She realized, mortified, that she was crying. Wiping her eyes, Alex moved out of his reach.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said, daring Patrick to challenge her.

He opened his mouth as if he was about to speak, but then snapped it shut. “I’ll leave you to your vices, then,” he said, and walked back inside.

It wasn’t until Alex was back in chambers that she realized the detective had used the plural. That he’d not only caught her smoking, but also lying.

There were new rules: All the doors except for the main entrance would be locked after school began, even though a shooter who was a student might already be inside. No backpacks were allowed in classrooms anymore, although a gun could be sneaked in under a coat or in a purse or even in a zippered three-ring binder. Everyone-students and staff-would get ID cards to wear around their necks. It was supposed to make everyone accountable, but Josie couldn’t help but wonder if this way, next time, it would be easier to tell who’d been killed.

The principal got on the loudspeaker during homeroom and welcomed everyone back to Sterling High, even if it wasn’t Sterling High. He suggested a moment of silence.

While other kids in her homeroom bowed their heads, Josie glanced around. She was not the only one who wasn’t praying. Some kids were passing notes. A couple were listening to their iPods. A guy was copying someone else’s math notes.

She wondered if they, like her, were afraid to honor the dead, because it made them feel more guilty.

Josie shifted, banging her knee against the desk. The desks and chairs that had been brought back to this makeshift school were for little children, not high school refugees. As a result, nobody fit. Josie’s knees were bent up to her chin. Some kids couldn’t even sit at the desks; they had to write with their binders on their laps.

I am Alice in Wonderland, Josie thought. Watch me fall.

Jordan waited for his client to sit down across from him in the conference room of the jail. “Tell me about your brother, Peter,” he said.

He scrutinized Peter’s face-saw the disappointment flash across it as he realized that Jordan had again unearthed something he’d hoped would stay hidden. “What about him?” Peter replied.

“You two get along?”

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I wasn’t.” Jordan shrugged. “I’m just surprised you didn’t mention him earlier.”

Peter glared at him. “Like when? When I was supposed to shut up at the arraignment? Or after that, when you came here and told me you were going to do all the talking and I was going to listen?”

“What was he like?”

“Look. Joey’s dead, which you obviously know. So I don’t really get why talking about him is going to help me.”

“What happened to him?” Jordan pressed.

Peter rubbed his thumbnail against the metal edging of the table. “He got his golden boy straight-A self rammed by a drunk driver.”

“Hard to beat that,” Jordan said carefully.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, your brother is the perfect kid, right? That’s tough enough right there, but then he dies and turns into a saint.”

Jordan had been playing devil’s advocate, to see if Peter would take the bait, and sure enough the boy’s face transformed. “You can’t beat it,” Peter said fiercely. “You can’t measure up.”

Jordan tapped his pencil on the edge of his briefcase. Had Peter’s anger been born of jealousy or loneliness? Or was his massacre a way to turn attention to himself, finally, instead of Joey? How could he formulate a defense that Peter’s act was one of desperation, not an attempt to one-up his brother’s notoriety?

“Do you miss him?” Jordan asked.

Peter smirked. “My brother,” he said, “my brother, the captain of the baseball team; my brother who placed first in the state in a French competition; my brother who was friends with the principal; my brother, my fabulous brother, used to drop me off a half mile away from the gates of the high school so that he didn’t have to be seen driving all the way in with me.”

“How come?”

“You don’t exactly get any perks for hanging around with me, or haven’t you noticed yet.”

Jordan had a flash of his car tires, slashed to their metal haunches. “Joey wouldn’t stick up for you if you were being bullied?”

“Are you kidding? Joey was the one to start it.”

“How?”

Peter walked toward the window in the small room. A mottled flush rose up his neck, as if memory could be burned into the flesh. “He used to tell people I was adopted. That my mother was a crack whore, and that’s why my brain was all fucked up. Sometimes he did it right in front of me, and when I’d get pissed off and whale on him he’d just laugh and knock me on my ass and then he’d look back to his friends, as if this was proof of everything he’d been saying in the first place. So, do I miss him?” Peter repeated, and he faced Jordan. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

Jordan wasn’t often surprised, and yet Peter Houghton had shocked him several times already. Peter was, simply, what a person would look like if you boiled down the most raw emotions and filtered them of any social contract. If you hurt, cry. If you rage, strike out.

If you hope, get ready for a disappointment.

“Peter,” Jordan murmured, “did you mean to kill them?”

Immediately Jordan cursed himself-he’d just asked the one question a defense attorney is never supposed to ask, setting Peter up to admit to premeditation. But instead of answering, Peter threw a question back at him that had just as unsettling an answer. “Well,” he said, “what would you have done?”

Jordan stuffed another bite of vanilla pudding into Sam’s mouth and then licked the spoon himself.

“That’s not for you,” Selena said.

“It tastes good. Unlike that pea crap you make him eat.”

“Excuse me for being a good mother.” Selena took a wet washcloth and wiped down Sam’s mouth, then applied the same treatment to Jordan, who squirmed away from her hand.

“I am totally screwed,” he said. “I can’t make Peter sympathetic over losing his brother, because he hated Joey. I don’t even have a valid legal defense for him, unless I try for insanity, and it’s going to be impossible to prove that with the mountain of evidence the prosecution’s got for premeditation.”

Selena turned to him. “You know what the problem is here, don’t you?”

“What?”

“You think he’s guilty.”

“Well, for Christ’s sake. So are ninety-nine percent of my clients, and it’s never stopped me from getting acquittals before.”

“Right. But deep down, you don’t want Peter Houghton to get acquitted.”

Jordan frowned. “That’s crap.”

“It’s true crap. You’re scared of someone like him.”

“He’s a kid-”

“-who freaks you out, just a little bit. Because he wasn’t willing to sit down and let the world shit on him anymore, and that’s not supposed to happen.”

Jordan looked up at her. “Shooting ten students doesn’t make you a hero, Selena.”

“It does to the millions of other kids who wish they’d had the guts to do it,” she said flatly.

“Excellent. You can be the leader of Peter Houghton’s fan club.”

“I don’t condone what he did, Jordan, but I do see where he’s coming from. You were born with six silver spoons up your ass. I mean, honestly, have you ever not been in the elite group? At school, or in court, or wherever? People know you, people look up to you. You’re granted passage and you don’t even realize that other people never get to walk that way.”

Jordan folded his arms. “Are you about to do your African pride thing again? Because to tell you the truth-”

“You’ve never gone down the street and had someone cross it just because you’re black. You’ve never had someone look at you with disgust because you’re holding a baby and you forgot to put on your wedding ring. You want to do something about it-take action, scream at them, tell them they’re idiots-but you can’t. Being on the fringe is the most disempowering feeling, Jordan. You get so used to the world being a certain way, there seems to be no escape from it.”