Jordan hefted Sam higher on his hip. “Your Honor, with all due respect, I’m not going to allow anyone to try this case for me. Especially not a judge who isn’t even involved in it anymore.”

He watched something flare behind her eyes. “Of course not,” she said tightly, and then she turned on her heel and walked out.

Ask a random kid today if she wants to be popular and she’ll tell you no, even if the truth is that if she was in a desert dying of thirst and had the choice between a glass of water and instant popularity, she’d probably choose the latter.

As soon as she heard the knock, Josie took her notebook and shoved it between the mattress and the box spring, which had to be the world’s lamest hiding spot.

Her mother stepped inside the bedroom, and for a second, Josie couldn’t put her finger on what wasn’t quite right. Then she figured it out: it wasn’t dark out yet. Usually by the time her mother got home from court, it was dinnertime-but now it was only 3:45; Josie had barely gotten home from school.

“I have to talk to you,” her mother said, sitting down beside her on the comforter. “I took myself off the case today.”

Josie stared at her. In her whole life, she’d never known her mother to back down from any legal challenge; plus, hadn’t they just had a conversation about the fact that she wasn’t recusing herself?

She felt that sick sinking that came when the teacher called on her and she hadn’t been paying attention. What had her mother found out that she hadn’t known days ago?

“What happened?” Josie asked, and she hoped her mother wasn’t paying attention enough to hear the way her voice was jumping all over the place.

“Well, that’s the other thing I need to talk to you about,” her mother said. “The defense put you on their witness list. They may ask you to go to court.”

“What?” Josie cried, and for just one moment, everything stopped: her breath, her heart, her courage. “I can’t go to court, Mom,” she said. “Don’t make me. Please…”

Her mother reached out for her, which was a good thing, because Josie was certain that at any second, she was going to simply vanish. Sublimation, she thought, the act of going from solid to vapor. And then she realized that this term was one she’d studied for the science test she’d never had because of everything else that had happened.

“I’ve been talking to the detective, and I know you don’t remember anything. The only reason you’re even on that list is because you used to be friends with Peter a long, long time ago.”

Josie drew back. “Do you swear that I won’t have to go to court?”

Her mother hesitated. “Honey, I can’t-”

“You have to!”

“What if we go talk to the defense attorney?” her mother said.

“What good would that do?”

“Well, if he sees how upset this is making you, he might think twice about using you as a witness at all.”

Josie lay down on her bed. For a few moments, her mother stroked her hair. Josie thought she heard her whisper I’m sorry, and then she got up and closed the door behind her.

“Matt,” Josie whispered, as if he could hear her; as if he could answer.

Matt. She drew in his name like oxygen and imagined it breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, funneling into her red blood cells, beating through her heart.

Peter snapped a pencil in half and stuck the eraser end into his corn bread. “Happy birthday to me,” he sang under his breath. He didn’t finish the song; what was the point when you already knew where it was heading?

“Hey, Houghton,” a correctional officer said, “we got a present for you.”

Standing behind him was a kid not much older than Peter. He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and he had snot running down his nose. The officer led him into the cell. “Make sure you share your cake,” the officer said.

Peter sat down on the lower bunk, just to let this kid know exactly who was in charge. The boy stood with his arms crossed tight around the blanket he’d been given, staring down at the ground. He reached up and pushed his glasses up his nose, and that’s when Peter realized there was something, well, wrong with him. He had that glassy-eyed, gum-lipped look of a special-needs kid.

Peter realized why they’d stuck the kid in his cell instead of anyone else’s: they figured Peter would be least likely to fuck with him.

He felt his hands ball into fists. “Hey, you,” Peter said.

The boy swiveled his head toward Peter. “I have a dog,” he said. “Do you have a dog?”

Peter pictured the correctional officers watching this comedy through their little video hookups, expecting Peter to put up with this shit.

Expecting something of him, period.

He reached forward and plucked the glasses off the kid’s nose. They were Coke-bottle-thick, with black plastic frames. The boy started to shriek, grabbing at his own face. His scream sounded like an air horn.

Peter put the glasses down on the floor and stomped on them, but in his rubber flip-flops that didn’t do much damage. So he picked them up and smashed them into the bars of the cell until the glass shattered.

By then the officers had arrived to pull Peter away from the kid, not that he was touching him anyway. They handcuffed him as the other inmates cheered him on. He was dragged down the hall to the superintendent’s office.

He sat hunched in a chair, with a guard watching him breathe, until the superintendent came in. “What was that all about, Peter?”

“It’s my birthday,” Peter said. “I just wanted to be alone for it.”

The funny thing, he realized, was that before the shooting, he’d believed that the best thing in the world was being left alone, so nobody could tell him he didn’t fit in. But as it turned out-not that he was about to tell the superintendent this-he didn’t much like himself, either.

The superintendent started to talk about disciplinary action; how this could affect him in the event of a conviction, what few privileges were left to be taken away. Peter deliberately tuned him out.

He thought instead of how angry the rest of the pod would be when this incident cost them television for a week.

He thought of Jordan’s bullied victim syndrome and wondered if he believed it; if anyone would.

He thought of how nobody who saw him in jail-not his mother, not his lawyer-ever said what they should: that Peter would be imprisoned forever, that he’d die in a cell that looked just like this one.

He thought of how he would rather end his life with a bullet.

He thought of how at night, you could hear the wings of bats beating in the cement corners of the jail, and screams. No one was stupid enough to cry.

At 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, when Jordan opened the door, he was still wearing pajama bottoms. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

Judge Cormier pasted on a smile. “I’m really sorry we got off on the wrong foot,” she said. “But you know how it is when it’s your child who’s in trouble…you just can’t think straight.” She stood arm in arm with the mini-me standing beside her. Josie Cormier, Jordan thought, scrutinizing the girl who was shaking like an aspen leaf. She had chestnut hair that hit her shoulders, and blue eyes that wouldn’t meet his.

“Josie is really scared,” the judge said. “I wondered if we could sit down for a minute…maybe you could put her at ease about being a witness. Hear whether or not what she knows will even help your case.”

“Jordan? Who is it?”

He turned around to find Selena standing in the entryway, holding on to Sam. She was wearing flannel pajamas, which might or might not have been one step more formal.

“Judge Cormier was wondering if we could talk to Josie about her testimony,” he said pointedly, trying desperately to telegraph to Selena that he was in deep trouble-since they all knew, with the exception perhaps of Josie, that the only reason he’d noticed up his intent to use her was to get Cormier off the case.