Conviction (35 page)

“Braden, you’ve had an extremely difficult week.”

“Is that why you’re here? You’re bribing me not to tell anyone about you?”

“I’m here because you shouldn’t have to do this alone, and because as someone who cares about you, I thought you’d need—”

“I think you’re the last person I need anything from.”

“Well, that’s your prerogative.”

“Maybe you should just pull over and let me out.”

His jaw sets in a firm cleft. “Let’s not make things worse than they already are.”

“Was that a threat?”

“Do you really think that, Braden? Do you not know me at all?”

“I thought I did.”

He starts to answer that, then doesn’t. He stares out at the road, and I understand then that I hurt him. “Well,” he says finally, quietly, “it’s a ways away,
right? Why don’t you just try and get some rest.”

I lean my head back against the seat with a thud. My whole chest feels hollow, but a painful hollow. All this time I’ve been too scared to name it into existence—I’ve been too
scared to name it even to myself—but I can’t push away anymore what I’ve been afraid of since that first day after my dad got arrested and the social worker was there: that God
marked me for this. That he warned me that day that I was going to have to choose between him and my dad.

We’re driving into the sun and there’s clouds around it, everything lit up like a picture Kevin showed once in class of a napalm bombing in Vietnam. We learned how napalm’s
designed to be sticky, so instead of getting first-degree burns you only get the worse ones, both the kind that hurt the most and the kind that sear your nerves too fast to hurt at all. When
there’s an explosion, it releases carbon monoxide, so people lose consciousness and then, lying there, they burn.

I can’t imagine a better description of hell.

When we get to the courthouse, I’m rattled going over the speed bump into the parking lot. Kevin parks, and when he turns off the car, it gets hot inside right away. There’s a crowd
outside the entrance, and I try not to look.

“Well,” Kevin says, again, and then he doesn’t go anywhere with it. I’ve unbuckled my seat belt and opened my door when he says quickly, “Braden, wait. Will you let
me pray for you first?”

“Oh, anything you say, Mr. Cortland.”

He ignores the sarcasm and reaches out to lay his hand on my head. I pull away; he drops his hand and closes his eyes.

“Father…” He pauses a long time, the silence swelling. “Father God, I ask that you be with Braden today. Give him the right words to speak. Give him courage. Give him
strength. And God—let him feel your presence surrounding him. Be close to him. Bring peace to him. Please just let him know you love him, and let him know many of us love him, and let him
know he’s not alone. And Lord…be with Trey, whom we love very much, too.”

M
r. Buchwald comes to escort me past the crowd gathered outside and through the back of the courthouse where no one will see me. He has an energy
bar, which he hands me and tells me to eat.

“Just remember today not to deviate from the testimony as we discussed it, and to stay calm during the cross,” he says as he ushers me down the long hardwood hallway into a
dark-paneled room with no windows and nothing inside but some folding chairs. “No ad-libbing. Now. It may be a few minutes.” He checks his watch. “Wait here.”

My eyes feel dim and broken down and quavery, and nothing holds its shape when I look at it. I can feel my pulse in my brow. All those times I never actually said anything—with the cops
that first night, with all the reporters and everyone who asked at school these past months—it doesn’t matter if I never lied then. This time I can’t evade the questions. And this
time, it counts. And I still don’t know what I’m going to say.

I’ve been waiting in the room for six minutes when my phone rings. This time I’m expecting Kevin, but I’m wrong again: it’s Trey.

I don’t pick up. I watch the seconds tick by on the clock; a minute goes by, then another. Trey doesn’t leave a message. Outside I hear the click of footsteps, like someone walking
by in high heels, and my heart revs up waiting for the door to open, but the footsteps pass. And then my phone goes off again: Trey left a message after all.

“Braden, it’s me. Listen, I—” There’s a lot of noise in the background. His voice is hoarse. “Listen, I’m at O’Hare in Chicago. I had a connection
back to New York, but I didn’t get on, and now I’m just—I don’t know what I’m doing. Kevin told me he went with you and he didn’t know if you were okay or not,
and I know it’s too late for me to make it back in time to be there like I said I would, and I just—look, I’m going to stick around here, so I’ll just be here, and maybe you
can call me if you want me to come back. I’ll get on the first plane back. Or text me, whatever. I’ll be here. Just—” His voice closes around itself. “Can you call
me?”

There are black circles hovering for a second over my vision as I dial. My head hurts. He picks up on the first ring. “Braden—”

“Don’t call me again.” My brain feels suspended in the middle of my head on a rope swing, swaying and banging against the side of my skull with every motion. The stupid thing
is when I first saw his name flash across my phone, some small part of me was holding on to some kind of hope maybe he was here, calling from the parking lot or something to let me know.
“That’s all I’m calling to say. Go back to New York, stay in Chicago, I don’t care. But delete my number and don’t call and from now on leave me alone.”

“Braden, wait, please. Please just hear me out and—”

“I never want to see you or hear from you again.”

From his phone I hear a flight being called, and then another one, and then I hear more footsteps outside my door. He says, “You mean that?”

“Yes.”

“Please just let me—”

“It’s too late,” I say, because it is. “Don’t ever contact me again.”

