qualified to answer that question.”
“Were you intoxicated or high on the day of the crime?” asked Ms. Ivers.
“No,” said Billy.
“How about now?” she asked. “Did you take anything today?”
Billy sighed, his patience getting thin. “No.” He glanced at the ADA. “Can I just tell you what happened?”
“I advise my client to only answer the questions put to him,” said Mr. Sawyer.
“I want to make a statement,” said Billy. “That’s not against the law, is it?”
Ms. Ivers leaned back in her chair smugly.
“My lawyer didn’t tell me to keep anything from you. He said I should say only what’s necessary. And keep it short,” said Billy. “Maybe it would be better for me if I kept it short, except this thing is hard to explain. I’m going to tell you exactly what happened to me, even if it sounds crazy.”
“Jesus,” Mitch sighed.
“I couldn’t sleep after.” Billy stopped for one second, choosing his words. “I couldn’t sleep after the crime, and it hurt to think about it, so I tried different things to stop thinking. I started piling stuff on top of each other until I passed out.”
“What do you mean by ‘stuff’?” asked Ms. Ivers.
“Xanax, pot, glue.” Billy went back to pulling the threads on the knee of his jeans. “I remember lying there and I couldn’t move. But then I felt like I got free from my body. Like flying away. And when I came back into my body”—he shrugged—“it was weeks later.” Billy forced himself to leave the worn spot on his jeans alone and folded his arms. “That’s why I can remember the crime perfectly but not those days I was away. During those weeks I think someone else was living in my body.”
Ms. Ivers’s pen stopped twirling. “Someone else was in your body?”
“Yeah, I think so,” said Billy. “That was him that said he couldn’t testify because he didn’t remember the crime. And that’s why I didn’t remember making that statement.”
She held perfectly still. “Is this someone an alternate personality?”
“My client is not qualified to answer that question,” said Mr. Sawyer.
Ms. Ivers made some quick notes on her pad. “You used the word ‘crazy,’” she said. “Is your lawyer planning to use any of this ‘out of body’ testimony as part of a diminished capacity defense in case your deal with the DA falls through?”
“My client—” Mr. Sawyer started, but Ms. Ivers waved away his objection.
“The question is withdrawn.”
“I may not be the smartest guy in the world, and I may not be innocent, but I don’t think I’m crazy,” said Billy.
Mitch sat crackling his nicotine gum wrapper.
Ms. Ivers smiled at Billy, pleased, as if she sensed a weakness she could take advantage of. “So you say you didn’t know what my clients, these two friends of yours, were going to do on the day of the crime, yet you’ve admitted that you’ve stolen things with them, you’ve vandalized street signs and a park fountain, you’ve taken drugs with them. Let’s be honest. You knew them pretty well. So, come on, you helped them even though deep down you knew that they were planning to rape that young woman, isn’t that right?”
Billy straightened himself in the chair. “I should have known, probably, yeah, but stealing the lame stuff we took—it seemed like nothing. Big companies that overcharged everyone. And spray-painting idiotic stuff on street signs kind of seemed like art. It’s stupid. And the drugs, I don’t know about Grady and Roth, but I just wanted to forget what happened to my mom and all that crap.” He looked from one of them to another. “But hurting a girl? That’s messed up. I couldn’t believe they would be that psycho. What kind of a person does stuff like that? And what kind of person has friends like that?”
This time when Billy looked toward his lawyer, he glanced at Mitch, and then his gaze moved to the other three people seated nearby, maybe parents of the other two boys involved. Billy’s eyes moved lightly across the room and fell on me.
CHAPTER 25
Jenny
HE FROZE FOR A SECOND, turned away, and held a hand over his mouth as if he wished he could shove all those words back in. Finally Billy looked directly at me, his face white.
“I could have stopped them.” He stared at me darkly, but I wouldn’t run even though I knew he wanted me out of there. “But I didn’t.” Billy turned back to the lawyers. “We were on the bus going to the mall in