Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [109]
Three hundred tiny lights from three hundred candles grew brighter as the sun sank behind the gymnasium building. The memorial service of Arlene Harounian was held late on a cloudy afternoon in the football field of the high school, where a stage had been outfitted with microphones and floral arrangements. The stage was big enough to hold the school orchestra, which played with heartbreaking finesse. The kids were good. They had accomplished something.
Silently they stood and carried their instruments off and the madrigal singers filed to the microphones, like everyone else wearing ordinary teenage grunge, boot-cut jeans and wind pants and baggies and T-shirts, underdressed for the gathering chill. It had been sunny in the morning. The few dozen grown-ups there, old enough to have read the weather report, came wrapped in scarves and winter coats.
The singers lofted into “Ave Maria,” and I began rooting around in the pockets of my leather jacket for tissues. Man, why was I there? To tap into that spring of grief that ran underground, seemingly always just beneath my feet? There must be a river of sadness below the pavement of our cities. One after the other, for at least the past hour, friends and teachers had stood at the podium and universally described Arlene Harounian as a girl with unusual promise, whose smile “lit up the world,” who “wanted you to feel better.” White doves were released and her basketball jersey retired. The team showed it to us from the stage, horribly laid out flat inside a frame.
Her parents sat on folding chairs with the other siblings and did not speak. The father had a wild head of madly blowing black hair and big teeth that snapped shut like a nutcracker into a stupefied smile. The littlest sister read a poem Arlene had written in seventh grade called “I Am,” which they printed in the program: “I am purple sunsets / I am the sick child who wonders why / I am a bell / I am a big sister who sometimes wants to be a little baby / I am a leaf …”
A history teacher called for the study of nonviolence, a boy played a keyboard solo. Two girls holding each other for support took turns recounting how fine-looking Arlene was, but how practical about her gifts. She had determined to become a model in order to pay for college. They wanted to be models, too, but she was the one who actually went out and had a portfolio made. It was dark by then. The little paper cups on the end of the candles, which sheltered the flames from the wind, glowed in the evening like homespun orange lamps. My fingers were caked with melted wax from turning the candle to keep it alive. Here and there the cups would catch on fire and be stomped out. Nobody giggled. A screen had been raised, and someone clicked a laptop, and we were watching a montage of slides and rap songs that told us all about Arlene Harounian’s life, from a dark-haired tyke on a bicycle to a confident young woman in a lacy cutoff top holding on to a tree and arching her back, but whose look into the camera said, I’m in charge, not you.
Then it was as if that kid with the keyboard had come back for an encore, ringing out chords of dissonance and rage. I sat up straighter and straighter, as if the conviction growing inside would fill the stadium, as if everybody must know, as I knew then, that the amateur modeling photos we were looking at on the screen were the work of Ray Brennan. All the loveliness of Arlene swirled like a crescendo of discordant notes into an artifact not of her, but of what had taken her, and that was the greatest injustice of all.
Even before I reached my car, the cell phone was ringing.
“The judge handed down his decision,” Devon said.
I did not even hold my breath.
“The judge is holding you to answer. He has found reasonable suspicion that you committed this crime, and you are held to answer for attempted murder.” He paused. “Ana?”
“We’re going to trial,” I repeated.
“No surprise,” Devon rolled on smoothly. “We expected this. We’ve heard their witnesses, and now we punch holes in every