I’m brought into the courtroom at nine thirty sharp. It has gleaming floors and no windows and wooden pews like in church, and it has that same feeling of the whole weight
of the universe above you sinking closer and closer down toward you. There’s a whole big contingent of cops in their uniforms seated in a cluster toward the back, a few people who look
vaguely familiar, maybe spectators or protestors I saw on the news, and the Reyes family. My dad is seated next to Mr. Buchwald at a table in front of the room, facing Judge Scherr’s bench,
and when I come in, his eyes lock on me. Before my mind kicks in again, the sight of him there hits me the way I always imagined it felt for Elijah when God sent down the fire from heaven and
incinerated Elijah’s drenched altar: so swift and all-consuming you’re left trembling and fighting for breath. He mouths,
Hi.
Then,
I love you, B.

Laila Shah is across the aisle from my dad and the witness stand is next to Judge Scherr, a microphone in front of it, and the air in the room is stale and I might dissolve under so many
corrosive stares.

I need more time. I need more time. I don’t know what to do.

As I spell my name for the court reporter, my mouth so dry I can hardly choke the letters out, there’s an insistent clicking of cameras going off. After that, the bailiff comes and stands
in front of me and raises his right hand and waits until I do the same.

“Do you solemnly swear or affirm that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

I say yes. He leads me to the stand. I can’t look at my dad. Maybe he’s been wrong about a lot of things, but this is the one he got the most wrong: there are much lonelier places
than a pitcher’s mound, and there are much deeper tests of who you are.

The lights overhead are long, buzzing rectangles, big enough you could lay someone down in them like a coffin. Alone up here, as Mr. Buchwald asks me to introduce myself to the jury, I can feel,
maybe, the choice I’ve always known I had to make starting to claw its way to the surface.

I struggle to push it back, to catch my breath. The microphone feels like a gun pointed at my head. I tell the jury who I am.

“And you’re Mr. Raynor’s son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your father has been your sole parent and provider all your life?”

“Yes, sir.” Mr. Buchwald’s coached me to keep my eyes on the jury, but I don’t do it; instead, I turn, without even really meaning to, so I can see my dad.

He smiles at me. And when he does, that night crashes into me again, all of it—the parts that’ve been replaying over and over every time I close my eyes, the parts I’ve sifted
through to try to make them into what I needed them to be, the parts I’ve been trying all this time to shut away. And I feel the beginnings then of how I will be ruined for the rest of my
life by what I’m about to do.

“Braden,” Mr. Buchwald says, “will you please tell the jury in your own words what happened the night of Sunday, February ninth?”

H
e didn’t recognize me when he came to our house that night I went to Los Angeles, I know that, but there was a time before that I met Frank
Reyes.

I was eleven and it was August, one of those days in the Central Valley when the sun beats you down and grips your lungs when you try to breathe. Still, my dad and I went out to the mound to
practice, just like we did every day. It was so hot I felt sluggish and light-headed, and in truth I wasn’t even trying. We usually stayed about two hours, but less than an hour into it, my
dad gave up. He handed me my water bottle and let me drink, then said quietly, “Well. I guess we learned something about you today, huh?”

Then I was ashamed of myself. When I started to tell him I was sorry and I’d try harder, he cut me off and said, “Calm down, Braden, no need to throw a hissy fit. Anyway, it’s
too late. Actions speak louder than words.” He took my empty water bottle and my glove and bag. “You walk home and spend time thinking about what changes you need to start making in
your character, all right?” He patted my back and said gently, “I still love you. I’ll have lemonade for you at home.”

There were heat waves rising off the asphalt, and my shirt was soaked through with sweat, and I was imagining myself dying and him getting the phone call that I’d literally burned to death
out there—and I was really going with it; I was picturing the way he’d wail with regret, and for all the times he was too hard on Trey, too—but then at one point my heart started
racing and felt fluttery in my chest, and I got dizzy and then, immediately, scared. Because I didn’t actually want anything to happen, not to me and not to him. I just wanted things to be
all right and him to be proud of me, not for me to actually die out here in the heat, which it felt like I might. So I tried to breathe slower and I put a hand over my chest to feel my heartbeat
and I prayed,
Dear God, please send someone to help me.

I’d made it—red-faced, my cleats dragging against the ground—to Eagle Crest Road when the cop car pulled up next to me. The window rolled down, and Frank Reyes stuck his head
and arm outside the window. He had a bag of Cheetos he was eating from.

“Hey,” he said, frowning and chewing, “you all right, kid?”

I looked around. Obviously he was talking to me. My heart jumped somewhere into my throat. When I got my voice back, I told him yeah, I was fine.

“It’s a hundred and two degrees. What’s the matter, you don’t have a ride?”

I told him I was just going home, and that I lived nearby.

“How near?”

I told him twenty minutes.

“Twenty minutes
walking
?
Today?
Here, hop in. I’ll give you a lift home.”

I knew he was a cop, but he still looked exactly like the kind of person my dad had always warned me would just as soon knife me as pass by me on the street. I looked around to see if there was
anyone who’d hear me if I yelled for help, and debated my chances running. But the streets were empty and I’d seen enough TV to know what cop chases looked like, so I figured I’d
be better off going with him. I said, “Okay.” Then I stood there hoping he’d change his mind until he leaned across the seat and opened the door and said, “Nothing happening
today anyway.”