Free The Diamonds by Ted Michael

Diamonds sentence Mark Durango and Erin O'Hara to no PDA on or around the Bennington School property. Mark and Erin are no longer allowed to be within five feet of one another at any time.” I glanced at Clarissa for help. She did nothing except widen her eyes. It felt like a challenge. Nothing was going to change the fact that, for Rosie, her boyfriend and her best friend had betrayed her trust. I knew that much from experience. But I had the power to make her life a little easier, didn't I? What good was having that power without using it?
    “In addition, Erin and Mark are required to wear clothing that exposes their necks for the next two months. If either is seen with a hickey, or a bruise that resembles a hickey, they will be required to do community service with Ms. Romano's special education class at the Bennington Cemetery on Saturdays. Erin and Mark are no longer allowed to eat lunch in Cafeteria B, and any student seen fraternizing with either individual will hereby be banished from Cafeteria B as well.”
    I reached over, grabbed Clarissa's gavel, and slammed it down as hard as I could. The sound was deafening. “Case closed,” I said.
    “That was amazing,” Clarissa told me. We were in her car, driving toward my house. My hands were still shaking from the trial. “You were so in control.”
    “Really?”
    She nodded, turning up the radio. “I was so impressed. I didn't think you had it in you.”
    I understood where she was coming from. I'd even surprised myself.
    I thought about Erin and Mark and how the few words I'd uttered would, most likely, change the course of their entire year. It both scared and exhilarated me. Outside, the sky was darkening into night. We sped down Willis Avenue, the funky beats of MIKA blasting from the speakers.
    “Doesn't it feel good? To lay down the law and know that whatever you say, people will follow it?”
    “Yeah,” I said. After this, there was no going back. I was addicted. I would stay part of the Diamond Court forever. “It does.”

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed … and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation …
—The Sixth Amendment
to the United States Constitution
     
     
    On the second Friday of every month, all the Bennington seniors with social lives attend the Sound of Music sing-along at the Roosevelt Multiplex, an artsy cinema about twenty minutes away from my house.
    To this day, I'm still not sure how the tradition got started or why the sing-along was an exclusively “senior” event. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it was, you know, a Sound of Music sing-along. What underclassmen wanted to explain to their parents why they needed to be dropped off at the movies wearing an outfit fashioned out of living room drapes?
    I met up with Clarissa three hours before the moviestarted to coordinate our outfits. I was going as the virginal nun-in-training (also known as a nunette), Maria, who taught the Von Trapp children the importance of sunshine, laughter, and singing in harmony. Clarissa was going as Elsa Schraeder, the vampy sexpot who tried to steal the Captain away from Maria and send the children away to boarding school (where—I'll say it—they probably belonged).
    “So, how are you holding up?” Clarissa asked, standing in front of her mirror and adjusting her boobs so that they stretched the front of her dress to full capacity. (Clarissa didn't exactly have a sense of the time period, if you asked me.)
    I looked at her blankly. I was sitting on the edge of her bed.
    “With Jed ,” she clarified.
    “I still miss him,” I said, falling back and resting my head on her pillow. “But more the idea of him than anything else.”
    “I know what you mean,” Clarissa said. “I was the same way right after I broke up with Anderson. It gets better, I