Andrew slumped back into his chair, crossed his arms over his chest. Given the magnitude of disaster he was looking at, his expression was almost serene. "Look," he said. "You start with my character in the story, remember, not me. You put him in a situation that you know something about. That's what they tell you, to write what you know."

"That's what you say in the story, too. So all right, you picked jealousy."

"I hadn't ever felt anything like it before. It was just… overpowering. Laura would get to going on about Mike, and after a while I just couldn't listen to it anymore. I suppose I started acting like a jerk…"

Wu jumped on it. "How?"

"Every way I could, really. Coming on to other girls around her. Cutting her down in front of other people. Dissing Mike…"

"But nothing physical?" she asked.

"No."

"Nothing?" Hardy repeated. This was the kind of fact about which you wanted no ambiguity. "You never hit her? Nobody ever saw you hit her?"

"I never hit her," he said. "I would never hit her. I loved her."

"Okay." Hardy thrummed his fingers on the table. "Let's go back to the story. Do you have any idea how we deal with it, or get around it?"

Andrew sighed. "It's fiction. I don't know what else I can say. The character isn't me. Julie isn't Laura, Miles isn't Mike. There's tons of stuff in the story that didn't really happen."

"Name me something important," Hardy said. "Something that will make any difference to a judge or jury."

"Well, the main thing, in the story, Trevor had had a lot of sex with other girls. That wasn't me."

"You're a virgin?" Hardy asked. "That didn't read like a virgin wrote it."

"I was then," Andrew said, a hint of pride in the admission. "I imagined what a guy like Trevor would have felt and done."

"All right." Hardy wasn't giving him much. "But it's a stretch to call that the main thing, Andrew. Maybe you could tell us something about the crime that's different in the story from real life."

The boy looked to Wu for help, but she, too, was waiting for what he'd say. "Okay," he said finally. "Okay. In the story, I have Trevor almost decide not to use his father's gun, right? He understands that if he does that, the cops have got to see that he's tied to the crime. So if I understood that clearly enough to write about it four or five months ago, would it make sense that I'd just go ahead and use Hal's gun?"

Hardy shrugged. "Maybe you figured out some way you could make it work?"

"But I didn't. It wouldn't have worked. So I wouldn't have done it. Not in real life."

Wu came forward. "But Hal's gun was there, Andrew."

"But that was- I mean, look, I got the idea from writing the story- we have the gun there on stage…"

Hardy butted in. "We've already done this. Let's go to something a little more personal. Your best friend- Lanny is it?- Lanny has testified that you thought Mooney and Laura were intimate. That's why you brought the gun to school in the first place, and…"

"That's another one!" Andrew's expression was alight with triumph. "My character Trevor never would have showed the gun to anybody at school. I wouldn't have shown it to Lanny if I'd been planning to use it. I mean, think about it, would that make any sense? Would a guy smart enough to write the Trevor character be dumb enough to show the gun around?"

"Smart guys do dumb things all the time," Hardy said. "The question is did you believe that Laura and Mooney were having sex?"

Deflated, Andrew sat back. "I thought maybe. That's why I wrote the story. But then we got back together…"

"You and Laura?" Hardy asked. Between the fiction and the reality, he almost felt he needed a scorecard. "I guess I missed the breakup. What was the timing on that?"

"Before Christmas. A couple of weeks after we got on the play."

"And why did you break up again?"

"She broke up with me. Over me being so jealous."

"But then after Christmas, you got back together?"

"Right."

"How did that happen?"

Again, the lick of pride. "She convinced me there was no reason for me to be jealous."

"In other words," Wu put in, "you started having sex."

Andrew nodded.

"But in the story," Hardy wasn't letting this go, "Julie having sex with Trevor didn't make any difference. In fact, it only fueled his jealousy."

"Right. But that's not what happened with us." Suddenly, he brightened. "In fact, ask Lanny about that. He'll tell you."

"What?" Wu asked. "About you having sex with Laura?"

"No." The question rankled him. "I didn't tell him about that." He read doubt in both their faces. "That's the truth! I didn't brag about it. Laura and I… that was private. It was nothing like in the story at all. That was another reason I didn't think I could send the thing out- those descriptions, they would have hurt Laura's feelings. That's not how we were. That's how Trevor was. Don't you guys see that?"

Hardy prompted him. "We were on Lanny."

"I never said a thing to Lanny. I've never told anybody about me and Laura, in fact, until right now. Nobody even knows we'd gone that far. It was only between us."

"Okay." Hardy, unimpressed with Andrew's vision of his own virtue, pressed the inquisition. "So what do we ask Lanny about?"

"Whether I was jealous anymore after we got back together. I didn't have to tell him why, about the sex, I mean. But I did tell him that all the jealousy was over."

"But you still kept the gun in your backpack? And while we're at it, you want to tell me how a spent shell casing, I'm assuming from your father's gun, got into your car?"

"I think that must have just been bad luck. When I first took the gun, I wanted to see what it felt like to shoot it, so I drove out to the beach one night and fired it a few times."

"From inside the car?"

"Just outside. One casing must have kicked out and gone back in through the window."

"It must have," Hardy said. "But it still leaves you with the gun in your backpack for at least several weeks after you say you had no intention of using it, except of course," Hardy paused, "for your motivation."

"I should have put it back. I see that now. Oh, and another thing I just remembered…"

"You just remembered?" Hardy said. "Don't start remembering things now, Andrew."

"No, about the story, another thing I would have done, definitely, that Trevor did when he went for his walk. He made it a point to talk to the clerk in that store. Remember that?"

"Vividly," Hardy said. "What of it?"

"On my walk, on my real walk that night, I didn't do that. I didn't stop in some store and establish where I was. And I would have, don't you see? Trevor thought of it, so I would have."

"Terrific," Hardy said. "There's progress. The problem we're on, though, is still that you didn't put the gun back in your father's drawer. And Mr. Salarco happened to see it at Mooney's." He paced three steps to the wall, turned around. "Andrew, I promise you I'm a lot gentler than anybody else you're going to talk to in the courtroom. I want to get your answers down here so we can have an opportunity, perhaps, to… give them a more positive slant if and when you get up in front of the judge. Are you with me?"

"What's my other option?"

Hardy snapped his reply. "I've already told you that. Your other option is pleading guilty as Amy suggested at the beginning if- and this is a big if- they'll still do the deal. You want that? No? All right, so here's my last question. Did Laura in fact wind up staying at Mooney's once in a while after you left? To your knowledge, did he ever drive her home?"

"Yeah."

"Just like in your story?"

"Well, except they didn't…" He hesitated.

"Have sex? Are you sure about that?" When he didn't answer immediately, Hardy pounced. "Yes! The answer's yes, Andrew. You're sure about that. If you ever get on the stand, there is no doubt at all. Do you understand?"