Amber! I almost started dancing a jig. I’d been so lonely. I pretty much had forgotten how to speak.

We hang out in the laundry room, blowing our smoke into the dryer.

The rinse cycle sounds like a tornado. Still, we whisper. We keep it low.

I earn cash for folding uniforms and I like the clean laundry smell. I feel a bit bad about blowing smoke onto the navy blue sweatshirts, but I don’t want Amber to think I’m ungrateful for the Player’s Light.

Amber says she came in here on purpose. She has something very important to tell me….

But for now, we’re in the laundry room, our voices hidden by the sound of washing machines.

She’s still proud of her skill at entering wherever she wants to go.

“Sara, it was so easy to get into juvie. I just crossed the street in front of a cop car. Boom. ‘Amber, you know you’re not supposed to be in the Red Zone.’ Oh really? I acted all surprised. White Oaks is full, guys. Too bad, guess you’ll have to take me to juvie ’cause I’m not gonna apologize. And so I got an escort here to see you! I didn’t even have to pay bus fare!”

“I really fucked up this time,” I say, surprised by how nervous I sound.

I’m so confused. They keep telling me not to say anything and they say tell everything and they say the less you say the better and they say the more you say the more you dig your own grave. Shut up. Confess.

“You didn’t fuck up, Sara. They fucked up. Besides, you don’t need to worry anymore. I got something really important to give you, Sara.”

“What?”

But the guard knocks on the door. “Hey, Carrie,” he says. He’s a big-necked buffalo who used to be a bouncer at Charmers, but he says he quit ’cause he couldn’t stand the clientele.

He calls me Carrie because he saw my yearbook photo in the newspaper and he says I remind him of the red-haired girl in the movie of the book by Stephen King. I wish I was Carrie; I wish I had telekinesis because then I could cause objects to move with the mere power of my mind.

“Hey, Amber,” he says. “I’ve got to start working harder now. I’ve heard about you.”

My trial date’s been set for September. I think they want to wait for the end of the tourist season ’cause a story of a psycho girl in Canada’s supposedly calmest city would be bad publicity. Mr. Galloway says he’s still wrangling to get my charges formally downgraded.

It’s funny; it’s like a play. There’s a whole list of all the performers who will appear.

Her Majesty the Queen vs. Sara Shaw.

First Act.

The Crown presents their case. Starring: Mackie Hollander, Stanley Smothers, the theater students, Dave Locke, Haywood and Vowell, the Polaroid, photos of Justine’s books and dresses in my bedroom, and my notebook, which they call a Diary. Dirk Wallace’s doctor, his wife, his boss, his mother-in-law, and his mother.