Isadora's POV
Two months.
It doesn't sound like a long time when people say it out loud.
Two months is a school semester. A summer vacation. Eight weeks. Sixty-one days.
But when someone you love is lying unconscious in a hospital bed, two months becomes something else entirely. It stretches. Distorts. Every day drags itself forward so slowly that by the time night arrives, it feels like you've lived through three separate weeks.
The explosion happened two months ago.
The explosion happened yesterday.
Both somehow feel true.
The weeks afterward disappear into a blur of hospitals, lawyers, courtrooms, reporters, police investigators, and endless waiting. Mostly waiting. Waiting for updates. Waiting for test results. Waiting for surgeries. Waiting for court dates. Waiting for Lukas to wake up.
The trial consumes everything.
I'd never paid much attention to how the American court system worked before this. Now I know more about it than I ever wanted to.
Twelve strangers sit in a jury box every day, listening to people argue about the worst thing that's ever happened to your family. They aren't lawyers. They aren't judges. They're ordinary people pulled from ordinary lives and told to decide who is responsible when someone else's life falls apart.
For weeks they listen to testimony.
Doctors.
Teachers.
Police officers.
Fire investigators.
Students.
Security personnel.
They watch surveillance footage from Whittiker. They study photographs of the destroyed library wing. They sit through presentations explaining gas explosions and emergency response procedures and institutional negligence. They listen to doctors describe Lukas's injuries in careful medical language that somehow makes everything sound even worse.
I hate every second of it.
Because while everyone else is discussing evidence, I'm looking at photographs of my brother.
Photographs taken after the explosion.
Photographs taken in the intensive care unit.
Photographs that should never exist.
Every time one appears on a screen, I want to throw up.
The jury sees them too.
Maybe that's why the verdict doesn't take long.
In the end, they find Whittiker Academy liable.
Principal Andrews too.
The school failed in its duty to protect its students. It failed to maintain a safe environment. It failed to control escalating violence. It failed to prevent unauthorized individuals from entering the campus. It failed over and over and over again until eventually someone ended up stabbed and someone else ended up burned so badly that surgeons spent twelve hours trying to save as much skin as possible.
The jury awards my family 22 million dollars.
Christian's family receives another eight million.
Thirty million dollars.
The newspapers call it one of the largest negligence verdicts involving a private boarding school in the state's history.
The reporters seem fascinated by the number.
YOU ARE READING
Foreigner
General FictionAfter yet another fight, Lukas Mai is sent to Whittiker All-Boys Boarding School as punishment. Determined to keep his head down, his plans unravel when he humiliates the wrong person, drawing the attention of the Seven - a powerful and ruthless cli...
