In Your Honor

“How long are you going to keep doing that?”

“Until I’m done,” I mumbled, not looking up.

“Leave him alone, Jude,” Leah said.

Jude, leaning in my bedroom doorway, raised his hand and snapped his fingers. Something shot out from between them and struck me in the neck. My concentration shattered and I jumped, my hand skidding across my drawing. For one heart-stopping second, I thought the tiny missile had ruined the last two hours of work. I whirled on Jude, whose grin was full of sharp, thin teeth.

“What the hell was that for?” I yelled. Angrily, I dug under my collar, but the thing dropped out the bottom of my t-shirt instead. It landed on my leg and I stared at it: a purple guitar pick. Jude always carried a couple in his pockets, and sometimes walked around with one in his mouth. According to him, the girls loved the innuendo. Disgusted, I threw it back at him.

“I’m bored,” Jude said winningly. “Let’s go, already.”

“Hungry, you mean,” Leah said, and we both looked at her. Oblivious, she stretched her arms for the ceiling. “I am too, come to think of it. What say we call it a night, K?”

People seemed to like Leah’s nickname for me – no one called me Kiryn, and teachers used my surname. Sometimes, I wondered if the reduction of my name to a single letter was a defensive reaction to my six-foot-four height. I sighed, replacing the cap of my Copic marker with a snap. “I guess, if you’ve posted today’s update out on the Duck. I can work on this page tomorrow.”

“Just finishing,” she responded, returning her hands to her laptop. The rapid-fire clackety-click of her nails on the keys nearly drowned out the music blaring from the speakers. I watched her, feeling sad that the only girl I dreamed of having on my bed was my best friend, and there she was. Fully clothed. Still, she looked pretty damn good in her white tank top, a black bra showing clearly through it.

From the doorway, Jude coughed. “The Duck?” he asked.

“DrunkDuck dot com,” Leah supplied, bent low over her laptop, which she was balancing on her knees. Her coppery hair curled out of a short ponytail at the back of her head. “The update’s due for CG and the Nation, too.”

Jude coughed again, and it was my turn to grin. He was a MySpazzer like the rest of us, but not a comicker. I dumped my markers and ruler into a shoebox, which I then nudged under my drawing table with my toe. After all, Jude had called half an hour ago and announced we should go out to eat. I explained, “We use the DrunkDuck, Comic Genesis, and Webcomics Nation sites to host our comic. We’re on BuzzComix, too – that’s a top list.”

“DrunkDuck,” Jude repeated. He shook his head. “I will never understand you two. DrunkDuck, I ask you.”

“Hey, don’t blame us,” Leah said, pointing at him suddenly. The laptop wobbled. “The Duck has British mods. You’d get along just fine there.”

Jude’s agate-green eyes widened. Instead of retorting, he walked over to my drawing table and riffled the pages of the open sketchbook. “So this is what you two get up to when I’m not around. You’re making a graphic novel.” He turned serious. “That’s keen.”

“Yeah.” I pulled one of the recent, uncolored comic pages out to show him. “Leah’s writing the story –”

“It’s about vampires, before you ask,” Leah butted in. “I got the idea because of you. Those canines of yours. The main character’s a wanker, too.”

Jude flashed his sharp-toothed grin. “You Americans and your accents make the rudest things sound, well, trashy. Tell me more.”

“– and I’m doing the artwork,” I finished needlessly. Jude and Leah could battle wits for hours.

“Why are you doing this old school stuff, K?” Jude held the paper in his fingertips, calloused from years of playing guitar, eyeing the clean, straight ink lines as well as the patches of Wite-Out that would hide my screw-ups online. “I can’t believe how neat your writing is. It’s better than a girl’s. But it would be easier to do all this on a computer.”

“Easier, probably,” I said quietly, “but not a valid alternative. My dad can’t afford a computer. You know that. Especially not one beefy enough to run good-quality graphic programs.”

“Use Leah’s,” Jude suggested. “You spend so much money on this. No wonder you’re always broke.”

“I like doing it this way.” I shrugged. “The art looks better to me when it’s done with a marker than it does when it’s done with a tablet. It takes a little longer for our updates to hit the Duck because they’re hand-drawn, but our readership is good anyway.”

DrunkDuck, Jude mouthed, rolling his eyes heavenward as if seeking a revelation. He flicked his black hair over his shoulder and sauntered closer to Leah, still perched Indian-style on my bed, her brow furrowed, her fingers a blur on the keyboard.

“So, Miss Author, who else have you plagiarized to furbish your fiction with characters?”

As if she hadn’t heard him, Leah went right on typing. Crackling, the paper-coned speakers in her laptop strained to keep up with the tunes streaming through the media player. Leah liked it heavy; it was metal or nothing. I frowned. The update shouldn’t take that long, unless she was leaving reviews on other comics to drum up return comments.

Jude glanced at me, his thick eyebrows raised questioningly. Then, with a devilish smirk, he tiptoed up to her and swiped the laptop from under her hands. Leah let out a shriek of surprise. “Give that back!” she cried.

“Oh, writing an email, I see,” Jude said cheerily. He plopped down next to her, and I winced. Now there was a guy on my bed. What was wrong with this picture?

“Give it,” Leah snarled. However, he dodged as she lunged for him, laughing when she bounced onto her face. The two of them were messing up my sheets grandly as they fought for ownership of the laptop. I sighed. I had a feeling this wasn’t going anywhere good. And I was right.

“Who’s Neale? Your boyfriend?” Jude squinted at the screen, holding it above his head.

