For Ciarra, Winona Ryder's shoplifting trial was a chance to see "the best person in the whole world." She arrived at the Beverly Hills courthouse with her friend Brittni just moments after recess of the trial's final day. After the press left the courtroom but before the defendant did, the two fourteen year-old girls told the bailiff outside the chamber the story of their journey—five bus connections in as many hours, from Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley—and then he let them into the gallery to get a glimpse of Winona.
Although the courtroom was nearly empty, the girls sat in the last row of seats. "Omigod she's pretty," whispered Ciarra, who has clear green eyes, flawless pale skin, and a pierced eyebrow.
"Look at us, Look at us, Look at us," Brittni murmured hopefully.
When the girls caught Winona's eye, they waved furiously. The actress looked delighted: she grinned, waved back and blew them a kiss.
They approached the front of the gallery, and Winona walked over to hug them and kiss each of them on the cheek. When Ciarra introduced herself by name, Winona said "That's my goddaughter's name!" and Ciarra replied, "I know." Two bailiffs intervened when Ciarra offered the star her notebook and an orange magic marker. "Can't I sign just one autograph?" Winona asked, in a voice that seemed to question the fairness of life.
They sternly shook their heads, and Winona returned to confer with her lawyer. Brittni, who had pink hair, sat down with Ciarra and said, "I will never wash this cheek." When the bailiffs wandered off, Winona beelined back across the courtroom, determined to give her autograph to the girls. Her hands were shaking slightly; she made a squiggle on the page, a false start. "Oh, I'll just make that a heart," she said, then wrote, "Thank you so much. Lots and lots of peace and love." She added a couple of CD recommendations: "P.S. Essential listening: Bright Eyes (Lifted) Wilco (Yankee Foxtrot Hotel)."
Ecstatic, the girls left the courtroom and waited for Winona to emerge, to get one more glimpse when she walked down the hallway to the elevator. While they waited, I asked Ciarra if it bothered her that Winona might be guilty of stealing, and she said, "I don't care."
As Winona walked down the hall, Brittni hollered, "I love you!"
Winona said, "I love you, too!"
Standing in the back of the crowded elevator, surrounded by her entourage, Winona held eye contact with the girls, raised her arm and made a defiant "V" sign with her fingers, and called out, "Peace!" Brittni and Ciarra mirrored both the gesture and the cry, and the elevator doors closed.
At that point, the girls barely knew what to do with themselves. They hugged one another. "We should go get her downstairs," Brittni said.
"No, she'll think we're weirdos," Ciarra said.
Reporters surrounded them, asking what Winona had written in their notebooks. Ciarra looked wary. She pressed the notebook to her chest and told the reporters that Winona wrote "stuff. Like, a lot of stuff. A whole page."
The reporters asked to see the autographs ("I'm with Newsweek magazine. I could get your names in Newsweek...") and Brittni said no, "It's personal." The reporters kept after them until Brittni interrupted: "Wait a minute. How much will you give me?"—a train of thought that led directly to "Do you think that this could get us on TV?"
Outside the courthouse, Brittni and Ciarra approached a reporter from "Celebrity Justice," a syndicated tabloid show. "We have autographs," Brittni said, and then, in what she called her "first TV interview ever," she was asked what she thinks of Winona Ryder. "She's pretty, and she's like a role model and stuff. She touched my pen."
Copyright © 2004/2005 Michael Joseph Gross. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication or distribution is prohibited.