By the time the first objection is raised, the nerves are already gone. Or at least, they’re hidden well.
Weeks later, seated together in the library at Camino Real Middle School, the students laugh at the idea. The nerves were there. They just learned how to carry them.
Inside a borrowed courtroom in Albuquerque — this one real, with a judge’s bench and the state seal fixed to the wall — middle school students from Las Cruces sat a little straighter than usual, their voices measured, their eyes locked not on classmates but on judges…