What it most reminded me of, in a way, was the haughtiness and control of a drag queen. I pictured RuPaul saying, “Sashay away.” What was important to the judge was that the defendant maintain the decorum of the courtroom. That he control himself. Control was the matrix, was the soil, in which any kind of justice or rationality could grow, and if you did not carefully and rigorously maintain the atmosphere of control, then you would have no hope of clarity in anything. Or these were the thoughts that bubbled in my adolescent brain.

And then it was Bunny’s turn. She and Swan pushed to the front of the room. Ray and I sat with the empty chair between us, the air still warm from Bunny’s body. All I could see was her broad back as she stood before the judge. Swan had told her not to sit.

“I understand an agreement has been reached between the DA’s office and the defendant,” the judge said.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Swanson said, and there was a murmured “Yes, Your Honor” from the prosecutor’s side as well.

The judge looked at Bunny with a strange glint in his eye, as though she interested him. “Do you understand that by entering into this plea you are giving up your right to defend yourself with your own testimony?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Bunny said, her voice loud and ringing as a bell.

“Is this what you want to do?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Do you further understand that by entering into this plea, you are giving up your Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights, your right to refuse to testify against yourself, and your right to a speedy trial. By entering into this plea you are giving up very important, substantial, constitutional rights. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said, and again her voice was a bell. I realized the entire court was hushed. They were all interested in this girl, in this girl murderer with the pink sweater and the crystal voice.

“Are you entering into this plea freely, voluntarily, and understandingly?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. And I felt I could not breathe. What if she copped to the murder charge? Ray’s voice was ringing in my memory. Do you think the DA would make the arson go away? And I worried we were making an incredible mistake. I wished this was like a wedding and the judge would ask if anyone had any objections, but it was not and he would not. It was too late for that kind of thinking.

“On the afternoon of October twenty-eighth, did you involve yourself in an altercation at North Shore High School wherein you attacked another student, Ann Marie Robertson, causing her to sustain injuries that ultimately led to her death on December tenth?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“To the charge of involuntary manslaughter, how do you plead?”

“No contest, Your Honor,” she said.

The judge looked at her for a moment more, then rolled on. “I find waivers knowingly intelligently made. I sentence her to three years state prison. Bailiff, please remand the defendant.”

And then the bailiff handcuffed her and led her out a door on the side of the courtroom. There was a window into the hallway the door led to, so I could see them even after the door had shut on her. Her hands were cuffed in front of her and the bailiff was steering her down a hallway, and he seemed to be talking to her, and she seemed to be nodding, and then she was gone.

* * *

—

It took me about three days to understand that Bunny was gone, and when understanding finally overtook me, it was like breaching the surface of the water after a near drowning, desperately gulping for air. What was I doing in Ray Lampert’s house? What was I going to do next? I began, haltingly, to claw myself toward a life.

I walked to Rite Aid, huddled into my sweatshirt, and every house I passed seemed ominous to me, as though there were people inside watching me. When I stepped inside the Rite Aid, I felt like I was home. Terrence let me into his little office, which had a one-way mirror so he could spy on the cashiers. It was all so straightforwardly Orwellian that it seemed a little sweet, from an older, more authoritarian time.

“Oh my god, oh kid,” he said when he saw me. “How you doing? How’s all your—guts?” He motioned around his own midsection.

“Well, a lot better. I mean, physically. I just—I’m so embarrassed, but I need help.”

“Tell me.”

The problem with telling him was that my eyes involuntarily produced tears, even though I was not sad about these things exactly. I explained that Jason had been one of the boys who beat me up, but that I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, and I hadn’t told Aunt Deedee. I don’t know why, but when I was talking to Terrence, it was easy to say it was Jason and to be sure. Everything was really very simple, there inside the Rite Aid manager’s office. Maybe because I knew he would believe me. My questions and explanations came in little thorny bursts that were extremely physically painful in a way that bewildered me, but with each piece I got out, I felt lighter and calmer.

He immediately agreed to my request to come and live with his family. He immediately agreed to transfer me to another Rite Aid somewhere outside the orbit of North Shore. He hugged me so tightly my nose was smashed into his shirt and I smelled the sweet powdery perfume of some brand of laundry detergent I had never smelled before.

“You are such a good kid,” Terrence said with a ferocity I had never heard in his voice except when talking about football. “Goddamnit, you’re a good kid.”

“Thank you, Terrence,” I said. I felt like I was floating, like my body was weightless, the way it was in Bunny’s pool. I wasn’t sure if my legs would function well enough to carry me back to Ray’s house to pack my things, but they did.

* * *

—

And so I moved in with Terrence’s family, engulfed by his many noisy children who were charmed by the irregularity of my sudden appearance. “I think we are in a pretend world and someone is playing with us,” his three-year-old said to me, her face inches from my own close to dawn in the gray-blue light of their living room. Breakfast time in that house was like Abbott and Costello on bennies but with a lot of farting, and by the time everyone left for school or preschool or kindergarten or wherever, I was usually slightly smeared with peanut butter from cuddles I would never have dared ask for. I loved it at Terrence’s house. I cannot even begin to describe how safe I felt there. His wife bought me socks because she noticed I did not own any. I had never bothered to spend money on socks when I could just not wear them, but I found that I adored the soft black cotton socks she bought. They made my feet feel so chaste and clean. I tried to express my gratitude by doing laundry, vacuuming when the dog hair buildup became uncomfortable (they had an aged pug named Grinch), playing with the kids, and helping with their homework, and Terrence’s wife, Olivia, was gobsmacked by this, as though no one had ever in the history of the world helped her, and so I became a most besotted suck-up, and she my sappy liege.