The Best Thing for You by Annabel Lyon Page A

blowing away. The trial starts tomorrow.

    The plan was that we would meet Joe Sumo in the courthouse cafeteria, but where we find him is in the underground parkade, jogging toward us, waving his cellphone.
    “Good morning!” he calls, his voicing echoing off the cars and concrete. “I’m glad I caught you. Jason’s going to plead guilty. No trial, that means. For us that’s the bluebird of good news, or whatever. I just got the call. They’ll go straight to sentencing. You can watch, if you like.”
    We ride upstairs in the elevator, the four of us, three of us dead numb. He explains Jason finally admitted to the beating, an hour ago, only, and if anyone was with him he wasn’t saying. Joe Sumo speculates there will be some psychiatric testing. When we step out into the courthouse lobby, he excuses himself to catch up with some character in a black robe and white dickie who greets him like a cowboy, pretending to draw guns from his belt and fire. They laugh.
    I can’t breathe right. I say, “Let’s go home,” and my voice is loud in my ears.
    Liam shrugs. It’s Ty who says, “I want to see.”
    From a distance, Joe Sumo points us toward the right room and makes some hand signals meaning he’ll catch up with us inside.
    Waiting for the judge to hand down his verdict, we watch him deal with a girl caught shoplifting K-Y jelly from Wal-Mart.
    “What I’m going to do now, I’m going to suspend your sentence,” he says. “What that means is, I’m not going to punish you. Everything you’ve had to go through with the store security and then coming to see me here, I know this has been pretty embarrassing for you and I think that’s enough. I think you’re not going to be stealing again, right? Contraceptives or what have you?”
    “Will this go on my record?” the girl asks.
    “Yes,” the judge says.
    When they’re finished, the girl comes and sits right in front of Liam and me, next to a tousle-haired woman in an Adidas warm-up jacket and matching tearaways. “Wake up, Mom,” the girl says. “Time to go.”
    “I just want to watch this next one,” the woman says.
    Jason is led in from a side door. I haven’t seen him since the night we took wine to his parents’ house. He wears leather shoes, dark dress pants, and a dark shirt buttoned up all the way, but no tie. He notices us right away, can’t not – the courtroom is not much bigger than a school classroom. I see him nod at Ty, next to me, who bobs his head. Shame? Liam’s seen, too; on my other side, he nudges me, but I’m not ready to react. Jason and his lawyer stand while the clerk reads the name of their file, and sit with their backs to us while the judge reads the charge and then the verdict. Jason’s lawyer talks a bit about Jason’s grades and behaviour at school – apparently he was having troubles – and about his little personality generally, andthen the judge hands down his sentence: a year in juvenile detention. Jason doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look up as he’s led back out the way he came in. Ty, beside me, exhales.
    “All rise,” the clerk says, and then it’s time for lunch. Just like that.
    “Mr. Leith,” Crown says to Joe Sumo. We follow them out of the courtroom along with the general throng. The Parmenters are nowhere to be seen. We watch the two men walk a little ways up the hall together, then shake hands. Crown hurries away while our lawyer comes stepping back to us, a costly peacock. “He’s dropping the charge against Tyler. You’ll get formal notification tomorrow the latest.”
    “That kid was psycho,” the K-Y girl is saying, a few feet away.
    “I’m just phoning your Dad.” The woman pulls a cellphone from one zippered pocket and bends over to dial, stretching the shiny fabric of her pants over her hams.
    “I’m not talking to him,” the girl says. “I don’t want lunch. I hate the cafeteria here.”
    “Did I say you had to talk to him?” the woman says.
    “You’re not smiling!”