‘Do you have earplugs?’ Charlie asked, standing at the counter in 7-Eleven next morning.

When Charlie was ten, she’d stolen foam earplugs from CVS and dissolved them in gasoline to make her first tiny batch of napalm. The YouTube clip of her using the sticky explosive to melt a Barbie had resurfaced in the days after she’d confessed to the locker bombing, and she worried that an onlooker would make that connection as the store clerk shook his head.

‘You’ll get them at Walgreens, six blocks up.’

Charlie walked the six blocks to clear her head. She’d hardly slept. The guys in her corridor had yelled through the night, banged doors and lobbed a firecracker into Jamal’s room at 2 a.m. At four, a pair of cop cars rolled up the driveway, their lights flashing up the walls of Charlie’s room.

They had an arrest warrant for some kid from a room upstairs, and he wound up climbing OIL’s steeply sloped roof and screaming that he hadn’t done nothing. The guy on the roof’s girlfriend came from somewhere and persuaded him to come down. By the time the sun came up, Charlie felt like she’d slept about fifteen minutes.

Charlie had just walked out of Walgreens’ automatic doors when her phone buzzed. She didn’t recognise the number, or the woman on the other end.

‘My name is Dr Raphael,’ she began. ‘I received the message you sent regarding visitation for your brother, Edward.’

‘Oh,’ Charlie said, as she eyed a bench then sat down.

‘Is now a good time to talk?’

‘For sure,’ Charlie said. ‘Have you been working with Ed? How is he doing?’

‘I’m an administrative director,’ the woman said curtly. ‘I have encountered your brother on several occasions, and taken part in clinical meetings where his case is discussed, but I’m not involved in his day-to-day care.’

‘Right,’ Charlie said.

‘I received your request to visit Edward. It was discussed with the nursing staff, and I’ve spoken to your sister, Fawn, and your brother’s independent trustee at the law firm Troughton and Oliver.’

Charlie shook her head. ‘Troughton and what? Ed’s trust money is administered by Care Nevada.’

‘It was until the beginning of this year,’ Dr Raphael corrected. ‘I believe there was a legal dispute between your sister and Care Nevada. Your sister won the legal right to control Edward’s settlement money, shortly before Edward was resettled here at Care4Kids.’

Charlie couldn’t believe it. ‘My sister has control of Ed’s money?’ she blurted.

‘I believe that is the effective result of the legal dispute.’

‘But it’s Ed’s,’ Charlie said anxiously. ‘It’s his legal settlement from the hospital. He’s got to survive on that money for the rest of his life.’

Dr Raphael sounded weary. ‘A Nevada State court has deemed your sister fit to manage Ed’s affairs.’