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The men are screaming our way and I have no idea why they are acting like this towards Remi and I.

“Don’t do it kid,” one of the police says as another one is crouched down with his fingers on Mr. Carter’s neck. “Put your hands in the air.”

“What are you doing?” Remi starts to ask. “Everything⁠—”

“Drop the weapon now!” he says again to me and it is then that I realize that I am still holding onto the gun that belonged to Mr. Carter.

On reflex I jolt and release the gun as if it was burning me and take a step back.

“Turn around and put your hands above your head and interlock them,” I hear being instructed.

I comply immediately.

“Wait, what are you doing?” I hear Remi start to yell and then feel the cold metal cuff on my wrists lock down tight against my skin.

What the hell is happening right now? I start thinking.

“Take them down and separate both of them,” one officer says as I hear Remi start to scream as if her life depended on it.

My head turns to the side and I see her being manhandled. Something primal kicks in and I make a move towards her but am slammed up against the bedroom wall.

“Easy, pal. Let them get her downstairs,” he says as he overpowers me. “She’s in shock.”

The next hour goes by in a blur after they place me in the back of the cop car. I wait forever for one of them to come and release me but it never comes. Several more cars show up and men in plain clothes go in and out of the house. After a while I watch them come out to the front lawn and speak in a huddle to each other. They point over at the car I’m in several times. Once they all start to disperse, a man in a fancy suit and tie along with an officer come up to the car. The door opens and I look up at their faces.

“Rhett Miller?” the man in the suit asks.

I swallow thickly, “Yes.”

“That man in there was my brother,” he informs me. “I can’t wait to see you hang.”

His words confuse the shit out of me but then the officer starts to read me my Miranda Rights and it all becomes so clear.

They are charging me for the killing of Sheriff Carter.

Over the next several weeks I’m brought in and out of the courtroom for hearings. The judge sitting on the bench is of course Sheriff Carter’s older brother and the man who confronted me at the house. My court appointed attorney doesn’t seem to know his ass from a hole in the ground, or is simply too scared to object to anything. I don’t even have my high school diploma and even I know more about what is happening than he does. I’ve figured out that everyone involved in handling my case, from the prosecutor to the judge to the newspaper reporting the case, are all related in some way. Which is why my attorney seems to not be fighting very hard in my corner.

My parents haven’t shown up to one single hearing or come to see me at the jail this entire time. Not that I’d expect them to, but it would’ve been nice to have someone on my side through all this. I’ve never felt so alone and scared in my entire life. How did this become my life?

I haven’t gotten to see Remi once either. I don’t know if they are keeping her away from me on purpose or if it is her own doing, but my life fucking sucks. I keep hoping I’ll wake up in the morning and all of this will have been one big nightmare. That things will go back to normal.

Last week my good-for-nothing attorney informed me that it was ruled that I was going to be tried as an adult. Meaning that I could get decades in prison if found guilty. My mind has already made peace with the fact that this Mickey Mouse of a courtroom has found me guilty and it is all for show at this point. The notion of having one of the Carter men look bad around town would never happen. It makes me wonder what else this family has done to cover up past incidents.

There is still a part of me that hopes Remi will burst through the doors of the room and tell everyone what really happened. That I killed her father because he was coming to murder her after he murdered her mother in cold blood. That I saved her life and that this has been one big misunderstanding. I’ll be released and Remi and I can finish high school and get the fuck outta here.

The prosecutor is spinning the case as Sheriff Carter and Mrs. Carter were strictly against me seeing Remi. That I planned the entire thing to kill them in cold blood and make it look like a break in. They are using my alcoholic parents as a way to show a kid from the wrong side of town stalking and preying on the popular girl in school, even though it couldn’t be further from the truth. Remi’s ex, Chance, even got up and told the court that I was forcing Remi to be with me. That she was scared of what I might do if she broke things off.

“It would be best if you didn’t have any reaction when the judge speaks,” Dan, my appointed attorney, leans over and whispers. His forehead is beaded in sweat as he smooths out his ugly brown tie.

“You mean this entire conflict of interest of a trial?” I spew through my teeth. Dan has the decency to look a little apologetic.

I’ve zoned out the entire day since I was brought in here. My body is numb as I’ve been going through the motions of daily tasks since being arrested.

“Where the hell is Remi at? Why hasn’t anyone brought her in here to get her side of the story?” I finally ask.

“She’s not relevant to any of this,” he tries to tell me again.

When he was first assigned to me, I told him everything that had happened. He’d written it all down from the time I came over to when Sheriff Carter and I were struggling with the gun. Dan had seemed on my side, listening and asking all the right questions, but the next day things started shifting. He started taking a plea bargain approach for me rather than what the true facts revealed actually happened that horrific night.