunshot, the round gavel block leaping up like a spent cartridge.

“ Order !”

Hundreds of simultaneous gasps seemed to suck the air from the room.

“ Order !”

Another crack of wood. Grumblings turned to shouts.

“ Order in this court! ”

The only people sitting still were Father Picoult, his arms crossed over his chest, and poor Cole, his memory tumbling with awful answers to the question. To that question, and questions he was thankful nobody knew to ask—

“Do you wanna do burritos?”

Joanna tugged Cole toward one of the open stalls lining the busy marketplace. A group of men stood by the ordering window eating wraps the size of soda cans.

“I don’t eat there,” Cole said, shaking his head.

Joanna looked from the large menu above the ordering window to Cole. “Why?”

“The owner’s name is Mendonça,” Cole said.

Joanna pointed to the man behind the counter with the stained white smock and cook’s hat. “That’s your father? ” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Cole said. “I never knew my dad. My policy is to not do business with anyone named Mendonça, just to be sure.”

Joanna seemed deflated, then confused. “But that’s gotta be like, the second most common surname in the barrio.”

Cole shrugged. “There’s lots of places I don’t go.”

“So you really don’t know who he is? What about your mom? Or any siblings?”

“Jeez,” Cole said.

“I’m sorry.” Joanna stepped under the cover of an awning pasted with Chinese symbols. She stuck her head in the ordering window, then turned, smiling. “Definitely not a Mendonça,” she said. “Is Chinese okay?”

“Sure.” Cole raised his hands. “As long as you’re paying.”

“I told you I was.” She winked at him and smiled. Cole let her order for them both while he watched the busy street, everyone going about their business as if the Miracle two weeks ago hadn’t happened. Or maybe, the bustle and energy of the barrio had increased from the weeks before. It wasn’t as if nothing had happened to the barrio, but something… wonderful.

“Let’s sit over there.”

Cole took a carton of noodles with a pair of chopsticks sticking out the top from Joanna. She sat on one side of a rickety table and Cole quickly sat down on the other to balance her out. Joanna extracted her chopsticks, but didn’t dig into her noodles. She held them in the crook of her hand, her delicate fingers cradling them, the tips opening and closing like a butterfly’s wings. Cole shoved a mouthful of noodles in his mouth and watched her. The smile on Joanna’s face filled him with a warmth he thought he understood, but a dread he couldn’t quite place.

“Thanks for lunch,” Cole said between bites, wondering if maybe he wasn’t being gracious enough and that was the reason for her mood.

Joanna nodded. She still hadn’t touched her food. “You’re welcome,” she said.

“You said you wanted to talk about something?” He took another bite.

Joanna looked up at the underside of the tattered canopy with the Chinese script. Cole saw a film of tears coat her eyes, and he wondered why that seemed to perfectly match the dread he was feeling.

“I’m pregnant,” Joanna said.

Cole gasped, sucking a noodle down the wrong way. A coughing fit ensued. He pounded his chest and looked around for water. Joanna ran and grabbed a paper cup and filled it from a hanging orange cooler. As Cole hacked and wheezed—his throat scratched and itching something awful—he considered the ridiculousness of Joanna tending to him at that moment. He seized the water gratefully and drank most of it in a rapid series of desperate gulps.

“Slowly,” Joanna said. Her smile hadn’t changed, but the tears were gone from her eyes, even as a different set of them rolled down Cole’s cheeks from the burn in his throat.

“Who?” Cole wheezed, his voice a dry rasp. He knew it wasn’t his. They’d only kissed the once, and just barely. He was pretty sure it took something other than a kiss. Right?

Joanna sat down beside him, threatening to teeter them and the table right over. She rubbed his back with one hand and took the empty cup away with the other. Cole felt the years between them yawn wide as she tended to him. Or maybe it was that he still largely felt like a child, and Joanna was saying she was with one.

“It’s nobody’s,” Joanna said with a smile. “It’s—” She shook her head and let out a little laugh. “Well, I don’t even want to suggest it,” she said, “but it must be a Miracle. I’ve never… done that … with anyone.”

Cole glanced down at the empty cup in his hand. Joanna grabbed the cup, twirled from the table, filled it back to the brim from the cooler, and returned. Cole took a sip, letting the cool, crisp water coat his throat. The man behind the counter yelled something about one cup per meal, and Joanna apologized.

“How do you know?” Cole asked. Now that the shock of her revelation was wearing off, his rational mind was assuring the rest of himself that she was simply wrong, or perhaps she was lying about having never done… that . Whatever that was.

“Sensors in the toilets look for these things,” she said. “They notify the nuns. It takes a couple weeks for the hormones to change.”

“A couple of weeks,” Cole intoned.

Joanna nodded. She reached for her noodles, then stopped herself and folded her hands together instead.

“Who else knows?” Cole asked.

“Father Picoult. A few of the Sisters, I suppose. Soon, I expect everyone will. Cole, they’re gonna make an announcement next week. I’m—”

The tears returned, welling up at the bottoms of Joanna’s lids and spilling over. Cole put his cup down and wrapped his hands around hers, an act of intimacy they had shared often in the past weeks.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. He suddenly felt like this person he was infatuated with, who he’d scarcely known for more than a month and had barely spent time with until two weeks ago, was so much older and different than him. Cole wanted to wrap her in his arms and run away from her all at once. His stomach and heart were at odds.