Act Two, my lawyer doesn’t want me to talk and he has no witnesses.

“Nobody?” I ask him. “Doesn’t that look bad?”

“Who else should I add?” he says, chewing on his fancy fountain pen. “Help me.”

“Ivy?”

He sighs. “Her mother doesn’t want her involved.”

Her mother just wants her to write poetry.

“Anyone else?”

Cassie and Amber, China and Heather, Dean Black and Nicholas the Skateboard Star. A sick girl with scabs on her face, a counselor nicknamed Gloria.

But I would never want those people to have to stand up before a crowd. They’d get ripped apart, embarrassed, they’d shred them all, public nuisances, cophaters, a beggar, and a dyke feminist.

Heather alone would be asked about the garden hose episode. ’Cause lawyers find out your reputation. It’s fair game. Nicholas would be asked why I left his apartment and why he never took my virginity. They’ll get China and ask her what she is. Solicitation for what? Speak up louder please. How many times did you OD? Please tell the court clearly as we need to understand you might be a person of bad character. Louder, louder, louder, speak up louder. Tell us how you got on your knees. You did what to Mr. Wallace? Louder, Alice, speak louder please. Tell the court and the whole world that you’re a drug addict and a whore.

Just thinking about it fills me with dread. I’d die before I’d let anyone I loved go before the likes of the lady with the Picasso umbrella.

Loved, I can’t believe I just said that word. Don’t start thinking I’m some corny nature girl hippie.

It’s funny all these people flitted in and out of my life so suddenly.

Absent on the list, they might as well not exist.

But I keep thinking about them, really, more and more and all the time.

Amber strolls around the jail waving at old acquaintances.

“Hey, Budgie, Frankie says hello.”

We’re in the TV room, sitting side by side. It’s Movie Night. We’re not allowed to watch The Outsiders but they’ll show us Cinderella.

“Fuck this shit,” Amber says, “meet me in your room.”

We can’t exactly hang out in other girls’ cells. But Amber opens her hand, a finger over her lips to say ssssh, and she shows me the key pressed against the lines of her palms. You know those lines, the ones fortune-tellers read to tell you if you will marry and how old you will be when you die.

Amber knows. I don’t know how. She just knows.

Maybe she remembers how I flinched when I saw her and Cassie cutting with the razor blade.

I tell her they have no idea. The cops, the lawyers, the newspaper, the people blabbing away on TV. I’ve tried to tell them but I wouldn’t know where to start. They’d need songs for their report; they’d need to see The World by Alice, a finger tasting father’s gin. And even then, would they ever understand?