The Planetarium

PART ELEVEN

TIME PASSED, AND MR. EMMERSON was found guilty and sentenced. I could breathe again - the jury had somehow bought the law team's pathetic pitch. Unknowingly, they had convicted an innocent man.

Ever since my confession at the stand, Hannah refused to talk to me. Even the boys had acted surprisingly frosty - I guess cheating was only funny to Ezra if it was hypothetical.

An assortment of random boxes crammed the contents of apartment that we had contributed over the years. Seeing the belongings struck a sad, sort of yearning. The whole ordeal with Juliet had turned my entire world upside-down. Now, all I could do was keep my head down and graduate like the good boy I was meant to be.

There was a tentative knock at my door. I straightened up at my desk, engineering papers flying about the place. Hannah was skulking in the door frame. Her chin was at her chest.

"Don't get up." There had been no affection lacing her words for weeks. "I just came in to collect some of my stuff."

"You don't have to move out, you know," I said tiredly for the millionth time.

The story of the strangling was legend now. The homicide had put Statholm on the map, and ironically, Hannah's parents wanted her to transfer. Not that she had any arguments. These days, she couldn't stand the mere sight of this soulless town, and the shell of our relationship.

She grabbed handfuls of books roughly from my shelf, a few dropping off by their own accord. Tess of the d'Urbervilles came down with a crash in front of her feet.

"So we're trying to understand women through classic fiction now, are we?" she said nastily. "You've never been a bookworm, Orpheus. It's a dull read, but it does teach a lot about the wicked ways of men."

I couldn't think of a smart retort. I had been harsh, how I had treated her. But it had felt so good to sabotage the only stable thing I really had.

There was a pregnant pause. For a few solid minutes Hannah continued her routine of searching through my garbage, unearthing things from hair clips to science awards. I felt like a prisoner in my own room. Wheeling back in my chair, I watched her. I was pretty much asking for her to snap at me. 

"I thought I hated her," she said, in a very quiet voice. "That teasing grin and all that lovely hair. She was everything I wasn't - white, confident, adored. Now I know I had the right to be mad with jealousy. I thoughts girls like her always took everything from me."

It was the first confession I had heard. Eagerly, I had been hoping for her to talk to me for months - whether she truly despised me, or there was still a chance for our future. Fancifully, I'd never appreciated how stunning her eyes were. Iris bled into pupils, swallowing your stare like black holes in the cosmos.

A reply danced on my tongue. However, I wanted to hear her speak.

"Then I saw her in that river." Something caught in her chest. "Floating so peacefully with angry bruises on her neck. And then I knew.. I didn't hate her."

Water-pipes in the walls gave a warning rumble.

"I started to hate you."

She threw the wind-up box into her cardboard crate. My heart dropped, but not because of what she had just said. Juliet's NASA badge was hidden in that box. I'd forgotten it belonged to Hannah, gathering dust on the shelf for god knows how long. Part of me wanted to wrestle the object from her grasp.

Hannah interpreted the pause as a loss of words.

"If she was still alive, you would have chosen her," she muttered, sweeping out of the room. My opportunity had slipped from my fingers. It would probably be assumed that it was just clutter from my astronomy junk anyway.