“No, Your Honor,” Ms. Manheim said. “Both her parents are—”
“I’d like to say something.”
Allie’s head whipped around to find the source of the familiar voice. And there she was. She wore a pink top as if in solidarity. Her thin white hair looked freshly washed and combed.
“Bea!” Allie shouted.
The judge banged his gavel once, then pointed it at Allie in a warning.
“Sorry,” Allie mumbled.
“And you are?” the judge asked Bea.
Meanwhile Bea was making her way up the aisle, looking sore and stiff.
“I didn’t say you should approach the bench,” the judge added.
Bea looked up and stopped. She was just a few inches from Allie’s left elbow now. Allie wanted to lean over and ask how she knew about the hearing, how she found Allie in this place, but she didn’t want to be gavel-warned again.
“Who are you, now?” the judge asked Bea.
“Beatrice Ann Kraczinsky. And yes, I have something I want to say. This little girl is so honest, when I met her I couldn’t even stand her she was so honest. I kept trying to put her out of my van for being so straitlaced, and if you lock her up, then the world just doesn’t make a darned bit of sense anymore. If you lock her up, you have to lock up everybody else in the world, too, because she’s more honest than all of them. It’s like a joke that anybody would blame any of this on her. There she was minding her own business and trying to grow up, but her parents broke the law, both at the same time. You’re supposed to put her in a foster home if that happens, but I guess you got busy and didn’t have one. So you put her in this place where somebody was trying to kill her, and now you say it’s illegal to try to get away from being killed. You can’t make that illegal. People have to stay safe, and you can’t tell them they’re breaking the law if they—”
“Wait,” the judge interjected. “Slow down, please, Ms. Kraczinsky. What is your relationship to Miss Keyes?”
“Oh. That. Well. I’m sort of her grandmother.”
“Can you explain to me how you can be ‘sort of’ someone’s grandmother?”
“Sure I will. It’s like when your family has this Uncle Fred, and then later you find out he’s really no blood relation to your family at all. But meanwhile he was just as good an uncle as all your other uncles. Maybe better.”
“So if you’re so close to this girl and her family, why didn’t you take her in?”
“Oh. I actually . . . hadn’t quite met her yet. At the time.”
“I see. At least, I think I see. It’s a confusing load of information. I hope you realize, Ms. Kraczinsky, that the point of this proceeding is not to decide whether to punish Miss Keyes. We’re trying to decide whether she’ll be safe in a foster home, or whether she’s still a flight risk.”
“She’s safe,” Bea said, her voice argumentative and hard. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She’s smart. She’s not stupid, that girl. You’re talking about her like she can’t even think for herself, but she has a good brain. Keep her where she’s okay, she’ll stay put.”
“Thank you, Ms.—”
Bea opened her mouth to talk again, but the judge banged his gavel. Twice. Allie jumped.
“Thank you, Ms. Kraczinsky. I think I have all I need.”
Silence. Nothing and no one moved.
“You may take your seat now,” the judge said, pressing the bridge of his nose as though his head hurt.
Bea moved out of Allie’s peripheral vision. Allie didn’t watch her go because she was too focused on the judge. On what he would say and do next.
The judge leveled Allie’s social worker with a serious stare.
“You have a suitable placement for Miss Keyes this time?”
“We have a foster home lined up, yes.”
“All right. Miss Keyes, I’m going to exercise my discretion and sentence you to time served. The few days you’ve spent in detention, waiting for this hearing, is all you’ll be asked to serve. But this ruling comes with a warning.”
Allie found herself staring at his pointed finger. It reminded her of the Greek gods they’d studied in school. Hadn’t one had the power to shoot lightning bolts from the end of a finger?
“If you let me down, and end up here in my courtroom again after another unauthorized foray into the world, my ruling will be very different, and you’ll be sorry you crossed me.”
For one shivery moment Allie thought about the man she’d ditched at the gas station in San Luis Obispo. The way he’d told her she’d be one sorry little girl if she ran. So many people using so many different forms of power to control her.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Polyester Lady took her elbow and turned her, leading her away from the bench and toward the courtroom door.
Allie looked everywhere for Bea. But Bea was already gone.
“We have to stop and get your things from the detention facility,” Allie’s social worker told her on the drive.
Allie had forgotten the woman’s name again. The courtroom experience had felt dreamlike and foggy to Allie. Her world had seemed unfocused at the edges—probably a result of fear—and no part of that morning had tended to stick.
“I didn’t imagine the part where Bea showed up there,” Allie said. “Right?”
“Oh, no. You didn’t imagine it. She was there all right.”
“You don’t say that like it’s a good thing.”
A sigh. A half mile of silence.
“Look,” Polyester said. “We got through that. We got you no more detention. Let’s just look forward.”
“What I have at that juvie place is nothing. One set of clothes. Not even ones I like. A cheap toothbrush they gave me. Let’s just go to this foster home.”
“No, they have more of your things than that. I got a message on my voice mail. Two bags. Nice-looking soft bags, woven or embroidered with . . . llamas, I think they said. They have clothes in them, and one has an iPad and a phone, and what looks like some gold jewelry. Somebody dropped them off this morning.”
Allie opened her mouth, but was too overcome with emotion to speak for a moment. Manuela had been wrong. Bea had brought Allie’s things back. Hadn’t hocked the iPad or the phone. Hadn’t stolen the gold necklace.
“You okay?” Polyester Lady asked.
“Actually,” Allie said, “they’re alpacas. Yeah, we have to go get that stuff, then. That’s a lot of my stuff.”
“Should I even ask how you got all those things? Because just about everything you brought to New Beginnings you left behind there.”
“No. You definitely shouldn’t ask.”
They drove most of the rest of the way in silence. Allie was thinking that, actually, Manuela had been half-wrong. Bea hadn’t stolen Allie’s stuff. But she also hadn’t stayed around.
“Thank you for taking part of the blame,” Allie said. Right around the time she saw the detention facility looming.
“What I said in court, you mean?”
“Yeah. That. You could have said you did everything right and I messed up. You didn’t have to put it on yourself.”