The Terrible Trial of Kennedy Abrams (Treadmill II)

XV

"Since when were you supposed to go off-script?"

"Since when was there a script I was supposed to be following? That would have made this entire thing a hell of a lot easier for me, all things considered."

Kennedy sighed as if Rebecca were nothing but a particularly irritating four-year-old.

"You wrecked Brianne's entire questioning for you. I told her everything that I had done to you, and she was going to use that to our advantage."

"I didn't think about that." Rebecca shook her head, "I'm sorry, okay? I was trying to make you look like a better person than you are. I thought it would help."

"Stop trying to help." Kennedy snapped, "Just do what you're supposed to do, and don't think about different ways to try and make things better. They're only going to make everything so much worse."

"I don't know about so much worse—"

"So. Much. Worse."

Kennedy took a deep breath, calming herself as she did so. She thought back to before the trial, when she had a therapist who had been assigned to her after her parents' divorce resulted in her vandalizing Susan Peterson's locker in the middle of the night.

Or, that's what the school thought had led to her vandalizing Susan Peterson's locker in the middle of the night. In reality, Kennedy had hated Susan Peterson for no good reason during most of her grade school career. She had simply hit a breaking point when Susan started talking about her prom dress during homeroom one morning and Kennedy started to really despise the way she subtly rolled her 'r' on the word 'prom.' Susan Peterson, as her name implied, was fully white and the rolled 'r' made Kennedy want to scream.

So, she had vandalized her locker that night when she couldn't sleep. And when the principal saw Kennedy on the security tapes and called her into his office, Kennedy said she was taking out her anger about her parents splitting up to avoid a suspension. She was assigned a school-approved therapist instead, Dr. Berkeley, and everyone felt bad for her for the rest of the school year. She hardly got assigned any homework for three months.

One thing that Dr. Berkeley had actually helped out with was Kennedy's ability to cope when she was overwhelmed. It didn't matter what was overwhelming her; she was prone to outbursts and saying things that she didn't mean before she had a chance to cool down.

She didn't want to hurt Rebecca more than she already had over the previous few months. So, Kennedy took a deep breath, then another, and then looked at Rebecca in the eyes.

"So. When is Celeste getting home?"

"She's probably home and in her room right now." Rebecca replied, shrugging slightly. "I'll go check."

Kennedy nodded silently and Rebecca stood, disappearing around the corner of the kitchen.

Kennedy popped a strawberry into her mouth and chewed slowly, paying attention to the sound it made in her left ear as she did so. It was a strange sound. She had started noticing things like that recently.

She ate three more strawberries, listening to each one, and looked around Rebecca's kitchen. It was relatively basic, but she could see where some effort had been put into the decorative plants on the windowsills and the painting of Clemson's football stadium on the wall next to the sliding glass door, directly in Kennedy's line of sight.

The sun was setting through the door, oranges and pinks and yellows bleeding through the sky. Kennedy had begun to notice that the sunsets had been more pink recently, with almost-magenta rays of light lining the edges of clouds and spiraling out in ribbons that crossed the sky for as far as she could see. A terrible voice in the back of Kennedy's head that she usually tried to ignore wondered how many more sunsets she would get to see before her days were spent in a windowless cell, surrounded by other murderers.