Chapter Eighteen: #3529

Disclaimer: Don't own Outsiders or references to Monster or Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Lucky closed his eyes and wished he could close his ears too as the sounds of screaming and a cellmate being beaten.

His trial was not going well. A.J.'s testimony, Lucky's lawyer had told him, guaranteed him reform school for doing drugs but neither helped nor hurt him on the murder case, since she hadn't been with him.

A.J., Lucky thought bitterly, I wonder what she's doing. I wonder what she thinks of me now. And Darry, and Pepsi, and Skate and Andy and everybody.

He wondered how long the trial would last. His lawyer had told him it was a motion case: they went through the motions and then locked them up.

Don't they care whose life they ruin? Lucky thought, suddenly enraged. Probably not. They've seen the same thing so many times it doesn't even matter to them anymore.

Lucky now tried to fall asleep against the sickening thuds. As he tried to sleep, he reflected that jail was nothing like prison movies.

Lucky wouldn't have admitted it aloud, but he was terrified of his cellmate. Not the one being beaten, but the one doing the beating. No one knew his name. The wardens addressed him only by his number: #3529

One of the prisoners had told Lucky sympathetically, "Tough break, man," when Lucky had found out that 3529 was his cellmate.

"Why?" Lucky had asked. The prisoner had leaned in and said in an undertone, "He beat his last cellmate to death, and stuck a knife in his own arm so he could claim self defense."

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A.J. was asleep at the cafeteria table. Darry prodded her experimentally. "A.J.?" he said. When he got no response, he poked her again. "A.J.?" he tried loudly.

She jerked awake. "I didn't do it!" she blurted, then saw Darry and blushed, unusual for her because the blush didn't normally show through her dark skin. "Oh. Hey, Darry."

"Hey, A.J.," Darry said heavily. He was brooding about Ms. Hart and her future husband a.k.a. the prosecutor. Bizarrely, he remembered that line from Romeo and Juliet: "Oh, I am Fortune's fool!"

A.J. gave him a sympathetic look from across the table. She's sort of in the same situation, Darry realized.

"What are you doing?" Darry asked, staring at the piles of papers and books around her. "Studying," A.J. said grimly. "Fell asleep."

Darry nodded. The tension was so thick you could practically cut it with a knife. As a matter of fact…

A.J. glared over at Pepsi. "Pepsi," she said, irked. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Pepsi looked up from dragging a fork through the air. "I'm cutting the tension," he said cheekily.

A.J. rolled her eyes and Darry felt like doing the same. "When's the next trial date?" Darry asked A.J.

"Today, actually, at five," A.J. said. "You coming?"

"Yeah," Darry said. "I'm coming if you are." A.J. nodded. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

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A.J. recalled the look Lucky had given her once again as she climbed the courtroom steps. The way it popped into her head out of the blue shocked her system so badly she began shaking uncontrollably.

"You okay?" Darry asked quietly. A.J. wrapped her jacket around herself and forced herself to nod.

She lagged behind and stood for a moment at the top of the stairs before she stopped trembling.

Then she took a deep breath and stepped inside. Yes, I'm okay, she said to herself. I'm okay now.

A.J. slipped inside and closed the door quietly behind her. She took her seat by Darry as the judge entered, and she had to stand up again.

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Lucky would have fallen asleep, the proceedings were that boring, but he was too terrified.

He felt a spark of hope in his chest when Darry was called to the stand that sank when Darry's story was the same as A.J.'s.

My friends can't help me, Lucky realized. Jason and those other goons are all just gonna try to save their own sorry skins.

It was a depressing thought, but unfortunately the way of the world.

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At the end of the day, A.J. came to see him again. She was the only one who ever came, Lucky thought.

She didn't say anything, just sat down and held his hand across the table. Finally, she said softly, "How've you been doing?"

Lucky opened his mouth to say, "Okay," but instead the whole, pathetic truth came spilling out.

A.J. listened quietly and nodded when he was finished. "We're gonna get you outta here," she vowed. "I promise."

When she left, Lucky's stomach twisted with guilt which made no sense to him. I didn't do anything, he thought. I didn't murder the guy. I was stupid. I got stoned. But I'm not a killer. I'm not.

Now all he had to do was prove it.

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