The Justice Project Read online

  Copyright © Michael Betcherman 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The justice project / Michael Betcherman.

  Names: Betcherman, Michael, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190066555 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190066563 | ISBN 9781459822504 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459822511 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459822528 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8603.E82 J87 2019 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934054

  Simultaneously published in Canada and the United States in 2019

  Summary: In this novel for teens, high-school student Matt Barnes, whose life has been upended by a serious injury, lands a summer job defending the wrongly convicted.

  Orca Book Publishers is committed to reducing the consumption of nonrenewable resources in the making of our books. We make every effort to use materials that support a sustainable future.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Edited by Sara Cassidy

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover images by Shutterstock.com

  Author photo by Claudette Jaiko

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  22 21 20 19 • 4 3 2 1

  To Laura and Claudette

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONE

  It’s showtime.

  Matt pasted a fake smile on his face, slipped his crutches under his arms and hopped from the bus toward the front door of the school. His right shin ached where the surgeon had inserted a six-inch-long titanium rod.

  Students clustered outside, waiting for the bell. A few wore shorts and T-shirts, even though it felt more like March than the first week of June. Matt said hi to his friends, but nobody asked about his leg. After all, it had been four months since he injured it. Ancient history to them.

  But not to Matt. The moment his life changed forever was permanently etched in his mind.

  The rock was hidden under a layer of fresh snow. Matt had been accelerating off a turn when the tip of his snowboard jammed into it. It felt like his leg had been torn from his body. By the time the ski patrol strapped him onto the stretcher, he knew he wouldn’t be playing football for months. It even crossed his mind that he might never play again. But nothing prepared him for the devastating news the surgeon delivered after the operation—that he would be a cripple for the rest of his life.

  Cripple wasn’t the word the surgeon had used. “You’ll have reduced mobility” was the way he’d put it, but there was no point in sugarcoating it. Matt was a cripple. What else would you call someone who was going to limp until the day he died?

  Matt knew that in the grand scheme of things, his situation wasn’t a tragedy. He hadn’t lost an arm or a leg. He wasn’t blind. He wasn’t a paraplegic in a wheelchair like Eddie Wilkins down the street, who’d been injured in the Iraq war. But knowing that others were worse off than him was no consolation.

  The hallway was packed with students, but Matt’s gaze was drawn to Emma. There was no mistaking the spiky red hair. She was talking to her best friend, Rona, an outgoing girl with a perpetual smile on her face. Emma turned, as if she sensed his presence. She caught his eye and gave him a smile that tore his heart in two.

  He and Emma had been together since they were sophomores, but they’d broken up in January, after Matt got a football scholarship to the University of Southern California. Emma would be going to a local arts college in Snowden to study drama, and as much as they loved each other, they both knew the relationship couldn’t survive with her on one side of the country and him on the other.

  At first they had decided to stay together until July, when Matt would be leaving for Los Angeles to work out with the football team for the summer. But every time they saw each other, all they talked about was how much they were going to miss each other. “We can’t keep doing this,” Emma had said after another emotionally heart-wrenching evening as Matt dropped her off at her house. She leaned over and kissed him. “I’ll always love you,” she said softly, a tear trickling down her cheek. He watched her walk up the path. When she got to the front door, she turned and waved, then disappeared into the house. It was a long time before he was able to drive away.

  Ten days later he lay in a hospital bed with his leg up in traction and his life up in smoke. Emma spent a couple of hours with him every day, binge-watching Game of Thrones. She gave him three weeks to get used to his new reality before she brought up their relationship. “Now that you’re staying in Snowden,” she said, “we should start seeing each other again.”

  He wanted that more than anything, but he couldn’t believe she did too. “I don’t want your pity,” he said. What other reason could she have? He pictured a hideous creature lurching at Emma’s side. Like the characters in Beauty and the Beast, only in this version the Beast would never turn back into a prince.

  “It’s not pity,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “I love you.”

  Something else he wanted to hear but couldn’t believe. Only in Disneyland does Beauty love the Beast.

  A few weeks later Emma got late acceptance to one of the best drama programs in the country, at a small school just outside Los Angeles. You couldn’t make this shit up. After everything that had happened, they were still going to be on opposite sides of the country—only she was the one who would be in California.

