I imagine him back where he came from, in the mountains, in a smaller but even nicer chalet in the woods.

Why did he just leave me here?

No one else is here. The cell sits at the end of a mint-green hallway, chilled with cement and stainless steel.

I eat a bologna sandwich and drink a carton of room-temperature milk. Then I lie flat on the metal bed with the book open on my chest, but I don’t read. I close my eyes and try to imagine something of comfort. What do normal people think of? Their mothers? I’m haunted by the kitchen, and by the image of a boy I didn’t even know.

I can’t even cry. I’ve cried so much I was a dried-out shell, brittle and pearlescent.

I don’t know when I finally fall asleep, the black-and-red scrunch of my closed eyes easing into a heavy, sinking dream.

But when I wake up, I’m covered with a rough, warm blanket. It smells just like clean fiber, a cottony, woolly smell. My feet stick out the bottom, still in their socks, but the rest of me is blanketed, held down, warm, safe. I try to remember anyone coming in, the heavy chunk of the cell door opening. Anyone, tucking me in, watching, praying, the way a parent or a guardian angel might. But I can’t.

In the morning, I attend the arraignment in scrubs. I get a shower, and a clean set, with new socks. Kateri comes in with another officer I’ve never seen, and I ask her if I should change into regular clothes, or a suit, even though I don’t have one. She says no. I didn’t come in anything particularly nice, and I don’t know where those clothes have gone.

There’s a tense hush in the building, down the corridor, into the offices and the courtroom. There’s some discussion between Kateri and the new officer—a young man, not much older than I am, but baby clean and buff, his hair like white down on his head. He asks her if I should be shackled, either by hand or by foot or both.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kateri says.

She wears a suit, and her hair is down, long, to her midback, and a rich dark brown that is scattered with something warm and nearly red.

“I could walk him in myself,” she tells the officer, “but they’re making me take you.”

He flicks his eyebrows and won’t look at me.

They have barricaded off the lobby, and through the windows I can see that the press has gathered outside—TV cameras, reporters, photographers. There are guards at the door, not letting anyone in, but people outside hold up cameras, iPhones, and a reporter from Watertown with a microphone shouts over the top of the crowd.

There are JUSTICE FOR CRAIG signs everywhere, and that unsettling American flag that’s black and white with a blue stripe through the middle.

In the precinct office, Kateri talks with the newly appointed lawyer, a woman with a girl’s face and a mother’s body.