"After the death sermon a while back," I responded.
"So almost a month." Mom exhaled. "You've been walking and talking for almost a month?"
I shook my head. I could shake my head. Man, it felt good. "No. I realized I wasn't dead then. I started to walk, maybe ten days ago, but I can't go far and it hurts and makes me really tired, and the talking about the same. That is not so hard."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Mom asked, a single tear rolling down her cheek.
"I didn't want you to warn Kurt. He shamed me publicly and I wanted him to take it back publicly."
Mom turned around and checked the road and started driving without saying another word. She didn't have to. I knew her well enough to know she was thinking, "What about turning the other cheek? What about being the bigger person?"
I didn't want to be the bigger person, I wanted justice. The fact that I didn't feel better was a sign Kurt hadn't been punished enough. I needed to make sure Mr. Tyrol destroyed him.
***
"Mr. Tyrol called and said I needed to meet him here," Dad said, ripping open Mom's door the moment she turned off the engine in our driveway. "What happened at school? Are we in trouble? What have you done now? I told you not to take her there, it's an embarrassment ?"
"Chill dad," I said. "Everything is fine."
He looked past mom, staring at me.
"Hi Dad." I waved at him. "I'm not a vegetable anymore. Yay."
Dad took a ragged breath. Mom climbed out of the car. "Go hug your daughter." Dad climbed into her seat and climbed over the console and fell on top of me in an embrace. Mom walked around the van and rolled the door open. "You could have walked around," she mumbled, a smile playing across her lips.
My father pulled back and took my face in his hands. "I thought you were gone."
"So did I, but I guess we're all still here together," I responded. I glanced my reflection in the mirror, and saw scars on my face for the first time. Angry spider-vein scars criss-crossed over the left side of my face, even the heaviest concealor would not cover it. I squeezed my eyes shut. Even though Kurt had confessed I would still bear the scars of his actions.
"Oh, Dad," Chloe interjected, standing beside Mom. "For the record, Kurt admitted to lying about the circumstances of the accident. Turns out he was texting."
Dad released me, his face clouded with rage. "I'm going to kill that sick ?"
"He's at the sheriff's office being charged, and to be honest, I don't care about Kurt at all," Mom said, wrapping an arm around Chloe. "Our family is whole again. All I care about is getting us re-connected."
"Sure. Okay," Dad agreed. "But we'll ensure that little punk gets what's coming to him too."
***
Later that day Junior had been arrested and given a slap on the wrists for subverting justice in the form of forty hours of community service. Kurt was out on bail by the end of the day. It cost his parents a small fortune and he had to wear a not-so-attractive electronic tracking accessory on his ankle till the trial, which was set for the end of summer.
Mom was opposed to the whole process, but Dad insisted we follow up the criminal case with a civil suit, so Kurt's parents would have to pay for my medical bills. The bills had increased. A professional physiotherapist, speech therapist, psychologist and neurosurgeon had been added to my list of people I didn't want to see, but mom was adamant; she had mastered getting what she wanted during my illness.
Things should have been getting better, but I felt bleak. Research had convinced me there was nothing that could be done about the scarring on my face, yet it seemed easier to deal with than the scarring on my heart from the betrayal. So I focused on building a happier future. I studied hard to get closer to graduating, I reconnected with friends, got involved with educating people about texting and driving, and with the help of the church pastor, who gave us free family counseling, our family was returning to life. Chloe was even growing out her strawberry blonde hair, which looked hilarious against the jet-black ends.
Despite all the positive things happening in my life I couldn't get out of the rut. When I saw my face it made me furious, I couldn't wait to see Kurt carted off to prison. I leaned over the desk re-writing my victim's impact statement for the fortieth time.
Sweat beaded between my shoulder blades and rolled down my back on the warm summer evening. "How is it going?" Mom asked, standing in the doorway in a Garfield nightie.
"It's ?" I exhaled and dropped my pen on the desk. "I want to get it just right. I want them to know that he took a year and a half of my life, that even though he confessed to lying that the gossip is still out there, that I still have nightmares about the accident, and that my face will never be beautiful again, that his actions have changed the course of my life ?" I buried my face in my hands. "That time is never coming back and I will never be the same."
Mom crossed the room and hugged me. "You're right all of those things are true. It's also true that you are stronger than I've ever seen you. That you have a passion to protect young people from what happened to you. What Kurt did was terrible, and he should pay for it, but will sending him to prison atone for what's he done to you?"
"Yes," I said, pulling away from Mom. "My life was interrupted for eighteen months, and it's fair for him to sit and root in prison for the same amount of time."
