Part 3 (1/2)

Devon could run. She could just jump up and sprint out of there. But how far would she get? Not very-the leg irons locked around her ankles and the throb deep between her legs and the guard who's posted near the door with the handcuffs clipped to his back belt loop and the other one who's sitting at the desk near the front and the maze of hallways that brought her here would all conspire together and prevent it.

The other kids fidget in their plastic seats, start looking around.

Devon finally raises her hand halfway. ”Here,” she whispers.

The woman studies Devon, humorless. ”Oh, okay,” she finally says. ”I get it-you forgot your name . . . temporarily. Nice.”

Devon shakes her head, No.

Someone off to Devon's right-maybe the guy with the dreads-laughs under his breath.

Devon stares down at the woman's feet, careful to see nothing else. Black wedge sandals, an intricate design of thin straps weaving around her feet and toes. Devon had wanted some like them herself; the memory is there suddenly. How she'd once lingered at the display at Nordstrom's, touched the smooth leather. Imagining them on her feet, she'd picked up each sandal, feeling its feather weight. But they'd been expensive. She couldn't buy them herself because she had to save up every dollar of her babysitting money to offset Regional camp fees and the never-ending need for that new pair of keeper gloves. And she hadn't wanted to set her mom up just to have to say no, so she never asked.

Kait, her best friend then, had stood there at the shoe display with her. She'd prodded Devon to buy them. ”Trust me, Dev,” she'd said, ”you'll definitely regret not getting them. You'll look back and wish that you did.” Devon pushes the memory out of her mind; that was before the two of them had slowly drifted apart. Devon hasn't allowed herself to dwell on the specifics for a long time now. Can't really remember the details anyway. And then Kait wrote that letter, and everything got ruined.

”Well?” The woman sticks her clipboard under her arm, her tone beyond irritated now. ”Come on, then, Davenport. You're up.”

Devon slowly pushes herself to her feet, wincing slightly. Sitting all this time has made her body stiff-her pelvis, her hips, even her back aches. But especially her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; they throb like she's just absorbed a corner kick full in the chest.

Devon feels the woman's eyes on her. Does she guess? About why she's here? Is it written on that clipboard of hers? Devon stands a little straighter, keeps her eyes on the floor in front of her.

The woman turns and moves toward the door.

Devon follows. The chain of her leg irons ching, ching, chings between her feet behind the soft slap of the woman's sandals.

The woman opens the door. Devon steps inside.

A waft of stale air, then a hushed ambience, flows over her. The door closes softly behind her.

It's the courtroom, but it doesn't look anything like Devon had expected. This seems much smaller than anything she'd seen on TV. Up front is the judge's bench. It's a two-level, terraced wood structure. On the top level sits the judge, wearing a black robe. Two cylindrical white pillars sandwich him, one on each side, and the U.S. and Was.h.i.+ngton state flags stand tall behind him. On the lower level below the judge, two women sit facing each other and tip-tap on computers, their flat screens back to back. Three rectangular tables are perfectly s.p.a.ced across the width of the room before the judge. People sit behind those tables, their backs to Devon. A uniformed officer is stationed in the corner of the room, covered in partial shadow.

The woman with the clipboard slips off to the right, sitting in a chair near the door. And Devon is left standing at the threshold alone.

Devon stares at the judge, unsure of what else to do.

The judge's hair is short and dark, his features lean. He is briskly sorting through a stack of papers before him. After a moment, he lifts his eyes, trains them on Devon. They are intense and commanding and seem to look right down into her, down into her mind. Like he can read what's there.

A s.h.i.+ver runs through her, and Devon s.h.i.+fts her eyes away to the gold nameplate on the front of the raised wood structure: HON. STEPHEN V. SAYNISCH.

Her judge.

A light sweat breaks across Devon's body, and her hands tremble. This is for real. She wipes her hands along the sides of her legs. A smattering of coughing and throat clearings comes from somewhere off to her left, and she jerks her eyes in the direction. A small window is there, and through that window she can see a long crowded bench along the back wall. The gallery. She yanks her eyes away, looks back at the judge. People are there in the gallery, watching her. Just like in all those courtroom dramas on TV, people are sitting back there and thinking things about her-terrible, imagined things.

