Testify Read online

  TESTIFY

  ALSO BY VALERIE SHERRARD

  Young Adult Novels

  Kate

  Sam’s Light

  Sarah’s Legacy

  Speechless

  Three Million Acres of Flame

  Watcher

  Accomplice

  Junior Novels

  Tumbleweed Skies

  The Glory Wind

  The Shelby Belgarden Mysteries

  Out of the Ashes

  In Too Deep

  Chasing Shadows

  Hiding in Plain Sight

  Eyes of a Stalker

  Searching for Yesterday

  Books for Younger People

  There’s A COW Under My Bed

  There’s A GOLDFISH In My Shoe

  TESTIFY

  Valerie Sherrard

  Copyright © Valerie Sherrard, 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Editor: Shannon Whibbs

  Design: Jennifer Scott

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

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  CHAPTER

  ONE

  This is it. This is the moment. All of the questions I’ve already answered have been leading to the one I know is coming next. My stomach clenches as I look out over the courtroom.

  Being on the witness stand is scary.

  The judge is to my right. He’s younger than I thought he’d be — not much older than my father. I’ve glanced at him several times during my testimony and each time he has given me a small, encouraging nod. It’s tempting to look toward him now, but I don’t. I need to focus.

  I take a long, deep breath to still the trembling inside me. My throat is dry, but I try to ignore that.

  The prosecutor, Ms. Dewyn, has already talked to me about how I need to look when I answer. I’ve practised at home so it’s easy now. I lift my chin and meet her eyes. She gives me a hint of a smile and continues.

  “And what did you see when you entered the kitchen on that evening?”

  “I saw Carrie and her stepfather, Joe Kelward. His back was to me, so he didn’t know I was there.” This is so much harder than before, when we went over my testimony. Of course, the accused wasn’t sitting a few feet away from me back then.

  I fight to stay composed. I can’t let panic cause me to fall apart on the witness stand. Too much is at stake.

  “Take your time, Shana,” Ms. Dewyn tells me. “You’re doing fine.”

  “Then he reached out and touched her … breast with his right hand,” I say. I don’t mean to look at him, but I can’t help it. He’s staring at me hard. A shiver runs through me as I meet his dark, angry eyes, but then the trapped look on his face almost makes me want to smile. I want to tell him that this is what happens to creeps who touch young girls. They get caught and charged and sent to prison.

  There are a few more questions from Ms. Dewyn before Kelward’s lawyer, Mr. Hatton, gets up and cross-examines me. He wants to know if I’m sure of what I saw. He tries to shake me, to make me say I might have been mistaken. I don’t budge. There’s no way I’m going to let my best friend down.

  And then it’s over. My knees are shaking as I make my way past the table where Joe Kelward is sitting. This time I hold my head up and look straight ahead. I pass by without a glance in his direction. As the courtroom’s big, wooden doors close behind me, I see Carrie, waiting on a bench in the hallway.

  She leaps to her feet and rushes over to me. “How did it go?” she asks, grabbing my arm. Her face is pale and frightened.

  “Okay,” I say, and then she wants to know everything. I go over it all in as much detail as I can remember and watch as relief washes over her face. But we know it isn’t over yet. It won’t be over until the trial ends and the jury makes its decision.

  Guilty or not guilty.

  Carrie is trying not to think about what will happen if he’s found not guilty. She says there’s no way she could handle it if the jury was to set him free. I keep telling her that won’t happen. It’s easy to understand why she’s nervous, though. She’s been through so much.

  The tap-tap-tap of heels clicking along the floor gets our attention. We turn to see Carrie’s mom coming along the wide corridor. Her face is pinched and sad and I can’t help but feel sorry for her. Six months ago she was newly married to what she thought was this super-great guy. It must have been awful for her to find out the truth, that her new husband was actually a child molester who had been after her own daughter.

  Carrie throws her arms around her mom. Her mom hugs her back and says, “Hello, Shana,” to me at the same time.

  “Hi, Mrs. —” I hesitate, because I realize I have no idea what to call her now. I’d always known her as Mrs. Freeman, even after her divorce from Carrie’s dad. Of course, when she remarried it was Mrs. Kelward, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to be called that anymore.

  “I’ll be going back to Freeman,” she says, seeing my dilemma. “It seems simplest, especially since I hadn’t had time to change things over before … all of this happened.”

  “You’ll be okay, Mom,” Carrie says, touching her mother’s arm. “So, do you think we could have money to go to Minato’s for lunch? To say ‘thanks’ to Shana?”

  “I don’t need —” I say, but Carrie is giving me the “stop talking” look so I let it go. I feel guilty when her mom fumbles in her purse and passes over forty bucks.