"What happens if the judge doesn't grant that?"
"He will. Judge Lawman is fair and just and he is harsh on this kind of thing according to Mr. Tyrol."
Mom kissed my forehead. "I'm praying for you."
I nodded, aware that Mom was retreating from a fight she knew she couldn't win. I picked up my pen, and started writing again. It was therapeutic to be able to cross things out, so much better than the delete key, which made it seem as though I'd written nothing. I had ten pages of text, crossed out and moved around, but still evidence of my efforts. When I finished a section I would type it up. So far, there were two and a half pages of double-spaced material, but I needed another half a page. It had to be perfect for me to have any hope of happy future.
***
At midnight, I turned out the lights. The words from my victim statement swirled through my head. It didn't feel right, no matter what I wrote it didn't feel like enough. The moonless night afforded no light as I twisted and turned rehearsing in my mind Kurt's annihilation in court.
"Zoey," came a fervent whisper from the window. "Zoey, let me in."
I rolled out of bed and walked to the window needing visual confirmation of the audio I refused to believe was true.
"Kurt?"
"I know I'm not supposed to be here," he whispered. "I just needed to talk to you and after tomorrow ?" After tomorrow he would be in prison.
"What do you want to say?" I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Please let me come in." The darkness hid his face, but I imagined his lips curling at the ends as they did when he asked for something.
I exhaled. "Fine, but if you try to attack me. I will scream and you will end up in prison tonight."
Kurt pulled off the fly-screen and stepped over the waist high windowpane carefully. Kurt was in my room. It had almost been two years since he'd been there, and yet the familiarity still lingered. I stepped away from him and turned on the small night-light beside my bed. Seeing him in the light, his eyes older, his frame stronger made me wish we were still in the dark, so I could pretend he was a shadow and not a person. I offered him the swivel chair and sat on the bed. "Talk."
He sat down and leaned toward me, his hands on his knees in prayer pose. "I know that this is pathetic, but I wanted to say sorry. I want you to know how sorry I am. It was an accident, compounded by a lie and I'm so sorry, that it aches."
"Are you sorry that it happened or are you sorry you got caught?"
"Both."
I stared at him for a moment. "I'm surprised you're being honest."
"I've lied enough. Every day I got up and acted like I was OK was a
lie. It was a show for my parents, for my friends, so that I wouldn't have to go to jail. So I could go to college and move away from here and never have to think about you and what I did to you, but it would have followed me. Every time my phone makes a sound in the car, I remember the ambulance officer's declaring you dead. I remember your bloodied face and the lie-that freaking lie-and I want to scream, but all the screaming in the world doesn't make it go away." A small sob escaped his lips. "Sorry is the most pathetic word in the dictionary, because it covers nothing. It's a bandaid on an open artery."
"And yet you've risked going to prison to say sorry," I said, cocking my head to the side. I imagined myself in his place, if I'd thought I'd killed him. No I wouldn't have lied, but would I have fudged the truth? Would I have infringed on the close relationship my father had with the sheriff?
"The device only goes off if I leave the outskirts of town," he said, wiping his eyes on his sleeves.
"What if they programmed my address into the tracking device too?"
A smile tugged at his lips. "That's why you were always the smart one. It didn't even cross my mind."
"Are you just doing this so that I don't go as hard on you in my impact statement?"
He blinked hard. "I want to say, no. But the truth is, maybe. I'm so scared of going to prison ? I don't want to go to prison."
Tears ran down his cheeks and left dark spots on his jeans. His hazel eyes were empty, his sandy hair disheveled, it shook me to the core.
"What do you want ?"
"I want to go back in time. I want to ignore Junior's text because it was all organized, we didn't need to text each other. I want to keep driving to the party and have a great night with you. I want to take you to Junior prom and give you my promise ring and I want to look at your pretty face without those scars that I, me, I put on your face. You're still so beautiful, but I want to take it all back and not ruin your life. That's what I want," he hiccupped, and buried his face in his hands.
My body felt like an iceberg, frozen by the size of Kurt's grief. After a few minutes of watching him cry, a grabbed a tissue and pushed it into his hand. It should have felt good to see his suffering, but it meant nothing, and it changed nothing.
"I think you should leave," I said, my voice hollow.
"I made things worse," he said, his eyes searching my face.
"Just go."
He climbed out the window and replaced the fly-screen. "I'll see you tomorrow," he whispered.
I waved my hand at him dismissively. I switched off the night-light, and lay down on my bed. Kurt's words stormed through my mind. The thing that bugged me the most, was that I wanted what Kurt wanted; I wished the accident hadn't happened either. That was something no court could remedy.