Leah gave up and sat back on her heels, fuming. “As a matter of fact, yes.”

Apparently, Jude hadn’t prepared himself for that. He shot me an unreadable look, said, “Oh, sorry,” and relinquished the laptop. Brown eyes snapping, Leah went back to her typing.

“We can go as soon as I send this,” she said, and jabbed her finger at the mouse. The music stopped.

And me? I didn’t say anything. What could I say to this tall, redheaded girl I’d known since sixth grade? She was a brilliant writer. Funny, smart, and enthusiastic about life. Addicted to caffeine, and lazy as hell. We had fun together. The boyfriends came and went. I remained, more of a brother to her than anything. A couple of years ago, after a nasty relationship had crashed and burned, she’d told me as much. Thanks for being here for me, K. Therefore, there was nothing to say.

Jude, however, wasn’t the type to let it slide. “Boyfriend since when?”

“Two weeks,” Leah answered.

“Where did you meet him?”

“Don’t pull this possessive crap on me now,” Leah said with a grimace. She stretched again and powered off the computer, avoiding his eyes. “Zero Ground, if you must know. At your last show.”

“How come I didn’t meet him, then?” Jude exclaimed. Zero Ground was a theater, where he and his band, Marmalade Terrorist, held gigs every few Saturdays. He was staring at her as if she was some strange new specimen of girl.

“Because you were busy at the merch booth, and I was busy doing something else!” she shouted, slamming the laptop’s screen down. “God, you don’t own my life. Leave it alone, already.”

Jude’s mouth dropped open as Leah clambered off the bed in a huff. “You’re serious about this one,” he said, his tone surprisingly bland.

“What one? You mean Neale?” Leah tossed her head. “Maybe I am. If you wanted to ask me out, Jude, you could have. I might have said yes. It’s too damn late now.”

For the third time, I sighed, while glib-tongued Jude spluttered the way his motorcycle did as it drained the main gas tank. Thankfully, he subsided into an outraged silence after a moment.

My bedroom wasn’t exactly big; if I wanted to, I could grab Leah to stop her going out the door and kick Jude in the shins at the same time without overbalancing. I did neither. Instead, I zipped up my hoodie in preparation for the early February chill outside. Long-legged Leah had disappeared by the time Jude collected his wits enough to leap upright.

“Me! Hah!” I heard him say under his breath as he followed her into the living room.

I closed my eyes, alone in my room. Vague mutterings came from the other side of the apartment; they had forgotten about me for the moment, but I didn’t care. When I opened my eyes again, a calendar – one of those free kinds left by real estate agents in the mailbox – seemed to leap at me from its nail. I put my hand out, turning the pages up until I got to the month of May.

Four months left until high school graduation. Four months left, and then, I knew, the three of us would go our separate ways.

I closed my fist, let the calendar drop, and left it swinging against the wall. Leah had come over so we could work on our comic, despite Neale wanting to see her. She’d said our project was as important to her as Neale was. It made me happy, but it depressed me also.

I wanted to hear that I was important to her, too. Jude knew that, I think, though I’d never said anything to him about it. His anger over Neale was probably equal toward both Leah and I. Guilt gnawed at me. I’d been there, when Leah first saw Neale at Zero Ground. I could have told him, and I hadn’t.

“I want to meet him,” Jude said, as I entered the living room. They were on opposite sides of the scuffed coffee table, standing eye to eye, matched foot for inch. Jude’s hair, mussed after the tussle on my bed, bunched over his shoulders like a lowered black hood.

“No,” she said. She crossed her arms under her breasts and glowered at him. “Drop it.”

“Why? I won’t hurt him. Much.”

“Drop it!” Leah screamed. Scarf in hand, she poked him in the chest. “You can be such a prick! I don’t need you pushing your complexity issues on me. I don’t get why you’re so possessive in the first place. K doesn’t act like a puffed-up caveman when I date someone, so you shouldn’t, either.”

“You know perfectly well that K wouldn’t stop you if you pointed a gun at his head!” Jude bellowed. A little randomly, in my opinion. “He’ll do anything you ask him to, or haven’t you noticed?”

“Because friends do that! At least he wouldn’t be the one to pull the trigger!”

“Could you leave me out of this?” I pleaded, shrinking into my hoodie as if I could escape the heat of their argument. Right. Jude and Leah both rounded on me, with identical furious expressions. Lowering my chin so that my hair sifted forward, brushing my lips and jaw before it settled, I shrugged in what I hoped was an offhand way. “If you’re done discussing what a coward I am, I’d like to go eat.”

It worked – my comment derailed Leah. “You are not a coward,” she stated, as I knew she would.

“Yes I am,” I said in my quiet voice, glad she’d stopped yelling. With my arm across her shoulders, I steered her around the couch, toward the front door. Jude made a visible effort to reign in his temper, though his black brows came to rest over his smoldering eyes like thunderheads. He gave me a clipped nod. Truce. I added, “We need Jude to catch you before you leap in front of a bus. I’d be sad if you did something like that. And so would he.”

Leah snorted. However, she smiled, tilting her head into my arm as I herded her into the hall. “Because you love me, right?”

“Always,” I said automatically. Friendly banter. I did not look at Jude.

If only she knew how much I loved her.

A/N: Although this is a first chapter and I don't have any reviewers to thank or Shout Outs to make, I feel strange not having this author's note here. Think of it as my binky (pacifier, soother . . . whatever your name for it). Please - and I'm not afraid to beg - leave me a comment and let me know what you think!