But when he comes back, he says he’s not impressed by my poetic bullshit. He’s not impressed, the judge is not impressed. “Quite frankly, no one’s impressed, Sara.”

“I guess I’m not going to Red Lobster.”

“No,” he says, “unfortunately, you are not.”

The judge decided that I should be remanded to the youth custody center because there is sufficient evidence and I pose a threat to the community and I do not have a responsible guardian and clearly, I clearly do not demonstrate remorse if I am writing poetic nonsense instead of a confession or an apology.

“Jail’s not so bad,” Edmundo says. “Cheer up.”

No, he doesn’t say anything. He just rolls his eyes when I ask if I can keep the notebook.

I’m pretty sure he wants to fire me.

I READ the newspaper article. The newspaper got it all wrong.

“Impressionable” and “troubled.” They should have called me a harlot and a slut, a poseur and a tease, a nubile and naive, a slattern and a sleaze, a vandalist, an anarchist, a dirty dilettante with a fatal and fervent disease.

Because I was all those things in the twelve days when there was too much rain and I was burning and I found and lost Justine.

“Authorities say the incident was instigated by a streetwise, disturbed girl.” Authorities say. Yeah, sure. That line always makes me laugh.

I shove the newspaper article under the mattress in my cell. My cell is painted gray and blue. Gray like the fog, blue like the ocean, the constant parts of my island I used to see every day, but no longer see now that I’m inside juvie.

I’m high up in the Sooke hills; fifteen miles from downtown, in a concrete slab surrounded by Christmas trees.

It’s like being back in Mount Doug, with the fluorescent glare and the smell of Lysol everywhere. There’s a cafeteria and classrooms and a basketball court. It’s not like the jails you see on TV. There’s no moat, no roaming dogs, no watchtower or barbed-wire fence.

At juvie, they frisked me as if my skin was contraband.

I’m high-risk, they said, I’m at risk.

The visitors’ room is a laid-back place, with a beanbag chair and a pinball machine. There’s a trophy case full of artwork from the former inmate kids—macramé baskets and clay rainbows.

Seamus is there, as often as they’ll let him be. He’s never high, even though I can tell he’s in bad shape; his fingernails bitten away, his chin full of razor nicks. It must be the worst thing to have everyone think your daughter is a fuckup with violent tendencies, especially when you’re a father who’s never raised his voice, never says what I hear other parents scream: How could you do this to me?

My father says, All crime springs from some necessity.

He brought me the books I asked for. Flowers for Hitler, Beautiful Losers.

I tell my dad Justine’s dad wrote those books.