Turns out it didn’t matter how much money I brought—the court was backed up, and Leo would have to stay a day, maybe two, in jail before a judge set bail. In my world that was supposed to happen much faster. Just like in my world bail was supposed to be reasonable. The only difference between my world and this one was that in mine it was supposed to be better, but lots of times it wasn’t. Which proved that no matter what world you lived in, injustice was a shitcake of many layers.

There wasn’t glass between us like there was in movies, but armed guards eyed us with suspicion from across the room.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Broke my boss’s nose.”

“You must have had a reason for hitting him.”

“I didn’t hit him, I tackled him,” Leo said. Then he let out a bitter laugh. “Your tackle changes the world. Mine just screws up my life.”

And then he told me the whole story.

“Homeless guy. Seen him before. Something not right about him. Not strung out or anything, just wrong in the head, you know? Next thing I know, there’s this woman screaming over by the deli counter. I leave my register, run over, and this guy—he’s been cornered by my manager. The guy’s got a knife, and he’s scared out of his mind. Because my manager’s pulled a gun on him. And this guy—you know what he’s got under his arm? A goddamn roast chicken! And his knife? It’s nothing but a butter knife. The dude just wants food, and my manager’s treating him like he just skinned his mother. The guy tries to bolt, and I know—I know—from the look on my manager’s face that he’s gonna pull the trigger. So I take my manager down before he can. I tackle him to the ground, and the gun goes off, shattering the deli case. And the homeless guy gets away. And now there’s blood on the ground, and I’m thinking did someone get shot? But no, the bullet at most killed a honey ham. The blood’s from my manager’s nose. When he hit the ground, it broke. And the way he’s looking at me, I knew that if the gun hadn’t flown from his hands, he would have used it on me.”