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“We’re going to be okay,” I say. “We’re going to get out of here.”
She nods, embarrassed now, but her breaths are still coming too fast. “What time do you think it is?”
We got to the protest at about four thirty and we never even made it to the park. “Maybe around seven,” I say.
“Still early. God, I am such a mess.” She pulls away from me, rubbing her gloved hand through her hair.
“You’re fine,” I say.
She snorts.
I look around the room at all the desperate faces. I bet none of them have ever seen the inside of a jail before. I bet none of them have family who’ve been in prison.
“Ever think about the future?” I ask, trying to distract her.
“Like, the future in which we’re not locked up?”
“After graduation. After Wallingford.” It is much in my thoughts lately.
She shrugs, leaning her face against a metal bar. “I don’t know. Dad took me to Vieques this past summer. We’d just lie on the beach or swim. Everything’s brighter and bluer there, you know? I’d like to go back. Soak it all up. I’m tired of being shut in dark places.”
I think of her trapped in that horrible wire cage by Barron for months at a time. During one of my bleaker moments the past summer, I looked up the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners. Depression, despair, crippling anxiety, hallucinations.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in a cage again.
“Never been out of the country,” I say.
“You could come,” she says.
“If you still want me with you after we graduate, I’m yours,” I say, trying to make my vow sound a little more casual. “So that’s it? You’re just going to lie around on a beach.”
“Until Dad needs me,” she says. Her breaths are more even now, her eyes less wide and wild. “I’ve always known what I was going to be when I grew up.”
“The family business,” I say. “You ever think of doing something else?”
“No,” she says, but there’s something in her voice that makes me wonder. “It’s all I’m good at. Besides, I’m a Zacharov.”
I think about the things I’m good at. And I think about Ms. Vanderveer, my guidance counselor. The future’s going to be here sooner than you think.
We’re in the cells for what I estimate to be another hour before a cop walks in, one we haven’t seen before. He’s got a clipboard.
Everyone starts shouting at once. Demands to see lawyers. Protestations of innocence. Threats of lawsuits.
The policeman waits for the furor to die down, then speaks. “I need the following people to come to the front of your cell and press your hands together in front of you with your fingers laced. Samuel Yu, Daneca Wasserman, and Lila Zacharov.”
The cells again erupt in shouts. Daneca gets up off the bench. Sam follows her to the front of the cell, turning back toward me and widening his eyes in an expression of bafflement. After a few moments, the shouting dies down.
I wait for him to call me next, but there appear to be no more names on the clipboard.
Lila steps forward, then hesitates.
“Go,” I tell her.
“We have a friend with us,” Lila tells the officer, looking back in my direction.
“Cassel Sharpe,” Sam supplies. “That’s his name. Maybe you missed it?”
“This is all my fault—,” Daneca starts.