  That’s when Matt decided that as soon as school was over, he would go live with his mom in Florida. She had moved there two years earlier, after she remarried. There was nothing left for Matt in Snowden. A fresh start. That’s what he needed. He knew that running away to Florida—poor choice of words—wasn’t going to solve his problems. He’d still be a gimp, but at least he’d be a gimp in a town where nobody knew who he was or what had happened to him.

  TWO

  Matt sat in law class, oblivious to the debate about the death penalty, his eyes on the school parking lot, where his former teammates and the cheerleaders were preparing for the annual C
ar Wash for Cancer.

  They’re so damn optimistic, Matt thought. As if life was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and your only decision was what to put on your plate. And why shouldn’t they feel that way? They had their whole lives in front of them, while he stared into the rearview mirror, watching his life recede into the distance.

  If only, Matt thought for the millionth time. If only The Goon hadn’t persuaded him to get in one more run before the ski lifts shut down for the day. If only the last cable car had been full. If only he had taken a different route down the mountain, even by a few inches.

  If only. Then Matt would be out there with his teammates, with the rest of his life in front of him.

  If only. The two saddest words in the English language.

  Mr. Darrow interrupted Matt’s reverie. “What do you think, Matt?”

  “Huh?”

  “The death penalty,” Darrow said with exaggerated patience. “Are you for or against?”

  “For,” Matt said. “A life for a life. Like it says in the Ten Commandments.”

  “That’s not one of the Ten Commandments,” Sonya Livingstone said dismissively from her seat across the aisle. “But Thou shalt not kill is. If God doesn’t believe in the death penalty, we shouldn’t either.”

  “God believes in the death penalty,” Matt said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Noah and the ark. God flooded the earth because people were so wicked. Everybody was killed except Noah and his family. That’s the death penalty. Big-time.”

  The class erupted in laughter. The sound was music to Matt’s ears. It wasn’t often that somebody got the better of Sonya Livingstone. She was the class valedictorian, on her way to Harvard University—and a royal pain in the ass.

  The feeling was mutual.

  The bad blood stemmed from a petition Sonya had organized the previous year demanding that the school spend as much money on girls’ sports as it did on boys’. It would have resulted in a huge decrease in the football team’s budget, which meant it was doomed for failure at a football-crazy school like Forest Hills.

  Matt would have ignored the whole thing if Sonya hadn’t made it personal. In an interview with the school newspaper she’d called him and his teammates a bunch of Neanderthals who have to take their shoes and socks off in order to count past ten. Matt had responded by getting the entire football team to come to school barefoot on the day of the vote.

  Sonya had failed to see the humor, and her mood hadn’t improved when her petition was signed by only a handful of supporters.

  Sonya ignored Matt’s Bible lesson. “If society kills in our name, then we’re no better than the murderer.”

  “What about the Aylmer Valley Slayer?” Matt asked. The serial murderer had killed six young women in the region before he was finally caught. He had been executed the previous month. “He deserved to die.”

  “What he did was terrible, but that doesn’t give us the right to kill him. All that does is satisfy our need for revenge.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if a member of your family was one of the victims.”

  “Yes, I would. I’d want him to go to jail for the rest of his life, but I wouldn’t want him to be executed.”

  “He didn’t show mercy to those women. Why should he get any?”

  “I agree with Sonya,” Kerry Chang said. “The death penalty doesn’t serve any purpose except revenge.”

  “It stopped him from killing again,” Danny Sullivan argued.

  “So would locking him up in prison for the rest of his life,” Kerry said.

  “It costs a lot of money to keep someone in prison,” Danny said. “That’s not how I want the government to spend my tax dollars.”

  “What tax dollars, dude? You don’t have a job.”

  “That’s not the point,” Danny replied, but he was drowned out by the laughter.

  The bell rang. “Good discussion, guys,” Darrow said. “We’ll pick this up next class. Remember, there are still a couple of spots available for the project in El Salvador.” Darrow was taking a group of students to El Salvador after school ended to help build houses in the countryside. “It’s a fantastic opportunity.”

  Yeah, right, Matt thought. A fantastic opportunity to spend a month working like a dog in the middle of nowhere, and pay a couple thousand dollars for the privilege.

  He looked outside as he stuffed his books into his backpack. Anthony Blanchard sauntered into the parking lot wearing his University of Southern California football jacket. Matt had the same jacket. They’d gotten them at the same time, at the press conference where they both announced they had accepted scholarship offers to play football for USC.

  THREE

  The Car Wash for Cancer was underway by the time Matt got outside. Cheerleaders lined both sides of Grove Street, encouraging passing cars to turn into the school parking lot. Some of Matt’s teammates were washing cars while others stood nearby, loudly critiquing their efforts.