  “You know what? I’m not sure I’m in the mood for sushi after all. I think I’d rather just get a burger,” Carrie says as we leave the courthouse. So, instead of heading west, we turn the other way to Barrington and make our way to the food court at the Maritime Mall. We order at Nick’s Lunch and Carrie pays with one of the twenties.

  Once we’re settled at a table in the food court, Carrie leans forward, puts her hand on my arm and asks, “So, honestly, was it hard for you? Testifying?”

  “Kind of,” I say. Then I feel foolish. Carrie had been on the witness stand before me. She’d testified for almost two hours! And she was the victim.

  “But I know it must have been so much harder for you,” I tell her.

  “It was pretty rough,” she admitted, picking at the edge of the paper plate in front of her. “But it was worth it. I’ll just be glad wh
en the whole thing is over with.”

  My thoughts slip back to the day when Carrie found the courage to tell me what was going on. Her words had stunned me, but my shock turned to fury as I pictured Joe Kelward’s smiling face. There he’d been, putting on a big act, pretending to be a nice guy, when all the time he’d been hiding a dark, evil side. Carrie was the only one who saw the truth all along. I remember her telling me right from the start that there was something about him she didn’t like. She said that she didn’t trust him and that he might be fooling everyone else, but he sure wasn’t fooling her.

  I wish I’d listened to what she was trying to tell me. Back then I just thought she was imagining things. I should have been a better friend. I hate that she had to go through that. More than anything, it kills me to know she kept her terrible secret for months before she finally broke her silence. She’d been feeling so trapped! No one had believed her when she tried to tell them the guy wasn’t what he seemed — that inside, he was a monster. Why would she think anyone would believe her when that same monster started lurking in the corners of her life?

  I remind myself that I came through when it mattered. The prosecutor said my testimony was really important because it backed up Carrie’s story. She said that telling the jury what I saw would help get rid of any doubts they might have.

  Which is all good except for one thing. I didn’t really see anything. My whole testimony was a lie.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  I know it’s wrong to lie. Even worse than that, I know that lying in court is really serious. (I try not to think about the fact that it’s called perjury and that it’s actually a crime.) But before you judge me, there are two things you should know about why I did it.

  The first one is that I would never have done something like this if there had been another way to help Carrie. And the second one is that I would do anything I could for her. She’s the best and truest friend I’ve ever had.

  We’ve gone to the same schools for ages, but we didn’t get to be friends until three years ago. That’s when we both got shipped off to the same summer camp. It was awful. Bugs and outdoor bathrooms and lousy food. On the second day there, Carrie cornered me and asked if I wanted in on a plan she was working on. I agreed even before I knew what the plan was. (You don’t really need to know the embarrassing details. Let’s just say it involved swimming — but it didn’t involve bathing suits. Oh, and we got caught.)

  It made us instant friends. By the end of the summer we’d upgraded to best friends and it’s been that way ever since.

  Carrie was the one who got me through the breakup with Mike Rebonair last fall. He was the first guy I’d gone out with that I really, really liked. A lot. It lasted for three and a half months — from August third to November nineteenth. It was a new and thrilling kind of happiness for me and I thought he felt the same way. Except that, one day, just like that, I found myself dumped. It was the cruellest, lowest way he could have done it, too — by changing his relationship status on Facebook. I never even knew why! He’d been at my place just an hour or so before that and I’d thought everything was fine.

  Carrie was there when I found out. In fact, she was the one who noticed it when she used my laptop. I sat on my bed bawling my head off while she tried to cheer me up by changing my status as well, and then posting nasty things about him on my Facebook account. It didn’t help. For a while, nothing did. I was devastated.

  That was why, for weeks afterward, Carrie would show up at my place and make me let her in even if I said I wanted to be alone. One time she came over with a full container of brownie-batter ice cream and refused to leave until it was all gone. She said it was impossible to eat that much chocolate and stay sad. She was right. By the time we’d gotten through it, we were giggling and I felt a little better.

  This summer Carrie came up with the idea of sharing a babysitting job for Mrs. Hauser down the street. Her usual sitter only watches kids after school, so she needs someone when school is out. I wasn’t keen at first. I like kids okay, but who wants to spend their whole summer babysitting? Carrie’s idea of splitting it up was perfect. She pointed out that it was the only job we could get where we’d have every weekend off. Besides that, we could divide the time however we wanted. Most weeks we split it up — two or three days each, so it hardly felt like we were working at all.

  The money wasn’t bad, either. Mrs. Hauser paid fifty bucks a day, so it worked out to a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week each. We always divided the money evenly, even though I actually ended up working nine days more than Carrie by the end of the summer. I didn’t want to make a big deal over it, so I never said anything to her about that. After all, it had been Carrie’s idea in the first place, and she was the one who talked Mrs. Hauser into hiring us.

