Free No One Tells Everything by Rae Meadows

fists; your sharp nails slicing into your damp palms. Sounds are at once all around you, magnified, startling. It seems like you have bionic hearing. You identify a car door slam in the courthouse parking lot, the judge breathing through his nose, your lawyer’s watch, its ticking slowing down until it stops altogether. You wonder what else is expected of you in this whole affair. Another yes? Maybe a no this time? The lawyer will tell you, and you’re glad for that. Your eyes settle on the kind-hearted Judge Castiglione, but then again, you’ve never been very good at reading people and he might really be cold and spiteful. You hope not. You hope he cares about you at least a little.
    Your lawyer says it’s clear that you were not in your right mind, which in the eyes of the law means not guilty by reason of insanity. So in the best case, you will be declared insane. You find it a little comforting. It explains a lot of things over the years. It will show your parents that it wasn’t a matter of just trying harder. Even with the humiliation that comes along with it, insanity gives you a slight power over everyone else. Okay, that’s pushing it, you tell yourself. The trouble is, some of the time you don’t feel insane and that is when, in the coming months, you will want to die.
    “You have ninety days,” the judge says to your lawyer, “to enter a circumstance of mental incapacity.”
    Circumstance. You wish it were all just circumstance but you know it goes deep down, to the bone. It is as inseparable from your being as the blood that warms your veins and collects in your chained-together, leaden feet. Your mind has been misfiring for years.
    Judge Castiglione cracks his gavel down. You thought that was just something they did on TV.
    “Okay,” your lawyer says, “they’ll take you back now. We’ll talk soon. I’ll be in touch with your parents.”
    You think that he’ll probably be much more in touch with them than you will.
    You are escorted outside and it’s too sunny and your eyes tear. You are relieved when the door of the police cruiser is shut and you can rest your head against the cool glass of the window. As you pass the donut place you know you might not ever be allowed another donut and your mouth waters and you close your eyes.
    Up until now you haven’t thought much about Sarah’s parents and now you can’t stop thinking of them. A wave of infinite sorrow makes you feel wobbly. The police radio crackles. You imagine she liked her parents a lot more than you like yours. You imagine they will miss her more than yours will miss you. Your parents, you guess, will never talk about it. Your parents will move to another town so that no one associates them with you. They will take your sister on a trip to Bermuda or the Caribbean or even Hawaii to take her mind off of you.
    The car stops and you are back at the jail. The patrolman doesn’t say anything to you as he opens the door. You don’t move at first because you are looking at the sky beyond his head.
    “Out,” he says.
    His hand is warm and tender on your head to keep it from hitting the top of the car. You feel like crying all over again for this kindness. You want to tell him that you are not evil but your jaw is locked like a vise and you are being walked across the pavement and his grip is around your upper arm and you wish he would hold onto you forever. Don’t let me go, you want to say. Don’t make me go in there. But you are already inside the sickly green cement corridor and he hands you off without saying goodbye.
    ———
    The police discovered what they believe was the murder weapon, a small kitchen knife, in a knapsack in Mr. Raggatt’s apartment.
    “‘Charles Raggatt is a faggot’ was just one of those stupid things kids say.”
    “There was this one time when as a joke someone wrote a love letter to him from Hadley Jameson, who was the hottest girl in school. He thought it was really from her and wrote her back. It