Brandy Colbert: Pointe

“Really?” He handed the sandwich to me then, and I moved aside as Donovan threw his comic book, a bag of chips, and a soda up on the counter. He kept his eyes on the register. “Haven’t seen you guys around, but you don’t seem like seventh-graders,” he said. “You could definitely pass for freshmen.”

“You go to the high school?” I asked, surprised and pleased that he wasn’t as old as I’d thought.

“I graduated early,” he said with a quick smile. “At my old school. I had a lot of credits, so now I’m just taking some time off and working until I figure out what I want to do.”

“I can’t wait to graduate,” Donovan said, digging money out of the front pocket of his backpack. “Then I can do what I want all the time without answering to anyone. Ever.”

“Yeah, but then you’ll have a job, and you have to answer to your boss at a job.” He told Donovan the total and looked at him as he handed over the money, as their fingers brushed against each other in the exchange. “What would you do all day if you could do whatever you wanted?”

“I don’t know.” Donovan was flustered at being put on the spot and that’s when I realized he thought the new guy was as cool as I did. He normally didn’t care what anyone thought of him, didn’t pay much attention to what other people said. “Look for rare comics. I’d go on trips all over the country to find the really good ones because you can’t always trust people selling them online. And I’d go to a baseball game in every city that has a team. Even the bad teams.”

“Huh.” The new guy looked thoughtful and paused before he reached into the register to make change. “You like fishing?”

Donovan wrinkled his nose and scratched under the collar of his puffy winter coat. “Not really. I mean, I don’t think so.”

“You ever been?”

Donovan’s head shook after a moment. “It doesn’t seem right, killing all those fish like that. They never did anything to us.”

The guy leaned forward on his elbows, bringing his face even closer to ours. Even though I didn’t know him, I was jealous. Why hadn’t he asked me what I liked to do in my spare time? Then I thought of Trisha and Livvy in the bathroom earlier, thought maybe it was better if he didn’t know about how much I loved ballet.

“You don’t have to kill them,” he said. “You can throw them back and they’re as good as before you took them out of the water.”

Donovan looked skeptical.

“Maybe we can go sometime,” the guy said, his voice easy as he stood up straight and handed Donovan a couple of dollars and some coins. “It’s too cold now but once it warms up a little, my buddies and I make a day of it. Take a cooler full of food. One full of beer”—he gave a sideways grin when he said this, as if he knew he shouldn’t be mentioning beer, but thought we were mature enough to handle it—“and we just goof off. Sometimes we catch something to bring home and cook, sometimes we don’t. You wouldn’t have to catch anything. You could just chill with us.”

Donovan turned over the idea in his head as he deposited the money in his backpack, slid the comic book carefully into a thin zippered pouch on the other side. “You’d let me hang out with you guys?”

“Of course,” the guy said. “You seem like a cool dude to me. Cool people are always welcome.”

I stood off to the side, feeling very unwelcome and very uncool until he looked at me and said, “No girls allowed on our fishing trips. Sorry.” And then he winked one of his brilliant topaz eyes. “I’ll have to find a way to make it up to you.”

Those words ran through my head the rest of the week and I kept telling myself it didn’t mean anything but when he kissed me two weeks later, I felt validated. As if I’d known all along that he was meant to be mine.

We had both fallen for him. He made both of us feel special in our own way and that just didn’t happen with someone like him. Older, cooler, and more experienced. And it never happened to me, not with guys that good-looking.

We were both so enamored that we didn’t realize he hadn’t told us his name. We didn’t realize until the transaction was complete and the conversation had wrapped and we were making our way toward the glass door.

“Hey, I’m Trent, by the way,” he called out from the counter. “Trent Miller.”

“I’m Theo,” I said quickly, wanting to get it out before Donovan could speak.

“Theo? That’s an interesting name for such a pretty girl.” He winked at me again and I normally hated winking but on him, it was cute. Sexy.

My face flushed as I explained, “It’s short for Theodora.” I’d said it a thousand times but it felt different when I said it to him. It made me feel older, somehow, like maybe I wasn’t such a little girl with an old-lady name after all.

“Nice to meet you, Theo.” He turned to my friend. “And . . . ?”

“Donovan. Donovan Pratt,” he said, copying Trent by adding his last name.

“Theo and Donovan,” he said, nodding very slowly, as if he were packing it away in an important place. “I’ll try to remember. That is, if you guys come back and see me?”

“We’ll try,” I said, attempting to play coy at the same time Donovan said, “Definitely. We’ll be back, Trent.”

He said it with so much enthusiasm that it embarrassed me. I knew from hearing girls talk in the locker room before gym that I was supposed to play hard to get. So I didn’t even say goodbye that first day we walked out. I tried to pretend it didn’t matter if Trent Miller liked me, but I looked back at him through the glass once we were on the other side, and I knew that was the furthest thing from the truth.

I DON’T KNOW EXACTLY HOW LONG MY TESTIMONY LASTS, BUT IT feels like a long time. Hours.

I have no idea what my voice sounds like as I croak out my story. Or what my fingers look like as they press a fresh tissue to my face every few minutes, reach down to cradle the cup of water more often than that. I couldn’t tell you which of the jurors gasps when I tell them, in detail, what Chris did to me in the backseat of his car and what he had me do to him. I’m not sure if it’s the Asian woman with the silver bob or the white man with the purple birthmark that covers half of his face.

I don’t see my parents’ faces, don’t wonder if they are horrified or mortified or both, because I can’t look at them and watch all the respect they had for me drain away before my eyes.

I try to be a grown-up. I attempt to say it all with no emotion, without showing how terrified I am of these questions. The detail is astounding—in McMillan’s wording and how much I’m supposed to reveal in my response. I have to close my eyes sometimes, shut out everyone in the room and talk like I’m relaying the plot of a movie. I don’t shake so much if I think about someone else in the role of Theo Cartwright. My voice wavers a few times, but McMillan just tells me to take my time, waits patiently as I stop to take in a few deep breaths or sip from my water.

Chris’s lawyer isn’t so nice. He spits questions at me rapidly, so quickly that my body grows too warm and my thoughts become muddled. But I keep up with him. I have to, because the sooner I answer his questions, the sooner I can get out of this hard seat and away from all these probing eyes. His own are an icy, crystal blue and they peer at me the whole time he’s cross-examining, daring me to doubt him. I knew from the second I saw him that he’d be anything but easy on me. He keeps asking if Chris ever flat-out told me he was going away with Donovan, or if I ever saw anything inappropriate between them with my own eyes. He asks if Chris threatened me, if I ever felt like my life was in danger when I was around him.