Chapter 10: Three Months Narrow to One
For a few days after the court notice, I kept the two dates covered with my hand.
The trial. Graduation.
I could make it through a school day if I didn’t look at the calendar. I could sit in Ms. Alvarez’s office, finish an assignment, and pretend the future was a list of manageable tasks. But as soon as I saw those dates together, five days apart, the week seemed to shrink around them.
Ms. Alvarez didn’t tell me I had to be brave. She asked what would make Monday possible.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Then we’ll start with what you do know.”
I knew I could use the counseling office when the noise in the halls became too much. I knew I had one assignment due and another overdue. I knew I couldn’t explain the trial to every teacher, and didn’t want to. We adjusted the plan: deadlines in writing, extra time where I needed it, no questions about the reason unless I chose to share it.
It wasn’t a cure for exhaustion. It was a way to make the next day less impossible.
I attended most of my classes that week. In English, I handed in an assignment I’d been carrying around in my backpack, its corners curled from being moved but never opened. My teacher accepted it without asking me to explain the delay.
I was grateful. I was also embarrassed that something so small could feel like a victory.
At the temporary accommodation, I worked at the little desk until the words on the page blurred. Some nights I slept. Some nights I lay awake listening to ordinary building sounds—a door closing down the hall, plumbing knocking in the wall—and had to remind myself that a sound was not the same as a warning.
The prosecutor’s office advocate called again to arrange a preparation session. Ms. Cole offered to come with me. I said yes.
The meeting was in a plain office with a box of tissues on one table and a pitcher of water on another. The prosecutor explained the basic shape of what might happen: questions from her, questions from the defense, possible breaks. She didn’t promise the recordings would be accepted or that the court would see them the way investigators did. She said those questions belonged to the court, and that the team would be ready to address them.
I appreciated that she didn’t decorate uncertainty to make it easier to swallow.
“What if I can’t remember the answer?” I asked.
“Then you say you don’t remember.”
“What if I don’t understand the question?”
“You can ask for it to be repeated or explained.”
“And if I need a minute?”
“You can ask to pause.”
The advocate sat across from me with a notebook open. She asked if I wanted to practice. I almost said no. Then I thought of Dean’s voice pushing into every silence at home, treating hesitation as permission to keep going.
“Yes,” I said.
The first questions were simple. My name. My age. Whether I recognized Dean. Whether I lived with him. I answered them without trouble.
Then the questions moved to the night I went to the hospital.
“How many times did he hit you?”
My fingers tightened around the paper cup.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you estimate?”
“No. I don’t want to guess.”
The advocate nodded. The prosecutor did not hurry to fill the quiet.
I had spent years learning that a pause was dangerous. At home, silence gave Dean room to decide what it meant. In that office, the pause belonged to me.
We practiced questions about the recording, too. What did I remember? What did I not remember? Had I chosen the words on it freely?
“I said I did it,” I replied. “He kept asking. I wanted him to stop.”
“Do you remember every part of that night?”
“No.”
That answer felt worse than the others. I wanted to give them a clean account, one with no gaps and no uncertainty, as if I could make the truth stronger by making my memory perfect.
The prosecutor reminded me that the recordings had limits. They could capture words and sounds; they could not explain every moment before or after. The investigators had compared available upload information with the medical timeline, but that supported only a general period, not a complete reconstruction. The date label alone didn’t prove when a clip was made. And the phone I’d hidden in the speaker was still missing.
The missing phone sat in my thoughts like an unfinished sentence. I didn’t know if Dean had found it, if my mother had moved it, or if it was somewhere in the house where nobody would think to look. The recordings already uploaded to my account remained accessible, but I understood that access and proof were not the same thing.
The prosecutor said the specialist’s work on one clip could help explain what had been reviewed. It did not guarantee that every question about every recording was settled.
“What if they say it’s misleading?” I asked.
“They may challenge it,” she said. “We’ll explain what the review establishes and what it doesn’t. The court decides what to consider.”
Ms. Cole sat beside me, not speaking for me, just making sure I remembered I could ask for a break.
We practiced again. When I lost my place, I stopped.
“I need a minute,” I said.
The prosecutor closed her notebook.
“Take your time.”
Outside the office, Ms. Cole walked with me to the bus stop. She didn’t ask whether I felt ready.
“I don’t know how to be ready for something I’ve never done,” I said.
“You don’t have to know how,” she replied. “You only have to know what you can ask for when it gets hard.”
The next preparation meeting was shorter. By then, I had written a few reminders in the notebook she had given me: Don’t guess. Ask them to repeat it. A pause is allowed. I read them before school, before calls with investigators, and once in the bathroom at the accommodation because my hands were shaking and I needed something steady to look at.
Ruiz and Bell updated me when they could. My mother’s account was still being reviewed. She had admitted seeing Dean pressure me and knowingly repeating the bathing story, but that admission did not erase the years before it or decide what the court would do. Dean continued to deny deliberately hitting me and said I had attacked him first. His lawyers were challenging the recordings and my account.
No one told me the evidence would speak for itself. I was beginning to understand why. Evidence did not speak in a room by itself. People argued about what it meant, and other people had to decide what they believed.
Meanwhile, school kept moving. There were quizzes, announcements, and a senior project that needed one more revision. I sat in class while someone talked about cap-and-gown orders and felt as if they were describing a ceremony on another planet.
Ms. Alvarez asked if I still wanted to attend graduation.
“Yes,” I said, surprised by how quickly the answer came.
“Then we’ll keep planning for it.”
I couldn’t promise myself I’d walk across the stage without fear, or that I’d enjoy the day the way I once imagined. But I wanted to be there. The trial didn’t get to become the only important event in my life.
As the date drew closer, the advocate checked again about possible scheduling options and support at court. She could request what might help, explain the process, and stay available. She still could not promise the trial would move. The date remained five days before graduation.
Five days. Not enough space to put one event away before the next began.
I began setting aside clothes for both. For court, I chose something plain and comfortable. For graduation, I kept the shirt and shoes I had picked before all of this happened. I folded them carefully and put them on the shelf. The small act made me feel foolish, then stubborn. I was allowed to plan for something good even when I couldn’t control what came first.
The night before trial, I barely slept. I kept rehearsing answers I hadn’t been asked yet, then scolded myself for trying to predict every question. Near dawn, I stopped. I washed my face, put on the clothes I’d set out, and slid my notebook into my bag.
Ms. Cole met me outside the accommodation. She asked if I wanted to talk on the way.
“No,” I said. “But stay with me.”
“I will.”
The courthouse was busier than I expected. People moved through the entrance carrying folders and coffee, heading toward rooms where their lives were being discussed in careful voices. A security officer directed us through the line. I focused on the notebook inside my bag and the feel of my shoes on the floor.
For one suspended moment, I could almost believe I was only there to answer questions.
May you like
Then I saw him.
Dean entered the courthouse wearing the same amused expression I remembered from the hospital.
