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?

And while I sleep, I let her read my new notebook. All I’ve got so far is Chapters One and Two. She reads what no one else ever will. In the Bushes with the Burnout Boys. It’s not relevant. In the rainsoaked bushes where I lay back and wished for a crown of twigs and moss.

“Hey,” she says, waking me from dream like she used to do when we were roommates at the home for disturbed girls.

I’m dreaming nightmares of Queen Elizabeth letting loose a white tiger to tear open my striped face.

But Amber’s real. She takes the key from her underwear, smiles triumphantly. “Hey,” she says, “when you write about White Oaks, you better not forget that I told you I’ve got the gift. Remember me. I’m a motherfucking Houdini!”

When it’s that time, I’m ready.

I’ve been brought a blue dress with a lace collar. Wardrobe for my preliminary hearing.

That’s where we have a rehearsal for the trial. All witnesses please arise and proceed to describe Miss Shaw as a violent liar who, even before the incident, carried a knife around. In her bra!