Free Crush. Candy. Corpse. by Sylvia McNicoll

help me if she could, wherever she was. Still, it doesn’t matter if God counts me with his stars in the heavens or whether Omi loves me or not. It only matters what those twelve rumpled, tired jurors think as they listen to all the witnesses testifying.
    “Would Donovan Petrocelli take the stand, please?”
    Oh no, here it comes . I squeeze my eyes shut for a minute.
    “Show me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,” my mother said when I got caught shoplifting last summer. I had explained to her that I never stole anything. Donovan just passed a leather jacket to me to hold while he grabbed something else. The secret shopper pointed both of us out to the security guard and the two of them cornered us.
    The charges were dropped for me but not for Donovan. Mom and Dad forbade me to see him. But, really, how could they stop me when they were busy working at the condo or were at tests and treatments for Mom?
    Donovan’s wearing a white shirt, dark tie, and a dark jacket. Dressed for court, or maybe a funeral. He affirms instead of swearing in on the Bible. You have that choice if you’re not religious, but already it sets him apart from everyone else. His eyes, constantly moving, twitching almost, also set him apart. I don’t know whether he still likes me or if he’ll say bad things deliberately. But his eyes stop twitching as he sees me and he smiles.
    “Donovan, under what circumstances did you meet Sonja Ehret, the defendant?”
    “A couple of summers ago, I was working with a lawn-cutting company and we got hired by her old man’s condo management company. One day I was mowing the lawn and she came out with a cold glass of water.”
    “How would you characterize your relationship?”
    “Say what?”
    “Were you just friends, or romantically involved . . .” the buzzard waves a hand windshield-wiper style, “you know, boyfriend, girlfriend.”
    “Yeah, yeah. I asked her out after I finished the glass of water. She goes to my high school and I’d seen her around before.”
    “So she would have been sixteen and you would have been seventeen, is that correct?”
    Donovan shakes his head. “No, she was sixteen. I was nineteen.”
    The buzzard taps his chin. “A three-year age difference. Do you know whether or not her parents approved of your relationship?”
    “They forbade her to see me.”
    “But you remained a couple for how long?”
    “Um . . . um . . .” He glances at my parents, knowing that we were supposed to have broken up that August when the security guard called Mom in. “We stopped goin’ out in February.”
    “That’s seven months that Sonja had to sneak around and deceive her parents in order to see you.”
    “Objection!” my lawyer calls.
    “Sustained,” the judge answers.
    Heh, heh, the plaid-shirt guy coughs. The chubby guy wipes his forehead hard and fast. Another statement they’re not supposed to listen to and yet they react to it anyway.
    “Can you tell the court why your relationship ended?”
    “She got really involved with the old people at the home. It was supposed to be just to get her volunteer hours to graduate, but then it was all she ever talked about.”
    “Can you tell us some of the things she said to you about them?”
    “Well, sure. You can see for yourself that Sunny is a hot . . . I mean, an attractive girl. She wanted them all to look better — to wear nicer clothes, to have their hair styled. We used to shop for them. She wanted to make them all happier and better.”
    “How did she react when instead the seniors slipped further away?”
    “She was really bummed out. She said she’d rather die than live the way they did.”
    “Objection!” my lawyer calls.
    “Overruled,” the judge says. “This is not hearsay. Mr. Petrocelli actually heard these words himself.”
    That’s because I must have said that line a hundred times to him before I even met Helen Demers, like when we were just shopping in the mall on Senior’s Day.