  Anthony Blanchard was standing with the critics. “Yo, Matt,” he called.

  It’s showtime.

  Matt hopped over on his crutches. Even though Matt was six foot two, Anthony towered over him. “Sup, AB?” Matt said, slapping palms with Anthony and the others.

  “Sup, Eleven?” the other guys said. Eleven was Matt’s uniform number, and it had been his nickname for years.

  “Some people will do anything to avoid an honest day’s work,” Allan “The Goon” Baker said, looking at Matt’s crutches and shaking his head in mock disgust.

  Matt grinned. “Busted.”

  “When do you lose the crutches?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth either. A week earlier the surgeon had told Matt he didn’t need the crutches anymore, but Matt wasn’t going to tell that to the guys or anybody else. There was method in his madness. Aside from the doctors, only his parents and Emma knew that he had a permanent limp. The pitying looks he got now, when all anyone knew was that his football career was over, were hard enough to take. They would be unbearable once everyone saw him lurching around town. Which was why he was sticking with the crutches until he was on the plane to Florida.

  “You’re looking bigger every time I see you,” Matt said to Steve Kowalski, the team’s gigantic defensive lineman.

  “The man lives in the weight room,” The Goon said.

  “I want to be three hundred by the start of training camp,” Steve said.

  “Pounds or kilograms?” Matt asked. Everybody laughed.

  “You don’t look like you’ve been missing too many meals yourself,” Steve countered.

  Matt couldn’t argue with that. He’d put on close to twenty pounds since the accident. No surprise, given that the only exercise he’d had was lifting his fork to his mouth.

  “If I can’t play quarterback with the extra weight, I can always be a lineman,” he said. The joke got way more laughter than it deserved. So did the next one. “I’ve already scheduled the lobotomy.”

  “What’s a lobotomy?” Steve said in a moronic voice. Everybody laughed.

  “Let’s go, guys,” the team manager shouted as two more cars swung into the parking lot.

  “A few of the guys are coming over Saturday to hang by the pool,” Anthony told Matt before heading off to join the others. “You should come.”

  “For sure,” Matt said, although he knew he wouldn’t go. Just like he hadn’t the last time one of the guys invited him to hang out. And the time before that. And the time before that.

  Even though it was a cool day, Matt was sweating by the time he had hauled himself the five blocks from the bus stop to the low-rise apartment building his dad had moved into when he and Matt’s mom split up six years earlier.

  He put the mail—a telephone bill and a coupon offering two-for-one pizza slices—into his backpack, then headed down the empty corridor to the apartment. He gripped both crutches in his left hand and willed himself to walk
normally. His leg refused to cooperate. It was as if it had a mind of its own. He watched with a combination of horror and fascination as it swung out to the side and then back in front of his body, the right side of his butt rising awkwardly with every step. His surgeon—a doofus who assured him he’d be able to live a “full and productive life”—called it a circumduction gait, but to Matt it looked like he was a drunk with a serious gas issue.

  He took a shower and then forced himself to open his biology textbook. Exams were only a week away, and he had dug himself a big hole by ignoring his studies in the months following the accident. In the past couple of weeks he had managed to get his act together, but he still had a lot of ground to cover if he was going to pass.

  He was struggling to understand the difference between biodiversity and genetic diversity when his mom called.

  “I’ve got some bad news,” she said. Matt’s stomach tightened. “Doug’s company is transferring him to Saudi Arabia to manage one of the oil fields. We leave at the end of the month.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”

  “We just found out. The man who was supposed to go can’t anymore because his wife has cancer. I was hoping we could stay until your graduation, but we can’t wait that long.” Graduation was normally at the end of June, but the school principal had pushed it back so that the seniors going to El Salvador would be able to attend. “It’s only for a year,” his mom added, as if that made any difference. “You can come visit us at Christmas. The company will pay for your flight.”

  Super. A couple of weeks in the desert. A dream come true. He stared out his bedroom window. All he could see was the brick wall of the apartment building next door. A metaphor for his future. Or was it a simile? He never could remember which was which.

  “I know it doesn’t feel like it now,” his mom said, “but things will get better. You’ll see.”

  “I can still lead a full and productive life, right?” Matt said bitterly.

  “Oh, Matt.” His mom’s voice cracked with emotion. “You’ve been through so much. I feel like I’m abandoning you.”