The First Stone

An elderly man named Mr. Harris throws his dinner tray on the ground as Mrs. Clayton, a nurse at Silver Meadows, apologizes to Leeza Hemming. Leeza is a volunteer. Mr. Harris keeps asking for Maggie and then begins to cry. Leeza comforts him. Although her grandparents died before she was born, she has always been good with elderly people.

She is there for a high school credit for her career and life management class, which requires 20 hours of community service. Leeza chose Silver Meadows because she hates the thought of someone being trapped in a room alone. Her mother and stepfather had worried, though. They thought being around suffering would be harmful to her since it’s only six months after her sister, Ellen, died of cancer.

After her shift ends, Leeza cries in her Subaru. Then she decides to go for a drive before heading home. The things she sees while driving are always surprising, which usually relaxes her.

The Pit has been slated for demolition by the city. Reef says the men who own The Pit are to blame, not the demolition crew, but Bigger scratches their truck with a shard of glass, and Jink slashes its tires with a switchblade. The men see them and start calling the cops. As they run, one man chases him, reminding Reef of when his drunken grandfather would chase him around the house. They split up to make it harder for the men to catch them.

Leeza slows in traffic and plays a game in her head. She imagines the names and lives of the people in the surrounding cars.

Reef stops near the overpass. He has always loved rocks. At age five, while traveling with his grandparents to Truro, his grandfather scolded him when he puked on the shoulder from carsickness. Outside the car, Nan gave him a stone and called it a “sick-stone.” He could squeeze it to relieve nausea. Reef then began collecting rocks, and he especially loved the ones different from the others.

Bigger named him Reef while they were smoking a joint. He had inhaled too hard and pulled the burning ash into his mouth, which made him cough and choke. He secretly liked the name because he’d been entranced by the coral reef during a fourth-grade science lesson. He imagined being a protective reef, but he could not save Nan from the cancer.

As he looks down at the road, Reef picks a target. Leeza sees a figure with a raised hand on the overpass. She waves as something hits her windshield.

Mr. Ryan, the man who chased Reef, talks to Hank Elliott, Reef’s lawyer. He describes the day he chased them away from The Pit. Reef is bored and wants drugs. Mr. Ryan trailed Reef to the overpass on the advice of 911. The mother of the girl in the Subaru sobs. After the rock hit the windshield, there was a chain reaction of collisions involving at least three other vehicles. Only the girl was hurt, and Reef doesn’t understand why everyone is being so dramatic.

Bigger, Jink, and Scar are waiting when Reef comes out with his lawyer. A reporter tries to ask Reef questions, but Bigger stops him. Elliott is annoyed that Reef and his friends are treating it like a joke. He advised Reef to plead guilty and says the case ended as soon as the story was on the news. Scar asks Reef if he saw the pictures. She is disturbed and says the girl is still in a coma. Reef thinks about how much blood was in the pictures of the Subaru’s interior.

Scar has always felt a need to help the underdogs. Two years prior, Reef and his friends had been teasing the girls at soccer tryouts. Coach Whidden told them to stop, but it wasn’t until Scar told them to shut up that they listened. There were rumors that she was a drug mule for her father. After their stare-down, she and Reef became friends and then on-and-off lovers.

Scar is now in the accelerated program and competes as a member of Whidden’s math team. She placed first in the school. Reef’s three friends wonder what his sentence will be, and he downplays it. The court recess ends, and they return to the courtroom.

Leeza dreams again that she’s in a forest. She’s always alone here, but she hears a bird. Suddenly, a voice tells her that the monitor is off now that she’s awake. The bird was the beeping of the monitor. Her nurse, Joyce, says she’s been there for three weeks. Soon after, she wakes again to find Dr. Julia Mahoney examining her.

She barely recognizes her mother, who looks older. Her father, Jack, looks older as well. She tries to tell her mother not to cry, but the morphine makes speech difficult. Mahoney asks her what she remembers. Leeza moans. She says the word “crash.” She remembers several cars hitting her Subaru.

She hears her mother say it’s like a bad movie that never ends. She’s angry that the lawyer made excuses for “that boy.” Mahoney says she’s more worried about what Leeza doesn’t know.

Karl Barker, Reef’s foster father, asks Reef if he’s thought about what he did. In the newspaper, he sees a picture of the girls’ parents answering questions. He laughs each time he sees himself called the “young offender.” There are never pictures of Elizabeth, their daughter, and he wonders how ugly she must be.

He’s relieved to see that she has regained consciousness. He remembers Nan being hooked up to machines. They aren’t allowed to identify him because of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, but people know. Other students avoid him now, including former friends like Zeus Williams, who has stopped coming to The Pit.

Mahoney explains Leeza’s injuries to her. She has two breaks in one arm and a dislocated shoulder. Metal rods called fixators protrude from her pelvis and legs. The metal will hold her legs and pelvis in place while they heal. She also has two broken ribs and had a severe concussion. The next day, she’ll go to a physical rehab center. Leeza starts to cry as she asks for a mirror. She looks like a stranger to herself.

Joyce asks Leeza about her name. She says she has a sister named Ellen. Ellen called her Leeza when she was little because it was hard to say her whole name, Elizabeth. Leeza’s mother comes in and says the courthouse called. She wants to be there when they sentence Reef. Elliot is surprised when he tells Reef that the judge is already prepared for sentencing.

The courtroom is packed. Scar and Bigger are there. Jink has other problems besides disturbing the peace and underage drinking. Rowdy, the owner of the bar where Jink was caught, may lose his liquor license, but the bar is a front for other illegal activities. They are worried about what he might do if he wants to punish Jink. Judge Thomas enters, and, for a moment, Reef thinks she looks like Nan. He grins at her as she stands, and he declines his chance to speak. A social worker named Royce Gould, his foster father, and Elvira Gregory, his eighth-grade teacher, speak on his behalf. They all state that Reef still has potential.

Judge Thomas says incarceration and punishment aren’t effective for young offenders like Reef. She is only interested in consequences that have meaning. She assigns Reef to the North Hills Group Home for 12 months under the guidance of Mr. Frank Colville. Reef will transfer to Bonavista High School. His principal, Ms. Rita Hamilton, will report to the judge on his status every two weeks. He will also volunteer at a rehab center, where he will witness crippling injuries and illnesses, many of which are the result of crimes like his. He will then make presentations to high school groups.

Above all, the judge wants Reef to feel and show remorse. Reef is furious at the ruling, but Elliott tells him he is lucky. He tells Reef that he hopes he has the guts to change. Reef says he could kick his ass and realizes that he is repeating a line from his grandfather. Outside, a woman says the verdict “was anything but fair” (82). An exasperated Elliott stops Reef from flipping off the crowd.