Free Out of Order by Casey Lawrence Page A

nervous energy settled itself under my ribcage, and a countdown started in my head: nine days until graduation. Nine more days, and we’d walk across that stage for real, for the last time.

June 27th
     
     
    “I WANT to go home,” I croaked, my throat tightening with tears again. How could I walk across that stage knowing that my best friends would never be able to do the same? How could I make my speech without them there to hear it? “I want to go home right now.”
    “In a little while,” the police officer with the notebook said. “We’re not done here yet.”
    “Yes, we are,” I said decisively, shrugging off my father’s grip with some difficulty. I scrambled out of the bed, feeling wild and reckless. “We are done. I don’t know anything.” I felt shaky once I was standing on my own two feet again, but sitting back down on the bed would be like admitting defeat. “I don’t know anything else, so why don’t you go do your jobs and find the man who murdered my friends !”
    I was on the edge of total hysteria, feeling it build and well inside me, ready to spill over at any provocation. Tears were running down my face and my nose itched fiercely, but I could not and would not lie down any longer. “I need to go home now .”
    I stumbled a little as I took my first steps, and the officer standing by the curtain lunged at me and grabbed my arm. “You can’t go anywhere,” he said. He didn’t let go of my arm after steadying me, instead gripping tighter.
    “Let go of my daughter!” my mother said angrily, glaring down the officer with her best stink-eye. Standing at five feet four inches tall without heels on, my mother somehow managed to become an intimidating pillar just by standing up. Her jaw was set in a hard line, and even the single teardrop balanced at the end of her long English nose wobbled menacingly.
    “She’s wearing evidence!” the officer protested, but his fingers loosened around my bicep. I yanked my arm free and took a step back, closer to my mother, for whom a feeling of intense admiration had begun to form and swell like pride.
    My mother glanced at me and pursed her lips. Her eyes, still wet with surprised tears, swept up and down over the dried blood on my dress and tights, scrutinizing the evidence of the crime left on her daughter.
    Turning back to the police officer she said, “Honey, why don’t you run over to the gift shop and get Corinna something to change into so we can be on our way?” The too-sweet, forced civility was directed toward my silent father, though she didn’t break eye contact with the officer who’d put his hands on me. My father nodded and walked brusquely around the curtain separating my bed from the rest of the room.
    “We’ll need anything with blood on it,” the officer with the notebook said after he had left, looking between my mother and I with a strange expression creasing his brow. It looked a little like concern, but I was still seething too much to care about his concern, real or imagined.
    “Can you give us some privacy?” my mother asked carefully. A muscle jumped in her cheek, betraying her impatience with the situation. I’d never seen her so frazzled, and I’d watched her interrogate gangbangers threatening to do horrible things to her without flinching. Her eyes had never glistened with tears under the threat of any number of tortures.
    “We need to take some photographs first,” the other officer cut in, and I watched as my mother bit the inside of her cheek. It looked hard enough to draw blood.
    The photographs were taken on the officer’s iPhone, which my mother found highly unprofessional and did not hesitate to state that fact. I held out my arms with my palms up, and then down, and then put them down by my sides for the pictures taken of my dress and legs. My mother stood behind the officer taking the pictures, watching carefully to make sure not a single shot contained my face.
    My father returned before long,