Harrison Woods is a 17-year-old girl attending Arbor Coast High, a boarding school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her dark past including her rocky relationship with her parents and her esteemed older brother's suicide are the reasons she landed herself at...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Sitting at the witness stand after Harrison's testimony was awful. My lawyer had just attacked her, sending her into a fit of tears and emotions I couldn't even imagine she was feeling. My heart shattered when her teary eyes met mine, her normally gorgeous brown eyes were now vacant and mournful. I had watched her walk back to where her lawyer and Jason sat, immediately collapsing into Jason's chest and crying even more. My lawyer kept this pleased look all over his face, and it made me sick.
I knew it was time for my own testimony, and I was in control today. The Predator wasn't present, which meant that I could say exactly what I wanted to. I could say everything that I needed to. Harrison's lawyer, Amy Beck, approached the stand to start my questioning.
"I could stand here and ask you an endless amount of questions, Otto," she said to me. "I could ask you about your disorder, and I could ask you about what you've done, and I could ask you about your relationship with Harrison Woods. But I don't want to do any of that."
To say I was confused would be putting it lightly.
"All I want to ask you, Otto is," she paused, taking a few steps closer to the stand, even going so far as to place her arms on top of it, "are you guilty?" She finished.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my lawyer looking incredibly confused and somewhat annoyed. I could even see the jury setting down their notebooks to pay close attention to my answer. I had to think about it, what to say and how to react to the abnormal question. But her question was going to help me. It was setting me up to say exactly what I needed to.
"I'm guilty of a lot of things," I told her, sitting up straighter in my chair. "I'm guilty of being in a relationship with my student, and I'm guilty of shooting my best friend, my brother. I'm guilty of loving Harrison, that's for sure." I looked over towards Harrison, locking my eyes on hers. "And I regret every part of our relationship."
Harrison tensed, I could see it in her face and in the way that Jason then grabbed onto her arm to relax her.
"I don't regret it because I didn't actually love her, or because I had the intention of killing her. I just regret it because I loved her too much, and I strung her along in all of my insanity when what I should have done was to let her go. Because if I had let her go, then she wouldn't be here right now, and she would be okay. That's all I ever wanted for her," I said, never looking away from Harrison's eyes. I was surprised that her lawyer wasn't interrupting me, but I took advantage of the moment. I was even more surprised that Harrison's eyes remained locked on mine, too.
"The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her," I croaked, a wave of emotion suddenly hitting me. Harrison's eyes began watering, and I felt as if my own weren't far from doing the same. "But I did. I hurt her through my actions that I don't even remember doing. And after everything that's happened, and everything that I've been accused of, even I can see it and admit it. I'm a monster."
