Читать книгу Innocent or Guilty? - A. M. Taylor - Страница 8

The room changes the moment the judge says the word, ‘guilty’. I watch Ethan’s shoulders stiffen, his entire body braced. We were told to expect this, and yet still, somehow, I didn’t. Didn’t think the system could get it this wrong. Ethan’s long, slim body is completely still; he hasn’t moved, but his lawyer is next to him, arm slung around his shoulders, and I wish I could hear what he’s saying but I can’t. Ethan still doesn’t move. Doesn’t make to reply to his lawyer, doesn’t look as though he’s ever going to move again, until suddenly he does. He’s forced to; the bailiff is attaching his handcuffs again, taking him away.

He turns then, finally, and even though Mom calls out his name, her voice cracking the room in two, he looks straight at me, our identical eyes catching. We’re the same height. He’s not all that tall for a guy, but for a girl I am, and so we’re eye to eye. Mom reaches up to him, pulling him into a hug before they take him away, and Dad has to pull her from him, letting my older sister, Georgia in for a hug too, and then clapping Ethan’s shoulder. Dad says something I don’t hear, and Ethan is swaying slightly in the push and pull, arms and hands outstretched towards him, taking, taking, taking. And still he hasn’t taken his eyes off mine. Finally we hug, for the first time in years it feels like, and of course it’s only one sided because he’s already in chains, but before he’s pulled away again I say, “I’ll make this right, okay? I promise.”

He nods at me, as if it’s all understood, a done deal, as if he knows that, somehow, someday, I’ll get him out of this, out of prison, even though I have no idea how, and wish that he’d tell me. Mom and Georgia are crying, albeit quietly, as Ethan is led away, and when I turn to look at Dad, he’s dumbfounded, his face a mask of stupefied tragedy like I’ve never seen it before. I want to reach out to all of them, to be pulled back into their orbit, but I feel detached from them now, a satellite circling them, no longer a part of the home planet. Mom and Georgia look so similar huddled together, the same size and shape, small and compact, shoulder to shoulder. Ethan and I always took after Dad more, and when I look at him now I wonder if I’m seeing my twin in thirty years’ time, face crumpled and destroyed by sudden loss, transfixed by a horror no one ever saw coming. And then I make a decision, putting my arms around them all, pulling them towards me, pulling them into my own tilted orbit; the strange, circling satellite, and like that we walk out of the courtroom together.