Lulu. Who did she think she was that she could just wink and come on to my boyfriend? Like I was invisible, like I was some stand-in for her.

Maybe my father is sleeping. Maybe time has stopped and the clock has been slowed and he can’t move his head from his hands. Maybe we’ve been pushed into a time warp. But I’m not going to say anything, just sit here with my arms crossed and wait for the warp to shift or for my father to lift up his head and face me.

Just like that stupid youth worker who stood looking down at me, like she thought I was going to suddenly say I was guilty or something. I could feel my heart going boom-banga-boom-boom and then I just lost it. I stood up and threw my mashed potatoes right in her pudgy face, plate and all. Well, they came from everywhere, the youth workers, throwing me to the floor, arms behind my back, and they carried me like I was an Egyptian mummy into the cell they insisted on calling my room, in this stupid effort to have us think we were at a resort or a vacation camp. They took out everything and left me there on the concrete floor. Bastards. I was so mad. Who do they think they are that they can do this to me? They sent in the officer-in-charge for the night, and he told me I was lucky the youth worker wasn’t going to charge me with assault.

“For throwing a plastic plate of mashed potatoes?” I said to him. I rolled my eyes. “Come on. It’s not like she didn’t deserve it.”

“You can’t even see how it’s wrong, can you?” He looked like he was feeling sorry for me, but not because I was trapped in here, but as though he believed I was some heartless freak. His pager went off and then he left, but not before looking at me and shaking his head. I’d like to give him a shake.

I hate them all. They keep telling me I need to work on my attitude, honesty is important, taking responsibility is important, like they think I’m a liar. I have no problem telling them where they can shove their comments, because who the hell are they to talk down to me?

The time warp shifts. My father stands up. He needs to use the washroom. He knocks on the door and some guard comes and opens it. He says he’ll be right back. I’m alone in the beige.

It’s been three months I’ve been sitting in here. It took three weeks for my throat to stop aching from screaming at Sergei. Just let her go. He didn’t have to prove anything to me. He turned on me then. The bruises on my face have faded now. At first they turned green and red as though I’d rubbed my cheek on some weird plant in a pond deep in a forest, some magic pond. Bad magic. In fairy tales girls like me turn the magic around. The heroines always take control. The sky erupts and terrifying smoke of pink and purple slinks down and around the girl’s wrists and pulls her up, and she becomes giant, looming over them all, her laugh a million smashing thunderbolts which rip and shred her foes into pieces.