All The Glory by Elle Casey

cell out of my pocket.
    My mind started to stray. Ms. Davis might have been saying something, but all I could do was sit there and think about what I was going to say to my parents … how I could tell my mom I was hanging out with a murderer without having her freak right the hell out.
    Hey Mom, listen, I know you wanted me to be more social and everything, find something to work on as an after-school thing, so I decided to, you know, hang out at the jail with our old neighbor.
    It was never going to work. There wasn’t a single thing I could say to my parents to make this okay with them.
    “Are you listening?” Ms. Davis said, tilting her head to the side as she stared at me.
    “Oh. Sorry. I kind of went off on my own track there for a second.”
    She frowned but continued. “I was saying that if you have any questions about the process, about what Jason is going to go through legally speaking, you could talk to me about it.”
    I couldn’t think of what to say to that, so I just sat there and waited to hear more.
    “I graduated from law school a few years back, but preferred teaching to practicing, so here I am.” She shrugged and then gestured around her room. “Trying to tap into all these young minds and get them interested in their country’s government and history.”
    “Wow. Talk about …,” I almost said boring , “… interesting.”
    She laughed. “I know, I know. You’re thinking it’s lame, but it’s really not.”
    I readjusted myself in my chair, embarrassed that she, like so many other adults, had the ability to hear my unspoken thoughts.
    “Most kids never have the luck — or the bad luck, I should say — to see the process up close and personal. And based on what I’m hearing and seeing in the hallways, none of your friends are going to get involved. But if you’re planning to do that, I can help.”
    “If I’m planning to do what?” I was so confused at this point. Up was down, down was up. Teachers gave a shit and my neighbor murdered a football coach.
    “Get involved.” She leaned towards me, bending almost in half. “Standing by Jason during his trial.”
    “His trial?” Until then I hadn’t really thought about a trial. A real courtroom where people would be watching and Jason would be on the stand, like the countless television shows I’d seen where the guilty went to prison or the electric chair and the innocent were set free.
    Jason admitted to doing it. He wasn’t going to be set free.
    I suddenly felt sick. Standing, I reached down to grab my bag. “Thanks, Ms. Davis, that’s really nice, but I don’t think I need any help.” I threw the bag over my shoulder and side-stepped away until there was enough distance between us for me to turn around and not be totally rude.
    “He entered a plea of not guilty,” she said at my retreating back.
    I tried to ignore her and get to the door, but she kept talking.
    “But he confessed. What do you think is going to happen with that?”
    I paused at her words, my foot refusing to cross the threshold. I had no idea how things really worked in a genuine courtroom, but common sense told me this was not a good combination.
    “There are legalities, things that he’s going to have to deal with. I was just thinking that you might want some support. It’s hard to be the only one standing against a sea of hate.”
    “Okay, thanks,” I said, just before pretty much running out of the classroom. My survival instincts or something inside me that wanted to be in another life at that moment told me to get the hell away and stay away. There was way too much cold, hard truth flying around that classroom.
    I ran all the way to Algebra, falling into my chair as the bell rang signaling the beginning of class.

Chapter Sixteen

    THURSDAY, AFTER A COUPLE OF mind-numbingly awful days at school listening to people talking not only about Jason but about me being a murderer-lover, I got a text from Jason’s dad. It was the first bright