  Just like the job, we do almost everything together. Movies, dances, shopping — everything is more fun with Carrie. If there’s anything going on, she’s right there in the middle. And if there’s nothing going on, she dreams something up. For example, she organized a flash mob down by the harbour one Saturday afternoon. There were about thirty of us, and when she gave the signal, we all pointed to the sky and went, “Ooooo!” It was hilarious! Everyone around us was straining to see what was up there. Of course, there was nothing. It’s impossible to be bored with Carrie around.

  But it’s more than that. Carrie is one hundred percent loyal. I know she would stand up for me anytime to anyone. You don’t find friends like that every day.

  So, you can see how it was. I know that lying in court was wrong. But my friend was in trouble and she needed my help desperately. I wasn’t about to let her down.

  I couldn’t.

  Carrie wants me to sleep over at her place that night after court. It’s a school night, but Mom says I can. She says she understands my friend needs support right now. There’s a shadow in Mom’s voice lately. She and my dad were really shaken by what happened to Carrie. And it scared them to think that Joe could have tried something with me, too. It took a while to calm them down and reassure them that he never touched me.

  Carrie is nervous about what the jury will decide.

  “What if they believe him?” she asks over and over. “What if they let him go?”

  “They won’t,” I promise, but I’m worried, too. I keep seeing his face, and the way his eyes burned through me when I was on the stand. It’s scary to think about what he might do if the jury sets him free.

  The worst thing is that juries do make mistakes. Anyone who lives in my house would know that. My mom is totally addicted to true crime. Books, television shows, movies — it doesn’t matter. If it’s about a crime, she’ll read it or watch it. And if she can corner me, she tells me all about it afterward.

  When she finishes giving me all the details, she always says the same thing: “You never know what a jury will do!” Most of the time she agrees with their verdict. But not all the time.

  Mom gets totally outraged when someone she believes was guilty is found innocent. Other times she’s just as upset about a guilty verdict. That doesn’t happen as often. And it’s not necessarily because she thinks the person is innocent. Usually, she just doesn’t think there was enough proof for a conviction. Reasonable doubt and all that. Mom takes her responsibilities as a crime fan very seriously.

  It’s interesting sometimes. But I never once thought a jury’s decision would matter that much to me. Or to my best friend.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  Closing arguments are the next day. I’m supposed to be at school, but I figure I’ll deal with that later. It’s more important for me to be here with Carrie. Her mom is there too, of course. She thinks my folks gave me permission to miss school.

  When the prosecutor gets up and goes over the case, I start to feel better. She’s so convincing, I’m sure the jury will find him guilty.

  But
then the defence lawyer has his turn. And suddenly, it doesn’t look like such a sure thing. The lawyer talks about how Joe Kelward has no criminal record. Then he makes a big deal out of the fact that there is no physical evidence against his client. Next, he reminds them of what the character witnesses said. They were people who had known Joe for years. And they all said Joe is a good and decent man, that he is someone they trust. He tells the jury that an innocent man’s fate is in their hands. The last thing he says is that they need to do the right thing and find Joe Kelward not guilty.

  Carrie is pale and trembling beside me. As the jury files out she slumps forward. I see her wipe away the tears that have begun to fall. Her mother slides an arm around her and tells her not to worry and that everything will be all right.

  I glance at Mrs. Freeman’s face. Her eyes are brimming with sorrow. It makes me so angry, to see Carrie sobbing and her mother so full of grief. How could someone do what Joe Kelward did? How could he not care about the horror he was causing? Carrie’s mom loved and trusted him. How could he have betrayed her and her daughter so completely?

  I shake off these thoughts as we stand and make our way out of the courtroom and along the wide hallways to the door. The prosecutor has promised to call Mrs. Freeman as soon as the jury comes back with a verdict. She also warned us that it might not be today.

  Carrie begs me to ask my folks if I can stay at her place again that night. I’m doubtful they’ll agree, but willing to give it a try. Mom is most likely to let me, so I look for her first when I get home. I find her in the kitchen chopping celery for a cold pasta salad she’s making. She’s humming while she works. Until she sees me, that is. Then she puts the knife down very deliberately. She stands up, crossing her arms in front of her. Her face does not look happy.

  “Would you care to tell me where you were today?” she asks.

  Uh-oh. The school must have called home. I’d been hoping that wouldn’t happen — their reporting system is kind of hit and miss. Now, not only is it out of the question that I’ll be allowed to sleep at Carrie’s place again, but it’s guaranteed that I’ll get grounded.“I went to court with Carrie,” I admit.