“Oh come on,” he says.

I don’t tell my dad that in the moments before my bogeyman appeared, in Ming’s and in the reeds and in the bedroom of the Blue House, she moved just like you’d think a poet’s daughter would, sly and certain, like she was too good for this dull world.

I read the back of his books. They say he’s somewhere in Greece. I hope she’s with him, on an island where the buildings are white stone instead of gray concrete, where the water’s clear, not murky and heavy with seaweed. I hope she’s with her father because he has her same smile, wry and kind.

“Oh come on,” Seamus says. “Leonard Cohen is not her dad!”

My fellow criminals are kind to me. The people the world hates, they’re the ones who understand. I’m not very friendly, but no one in juvie calls me the Ice Queen.

Maybe I belong here.

Maybe jail is where I belong after all. Maybe not, maybe.

Hey, they yell, when they walk past my cell, keep your head up, Sara! Be a fighter. Barry, a serial shoplifter, wants to give me a FUCK THE WORLD tattoo.

But outside, I’m despised. I’m villainous, vicious, vile, vilified.

CHEK-TV 6:00 news. Girl, 16, Arrested in Savage Attack. In the alley, carnations lie limply; little flames flicker from the candles. A hand-painted sign billows over the bricks: GET WELL SOON DIRK.

Man-on-the-street interviews, what a joke.

Question of the day: How do you feel about the vicious attack on Dirk Wallace?

Considering none of these people know what happened, they’ve sure got a lot to say.

This one old lady with blue-rinsed hair and a Picasso umbrella: “I do believe the Lord will have those girls burn in hell! The one that’s missing, she’s probably already there.”

My new lawyer is a friend of my neighbor’s. The man who gave us his secondhand technology took pity on us and said he’d pay to have me represented properly.

Or maybe Seamus caved in and called Everly. I like to believe she sent a check from Palm Springs. When you’re locked up, you can have these hopes, or whatever the wanting of a secret savior is called—daydreams, delusion, a lost daughter’s fantasy.

Anyway, I like my new lawyer so much more than that fool Edmundo. He’s even better than the man on Dynasty. Mr. Galloway, he’s probably around fifty; he looks wealthy and clean. He must live in a mansion in Uplands, maybe next door to that movie producer who was always in Los Angeles. I wonder if, nights, him and his wife hear the secret sound of boys skate-boarding in an empty swimming pool.

He has wise eyes; he wears pin-striped suits.

I like his manner.

He never suggests. He just tells me that the police have a weak case based on what’s called circumstantial evidence. He doesn’t brag or sneer when he tells me that Stanley Smothers is in possession of a portfolio of half-naked girls. Many of whom are clearly underage.