Boo YOU, motherfucker.

I felt confident and sure as I strode down the hallway in my new pantsuit.

I knew the case. I enjoyed pushing my comfort boundaries. Best of all, on the other side of the mock trial, I’d be closer to finishing my hated first year of law school.

All was well as I set foot in the classroom setting of my mock trial.

Then I was in the room, and I remembered.

ten

I remembered being told, “No one is going to believe you. They’re especially not going to believe you if you’re angry. You need to cry. You need to show how much you hurt. That’s what jurors want to see.”

I remembered sitting in the children’s room of the courthouse, playing with toys not intended for an eleven-year-old. Terrified but trying to distract myself.

I remembered being led to the stand, and coming to sit fewer than a dozen feet away from an unspeakably evil man. Wanting to leap over the low wall separating me from him, dive across the table, and strangle him. I wanted to eat his studiously sad face straight off of him so everyone would know he was a monster. Then, too, I would have a “real” reason for feeling so sick to my stomach.

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