The Lemonade War Three Books in One by Jacqueline Davies

Author:Jacqueline Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter 10

Trial by Jury

trial by jury (trī′əl bī jo͝or′ē), n. A legal proceeding in which the guilt or innocence of a person accused of a crime is decided by a group of his or her peers, rather than by a judge or panel of judges.

Evan looked around and felt as though he’d dropped into an alternate universe.

First of all, he was sitting on a basketball, which felt strange.

Second, here was his sister, acting like she was the leader of the free world. Jessie could sometimes be bossy at home, but Evan was used to seeing her on the sidelines at school. On the edge of whatever was happening on the playground. Eating quietly at a cafeteria table. Sitting with her hands in her lap at the all-school assemblies.

Suddenly she was the leader. And it was weird.

Evan stared at the twelve kids sitting in the jury box, and that was weird, too. If he looked at each kid, one at a time, all he saw were the faces of kids he’d known for most of his life. Nothing new. But when he looked at them all together, standing in the box that Jessie had made out of jump ropes, they looked different. Even Adam, his best friend in the world, seemed almost unfamiliar. They were the jury—the ones who would either hand him a new Xbox 20/20 or make him stand up in class and apologize in front of everybody. Suddenly, they didn’t seem like the kids he’d known forever. They had turned into something much bigger.

Evan’s eyes traveled across the courtroom: to the witnesses all standing together behind the line of the jump rope, to the audience waiting patiently for the trial to begin, and to David Kirkorian standing at his milk-crate podium.

And that was the weirdest thing of all. Every single one of the fourth-graders had shown up after school and put on a nametag. (Okay, so Malik had taped his nametag to his butt, but he was still standing in the witness box, ready to testify.) Everyone was waiting to do whatever Jessie told them to do. It was as if all of a sudden there was a whole new set of rules at school, and everyone—everyone—had agreed to follow them.

Even Scott Spencer was sitting on his basketball. He had his knees spread wide, and he was drumming a beat on the ball. Chook-uh-ta-chook, chook-uh-ta-chook, chook-uh-ta-chook. He had that look. That Scott Spencer look. The look in his eyes that seemed to say, It’s all good. It’s all cool. It’s all mine.

That was the thing about Scott Spencer. Somehow, some way, he always managed to spin things so that everything worked to his advantage. Evan remembered the time they were in first grade, playing in Scott’s basement playroom. Scott’s mom was at work. His dad worked at home, like Evan’s mom did, but his office was all the way at the other end of the house, and it was soundproof! Evan remembered how they used to play a game of seeing who could make enough noise to get Mr.

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