Chapter 16: Four Words

They brought me to court in a gray sweatshirt, with a chain around my waist.

Six days of sitting on a plastic mattress had taught me one thing.

I could do it.

I had slept in a freezer, and a cell with a bed in it was easy.

The courtroom was fuller than before.

Joaquin sat in the second row, in a pressed shirt, with a purple bruise along his jaw.

I had put it there, and I felt a stab of something I did not have time to name.

My public defender slid into the seat beside me with a folder.

"Your brother filed an emergency bond motion on Monday," she whispered. "He put up sixty thousand dollars in cash. It's every dollar he had."

I turned my head.

Joaquin looked back at me and gave one short nod.

The doors at the rear opened.

Renata came down the aisle in ivory and pearls, and behind her a nurse pushed a wheelchair.

My father sat in it with a blanket tucked around his knees.

His head was bowed.

She stopped at the front row and arranged his blanket where everyone could see her do it.

Tomas walked in last, pale and neat, and sat on his mother's other side without a glance at me.

"All rise," the bailiff called.

The judge took her seat and put on her reading glasses.

"We are here on the defendant's emergency motion for release, ahead of the full hearing," she said. "Counsel."

The public defender stood up and made her case in four sentences.

I was a minor with no record.

I had a place to stay and an adult brother willing to supervise me.

The prosecutor rose and said I had fled my home at twelve and would flee again.

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