The Lemonade Crime

Fairness is quickly established as a recurring theme in the opening chapter. Evan and Jessie are packing their school lunchboxes; Jessie is angry that Evan allocates more to himself. Jessie stridently tells her brother, “It’s about being fair” (2), when he resignedly gives her the same number of cookies as himself. Later, Jessie is infuriated when Scott pushes into the front of the line to enter Grade 4-O. Jessie angrily reminds him that “it’s a line […]. The rule is you go to the end of the line” (8). Jessie is offended that all other class members must wait patiently while Scott excuses himself from the rules. Rules are important to Jessie because she believes that they ensure fairness.

Jessie later violates her principles of fairness in her determination to find Scott guilty of stealing the money. Ironically, she wants to achieve a fair and just result through unfair and unjust means; she intentionally withholds the fact that Evan first stole the $208 from her. She also limits Scott’s options for a lawyer to a group of girls with whom he is not close. On the other hand, she—the person with the most legal knowledge—represents Evan. Unsurprisingly, the trial, which was built on a premise of dishonesty and unfairness, leads to an unfair and incorrect conclusion.

Jessie learns that she must apply the principle of fairness to all people, as Megan does when she represents Scott, even though she also believes he is guilty. Megan correctly points out to Jessie that “in a real court of law, everyone has the right to a lawyer. So, somebody had to stand up for Scott. Otherwise, the trial would have been a great big fake” (135). Jessie knows that Megan is right and that her determination to find Scott guilty led her to act unfairly. She admits this to herself when she reflects that “she understood exactly what Megan was saying. Somewhere in the back of her brain, she’d known it all along” (135).

The idea of justice is tested during the trial to determine Scott’s guilt or innocence. Justice is often depicted as blind to represent impartiality, meaning that the scale justice is shown to hold is not weighted in anyone’s favor. However, Scott’s “trial” is not impartial, and, by design, it was set up to favor Evan, the accuser. The jury is stacked with people who know Scott and Evan, so impartiality is unlikely. Scott initially has no one to represent him until Megan steps up, and Scott is forced to testify, which would never happen in an actual court. And while he is found not guilty (even though he did commit the theft), Evan decides to administer his own form of justice through a particularly violent one-on-one game of hoops. Thus, justice, as rendered in the student-run court and later on the basketball court, is hardly impartial. However, at the story’s end, a just solution is realized when compassion and empathy are added to the equation. When Evan apologizes for his behavior and later defends Scott in front of Scott’s father, his adversary returns the $208, rebalancing the scales of justice and, perhaps, opening a window to a possible friendship.