***
"Miss Zoey Saunders, I'll hear your statement now," Judge Lawman says.
Instead of riding to the witness stand in my wheelchair, according to plan, I stand and slowly walk to the seat and sit down. Judge Lawman has seen me in the wheelchair, he is aware of my injuries, and has reviewed the phone records and the negative semen swab report ignored by the sheriff.
I smooth my black skirt and adjust my white blouse, which I am rocking since I've put on a little weight. I clear my throat, and read. "Judge Lawman. I'm here today to tell you how Kurt's actions have impacted my life. It's hard for me to walk. I live on what I not-so-affectionately call the baby-food diet because I can't digest anything that hasn't been pureed. Worse than that, is my body's waste disposal, which has essentially rendered me an eighteen-year-old baby. I wear a nappy most the time, to prevent accidents. My pretty face is gone, I will bear the scars of Kurt's actions till the day I die. It is not just me that has been affected by the accident, my family not only suffered when I was unconscious, they suffer in different ways now trying to care for me."
I took a breath to hold back the threatening tears. "Since coming back to life, I've wanted Kurt to know what I've been through. To have him be stuck in a prison that he can't escape. I want him to experience what he has done to me ? I thought prison was the solution, for him to get eighteen months incarceration in exchange for the eighteen months he gave me." I put down my notes and look into Judge Lawman's eyes, which crinkle kindly as he listens. Despite his shaved grey hair, he looks too young to be a judge.
"But prison is not justice. If Kurt spends eighteen months in prison then all you'll have on your hands is two teenagers who collectively have lost three years of their young lives. Justice would be going back in time and giving me back the last twenty months of my life to be a teenager. Justice would be me being able to go to prom and graduate with my classmates. Justice would be removing these scars. But you can't do that-not even a plastic surgeon can do that. Justice is about equity, but I can't find any equitable way to resolve this.
"There are those who say my life is ruined. I'm eighteen and I can't tell when I need to pee. But my life is not ruined, it's merely different to what I'd imagined. It's different to most people my age. That has also afforded me other opportunities that most kids my age don't have, like telling my story to kids in schools; to tell them that this." I point to my face. "This is the result of texting and driving. It's going to take me time to love this face, but I believe in miracles. How could I not with my recovery?
"Maybe justice for Kurt is going to schools with me for eighteen months, or sharing his own experience without me. Maybe it's community service of another form. All I know is that putting him in prison won't benefit anyone, perhaps making him work in the community might? Thank you." I fold my speech.
"Thank you Miss Saunders," Judge Lawman says.
"May I say one last thing?" I ask.
He nods.
I look Kurt in the eyes. "For the record Kurt. I forgive you. Don't lose any more time regretting the accident, I don't." I slowly make my way back to the wheel chair.
Mom squeezes my hand. "I'm so proud of you."
I nod. I'm proud of me too. Things finally feel right.
***
Judge Lawman asks Kurt to stand. Kurt's hands tremble as we all await the verdict.
"Under law, I can give you up to five years for texting while operating a vehicle. You made your situation worse by lying, and blaming the victim for your crime. I believe you need to be punished and am giving you a suspended eighteen month sentence, during which time you will assist Miss Saunders in raising awareness of the dangers of texting and driving. If you are found using a phone while driving or miss one appointment to fulfill your community service, you will serve the full eighteen months in prison. And to save time, I've read over the Saunder's civil claims and award them all medical costs. You will need to find a job, and pay for your mistake. Court is adjourned." He swings his mallet and makes a wooden clack, before leaving.
Kurt's lawyer shakes his hand. "That was a better result than I expected. Don't screw this up."
Mr. Tyrol steps in front of me blocking my view of Kurt. "It's not often that I am challenged by what justice means. Thank you, but make sure he earns the grace you just gave him."
"Grace is free unmerited favour," I respond.
"I better watch you." He smiles. "There may be a budding lawyer in our midst."
Mom and dad hug me. Dad isn't happy about the sentence but he'll make peace with it.
Kurt's gaze catches mine. He smiles at me and his lips dimple in the corners. I see a glimpse of a new future, but I push it aside.
The future is not as important as enjoying right now.
About Susan Fodor
Susan Fodor is the author of The Silver Tides series.
A dreamer. Wife. Mother. Friend. Dessert enthusiast. Theologian/Pastor. Australian. Passionate.
Bi-lingual-English/Hungarian.
Overly involved with fictional characters.
Avid supporter of International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Has eclectic taste in music, food, and clothing.
Enjoys taking random photos of Tuvok
her cat.
And always has time to look for the best in people.
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