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deck of a boat in a windstorm. Dylan grabbed one edge to keep from smashing his face against the tossing wood surface. With his other hand he took hold of the seat of his chair lest he be pitched onto the floor.
    “I tried to kill my brother with Daddy’s axe,” he whispered. This time Mrs. Eisenhart’s kick hurt. He guessed he hadn’t spoken loud enough for anyone else to hear because nobody was looking at him. The words hadn’t been a confession; he’d said them to see if it would make him remember. Because he didn’t. He didn’t remember a thing. Not one thing after his mother had put him to bed.
    He’d told them that over and over, but even his own lawyer didn’t believe him. When she got to talk, she argued that people suffering head injuries from accidents often couldn’t remember events that happened immediately before the trauma, that the blow had given Dylan a severe concussion, that he’d been in intensive care, and that, since the incident, he suffered severe headaches.
    Nobody felt sorry for him; Dylan didn’t even feel sorry for himself. He’d tried to kill his brother.
    Rich was on the stand for over an hour. Talking so long cost him. Lines of pain aged his face. During the whole thing, even when the prosecutor pushed, Rich refused to say anything bad about Dylan. Looking straight at the jury the way Mrs. Eisenhart told Dylan he should if she decided to put him on the stand, Rich told them that Dylan never hurt anybody, didn’t hit or pinch or call other kids names, minded his mother
and father, was kind and protective of Lena, their thirty-month-old sister, and brought home injured animals to take care of. The more good he told them, the less the jury believed it. It didn’t even sound like Rich believed it himself.
    When the prosecutor was finished, Mrs. Eisenhart didn’t ask Rich a single question. As he was being wheeled out, Rich whispered, “Hang in there, brother,” and gave Dylan a thumbs-up. Dylan didn’t respond; he knew if he so much as nodded he would be six years old again, bawling like a baby.
    After Rich testified, things in the courtroom pretty much stopped making sense for Dylan. People came and went without reason. Colors got brighter and brighter until Dylan had to squint to keep them out. Voices were superloud. He could smell things with a dog’s nose: traces of his lawyer’s perfume would choke him; the stink of an old cigarette on somebody behind them would make him sick to his stomach. The walls crept in, making the room smaller.
    This whole-world cacophony made him crazy.
    Crazier .
    One day the prosecutor called Vondra Werner. Dylan pulled hard on the places where his brain was being sucked out of shape so he could pay attention. Vondra and her family had only lived next door six months or so, but she was always around, snooping and trying to talk to Rich. Dylan didn’t think she knew he existed.
    “Pink, of course,” Mrs. Eisenhart hissed.
    Vondra had on a pink dress. She looked pretty, shy, and nice. Dylan didn’t know why that made his lawyer mad. In a low voice, Vondra told everybody how she and Rich had been together. Except she didn’t say they were necking; she said they were “making love.”
    When it was her turn Mrs. Eisenhart made Vondra tell how she was always watching, and following Rich around, and maybe was jealous of his family, and maybe didn’t like Dylan. Dylan thought for a minute the lawyer was going to get Vondra to break down like Perry Mason
got confessions at the end of the show, and Vondra’d confess she’d done everything.
    Then the lawyer said, “Richard didn’t like you spying; Mrs. Raines didn’t like you watching.” Vondra went white like Casper the Friendly Ghost.
    “Richard loves me,” she said. “Mrs. Raines didn’t like him .” She pointed to where Dylan sat. “I overheard her once saying he did things that scared her.”
    Panic flooded Dylan, filled his brain until there wasn’t room for anything else.