And her mom. Is her mom sitting there with them?

Devon feels dizzy, light-headed. Queasy.

A loud, staccato whisper. ”Hey!”

Devon's eyes snap straight ahead toward the sound, toward a man sitting behind the table closest to her.

He's glaring over his shoulder-over his reading gla.s.ses-at her.

”Sit!” he whisper-hisses, his index finger pointing at the chair on his right.

Devon quickly shuffles forward, lowers herself into the chair, her heart thumping in her chest. She places her hands on her lap and folds them carefully.

”I'm your lawyer,” the man whispers into her ear. ”At least for today. We'll talk later.”

Devon nods because her mouth is too dry to trust with her voice. But her lawyer has already turned away from her, his attention directed at the piece of paper in his hands. Devon wets her lips and observes him cautiously out of the corner of her eye.

His hair is spa.r.s.e-the few tufts rooted between his receding hairline and his bald spot fluff up like the crest of some exotic bird. His dark suit is wrinkled, the shoulders lightly dusted with dandruff. As he scans the paper, his lips move, silently forming the words he sees.

Nothing like what Devon expected a lawyer to look like. Nothing like those lawyers on TV. He's sort of shabby. And old.

But then she feels a twinge of guilt. After all, he's her lawyer. He's going to get her home today, away from this place. Right? Yes. Definitely, yes.

”Just keep your mouth shut unless I say otherwise,” Devon's lawyer whispers without looking at her. ”If the judge asks you something”-he jabs his finger on the piece of laminated paper taped to the tabletop in front of her-”you have two choices.”

Devon looks down. Two sentences in bold black scream: ”Yes, Your Honor.”

”No, Your Honor.”

Devon swallows and nods again.

”State versus Devon Davenport, number zero zero, dash eight, dash seven five seven nine four, dash one.”

Devon turns toward the new voice. Only a few feet to the left of her lawyer, behind his own table in the middle of the room, sits a young man speaking into a microphone. He wears a dark suit and power red tie and seems nervous by the way his leg shakes up and down under the table as he reads from the file before him. Looking across him, Devon can see the third table over on the far left side of the room. Behind it two women hunch over a stack of papers, their heads close-pointing at this, nodding at that.

Her lawyer pokes her with his elbow, and Devon jerks upright. She glances at him apologetically.

”Sit up,” he whispers again. ”When the prosecutor speaks, act like you care.”

”Your Honor,” the young man in the red tie-the prosecutor, apparently-is saying, ”the respondent is before the court today for an arraignment-”

Respondent? Wait. Didn't her lawyer just say that man was the prosecutor? Or is that her-the ”respondent”? Devon wants to ask, but her lawyer is so busy, rifling through a cardboard box of folders on the table before him. Red. Green. Blue. Yellow. He pulls out a yellow. Opens it. Leafs through it.

The young man drones on. Devon looks down at her hands in her lap, at her fingertips, specifically. They are gray. From the fingerprinting. Earlier today, the frizzy-haired woman behind the bulletproof gla.s.s had uncuffed Devon's wrists before snip-ping off the hospital wristband and replacing it with another, similar band for Remann Hall. Then she held Devon's hands. Had rolled each fingertip over the cool black ink, had stamped each onto a white card until all the little boxes had been filled with her prints. Devon couldn't get the ink off completely, not even when she'd scrubbed her hair in the shower afterward.

Devon shoves her fingers under her thighs, hiding them. The humiliation of the inprocessing is still so raw. Fingerprints were only the beginning. Then came the mug shot. The strip search. The lice check. The shower. A different woman-one with short gray hair-had watched from the corner of the bathroom as Devon stood naked before her, the water trickling over her shoulders, down her back.

The woman had, at least, turned her eyes when Devon dried herself. But afterward, the woman had spotted the blood smeared on the rough towel, the small pinkish puddles on the tile floor.