No Such Person by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2015-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

She is in an interview room with a woman who claims to be her lawyer.

The woman is heavy and lumpy. She wears a navy-blue suit in a fabric Lander would never put on her body. A tight knit shirt reveals rolls of fat. The lawyer wears no earrings, necklace or bracelet. Her watch has a leather band. Her hair is yanked back into a thin, graceless ponytail.

It is frightening. No kind, gentle attorney for a homicide case, but a woman who can’t be bothered with frills. Because when you face prison, everything else is a frill.

The policewoman removes one cuff and fastens it to the chair. Lander brings her free hand to her face, reassuring herself that the hand still works.

The policewoman leaves them in private.

“Your parents retained me,” says the lawyer.

My parents know I’m here.

Lander’s pretense that this would go away in the night, that nobody would ever know, that she would walk away stained in heart but not in public, is destroyed.

Her parents, who spend their lives admiring her, displaying her, bragging about her—her parents know that she is in jail, accused of murder. They have found this criminal attorney. It is late Saturday afternoon. They found this woman at jet speed. Lander can’t imagine her parents achieving this.

“How are they?” whispers Lander. She knows the answer. They are in the same shape Lander is in. How can this be happening? they are screaming silently. Make it end! Make it go away!

She struggles to breathe evenly.

The lawyer says, “Lander, you were brave and correct to say nothing to the police. That was a good decision. But I am your lawyer. You must talk to me or I cannot help you. We don’t have much time because your parents cannot afford much time. I am expensive. Your parents are broke.”

This is such an odd statement that fear gives way to annoyance. “Broke?” she echoes irritably.

“They are mortgaged to the hilt on both their houses. They have loans on both their cars. They have huge credit card debt. They have no savings. They have spent it all, my dear, on you. Your orthodontist, your riding lessons, your piano lessons, your clothes, your costly summer music camps in the Berkshires, your college, your ski weekends, your trips to Europe and now your medical school. But they don’t have to worry about that particular payment because you are not going there.”

Her father often says, Kiddo, we can’t do that.  We don’t have a dime. Or, Maybe next year. Right now I just barely have my head above water.

It has never occurred to Lander that he means it. She has always thought of these as just little sayings, tossed out to stop a conversation.

Her parents have no money. Because of her.

“Listen up, Lander. A lot of what I’m telling you I got from television, Twitter or Facebook. People have been very cooperative with the media and very free online. First of all, two crew members on that barge and one person with riverfront

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