“Then what happened?” Donny asked.
I put a hand up to my swollen eye to cool it. I’d had ice packs on it off and on since the day before. “While they were dragging me down the steps I got a leg free and kicked Eric in the groin. He doubled over, and Mario let go of me. That’s when Eric got really mad and slapped me. I hit my head on the railing and went down.”
Donny’s lips thinned again, and he looked murderous. I saw him breathe in deeply and let it out slowly, but it still took him a minute before he could speak again. “Who found you?”
“Mr. Pierce,” I said. “I think he had hall duty, and he found me and helped me to the nurse.”
Eric had hit me hard enough to slam my head into the railing, which had nearly knocked me out. I was discovered, dizzy and disoriented, by my chemistry teacher, who helped me to the school nurse, who’d then called my mom. She and Mrs. Duncan had come to pick me up in Mrs. Duncan’s car, and they’d taken me to the doctor. While I was in with him, Ma called Donny and he’d walked right out on a client and driven two hours at rush hour to see me. He’d spent the night with us, and he’d been on the phone raising hell all morning and afternoon. That’s what had led to the late afternoon meeting with the superintendent.
“Okay,” Donny said, snapping another photo. “I think I’ve got it.” Then he took my hand again and said, “We’re meeting Mrs. Matsuda in the principal’s office. Can you take me there?”
I stared down at my feet. We were at the school to meet with the superintendent, but I didn’t want to explain to anybody but Donny what’d been happening to me over the course of the last few days. It was too overwhelming.
Donny squeezed my hand encouragingly. “Listen, kiddo, I know this is hard, but you have to speak up and tell the superintendent what happened. If you don’t, then not only will Anderson and Rossi get away without much more than a slap on the wrist, but Principal Harris won’t get reprimanded, either. Poplar High is supposed to have a no-bullying tolerance, and any reports of bullying are required by the school’s own charter to be acted upon immediately. You reported several incidents to Harris, and in your last effort to notify him, he told you that if you didn’t like it, you could leave. And the guy was dumb enough to say it in front of one of his secretaries, which means he thinks he’s above the school’s policy. Don’t you see how unacceptable that is?”
I did see, but I didn’t think I could bring myself to walk these halls during the day ever again. “I can’t come back here, Donny. Everybody’s against me.”
“That’s because no one’s telling them they can’t be,” Donny said. I frowned at him. He didn’t understand. “What’re you gonna do, Maddie? Drop out of school? Cornell doesn’t take dropouts.”
“I could go to another high school,” I told him.
“You want to come live with me?” he asked.
I dropped my gaze. He knew I couldn’t. “Maybe I could go to Jupiter or Willow Mill?”
Donny sighed. “Getting you into their school system would be tricky. This county doesn’t like students crossing residential lines to attend other schools, and frankly, as long as this murder investigation hangs over your head, you’re going to have issues no matter where you go.”
I shuffled my feet, still undecided.
Then Donny said, “Plus, what’s Stubby going to do once we get him cleared of all charges? You think he’ll want to come back to school without you?”
My head snapped up. “You found something that’ll clear Stubby?”
Donny shrugged. “Maybe. It’s something that I still need to look at, but there could be something that shifts the investigation away from both of you. At the very least I intend to present it at Stubby’s pretrial hearing next week. With any luck, the judge will see it our way.”
I felt a seed of hope begin to spring up inside me, but Donny held up a hand of caution. “Don’t set your hopes too high, Maddie. The feds have been busy building their case, and I won’t see much of what they have until the pretrial. There might be enough circumstantial evidence to convince the judge to hold Stubby over for trial. I hope there isn’t, but I want to warn you that I might not be able to clear him this early.”
Still, it was at least a ray of hope and I clung to it. “Will I have to testify?”
Donny shook his head. “No way am I gonna put you on that stand. At least not for the pretrial. It’s too risky. The DA knows the feds are trying to link you to the murders. If you get on that stand, they’ll do their best to insinuate that you were involved too so they can use your testimony against you later, if the case goes to trial. We’ll wait until then to get you up there.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d been terrified of going on the witness stand and being identified by the DA as Stubby’s female accomplice. But then another dark thought entered my mind. “Donny? If the jury from Stubby’s pretrial hearing rules that the case should move forward to an actual trial, does that mean that the feds will arrest me next?”
Donny sighed and I could see in his eyes that he was worried. “I hope not, but they could.”
“What are they waiting for?” I asked. The anxiety was killing me.
Donny smiled like he thought I’d asked a naive question, and he cupped my chin fondly. “Because you don’t look like someone who’d torture and kill two kids, Maddie. You look like the sweet girl next door, which is exactly what you are, but from the DA’s perspective, so many of these cases are won in the court of public opinion that, unless they find you with a smoking gun, or Stubby implicates you directly, the feds know that with only the notebook and Mrs. Tibbolt’s flimsy testimony, they’re fighting an uphill battle.”