My father came to see me less than an hour after I was arrested. It feels like an eon ago, not three months ago. The first thing I noticed was the stubble on his face. Something had finally shaken his world up, like he was a little man in a snow globe who’d become unglued from the bottom and was now floating around banging his head on the plastic walls, trying to get his feet glued back down again. He came in and he looked at me, his eyes all red. “Isabella. What happened? You have to tell me.” I had my arms crossed and he leaned over and took my hand. It was the first time he’d touched me tenderly since I was ten years old, aside from patting me on the shoulder like I was the dog.

It’s a long drive for him, but he’s been coming twice a week. It could be a disaster for his career, although he hasn’t said this, which is unusually thoughtful of him. I’ve seen my father more than I ever did when we lived in the same house. He must like the routine here. He’s all about routine. Every Sunday is visitor time, although they’ve made some special arrangements for him to have an extra visit.

They do art therapy in here. Mandatory art. What’s therapeutic about that? I ask the art instructor. Her name is Elaine. It’s printed on the red facility pass she has clipped to her smock, the pass that gives her access to the high security part of the facility. Her name is pronounced like it’s élan, like she thinks she’s from Paris or something, instead of just some bitch from the boring world. She keeps correcting us when we get it wrong. I always say it wrong to see what she’ll do. I’d like to come up behind Élan, grab her stupid ponytail and give a yank and watch her neck snap. That would be pretty funny live art.

Someone called her “Elaine-the-Shit-Stain” to see what she would do. She just smiled and finally said, “Call me whatever you want, I don’t care.” All the girls laughed. They don’t have anything else to do but laugh. They have sentences already.

I’m the only one in here on remand, on dead time, waiting for my dumb court date. The stupid youth workers told me they’ve seen other people sit in here for a year waiting for their trial, next they’re found guilty and none of it counts as time served, a whole year of dead time.

Elaine comes every week. She’s the only one in here who is nice, who doesn’t talk down to me. Art is the only thing I can stand. I want to be an interior designer. My father wanted our whole house redone, and he let me choose the colours.

Yesterday in art therapy Elaine got us to pick colours to reflect how we feel. She has this colour wheel she uses, a poster she puts on the wall. Colour therapy, she calls it. All the shades of purple spoke to me. I touched each one of them, the lavender and plum, the mauve and lilac, the pale violets and the deep wines, the grape and heather purples. “Yes,” she said, smiling. “What does it say about you, this colour?”