Look, fam, in 2021, we freed Britney. In 1993, we freed Willy. This year, if you ask me, we need to band together to free Bill. So, join me, join me, wherever you are, in taking a stand for a man who, sure, yeah, may be guilty, but he at least deserves the dignity of house arrest until we know for sure. I’ll leave you with this: If Bernie got to serve time at home, shouldn’t Bill?

TNT (’Til Next Trial)

JUNIPER SHORES SOCIALITE

Alice Lucky Breaks

Six days had passed since Belle Epoque, and #freebill was really taking off. Well, around here, at least. Everywhere we went, people stopped Charlotte to ask what they could do, how they could help, if it was true that Bill had been framed. And that was great. But she was still incredibly anxious about what evidence could be used against him. Tonight we had talked her into getting out of the house, getting away from the phone and computer, and forgetting all her troubles with some good old-fashioned Friday night lights.

I looked around at the familiar scene, sitting in the bleachers at Juniper Shores Prep, cheering for the Marlins. How many nights had I sat in these stands? I couldn’t even begin to count. Two rows in front of me sat a little girl with blue-and-white ribbons in her pigtails. Her grandmother reached over to hand her a box of Milk Duds, and I smiled, thinking of my darling departed Mina, the aunt I barely knew who, after my mother died and my father was incarcerated for involuntary manslaughter, rescued me. And I do mean that literally. Mina was sixty-four years old, my mom’s oldest sister, nearly twenty years her senior, the day I entered her quiet, calm, organized home. I was a terrified little girl of ten who had lost her beloved mother to a car crash, her father to prison, her predictable-if-sometimes-annoying siblings, her home, her everything all in one fell swoop.

I think I knew from the first day with Mina that I was lucky. I knew that not every kid with no parents got to live in a pink bedroom with sheets that smelled like flowers and with a kind woman who cooked amazing food and told great stories. Mina never tried to be my mother. She only tried to take care of me, to love me, to help me love myself. She believed she could only take on one child and, since I was the youngest, since I would be displaced for the longest amount of time, she chose me. I couldn’t have known then that my siblings would spend the rest of their lives resenting me for that; I couldn’t have known what a wedge it would drive between us.

Even so, I would have chosen Mina. She gave me—against all odds—a wonderful childhood.