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in shock in front of my mother. The man heading to the area behind home plate is Rob Davis, scout for the Cincinnati Reds.
    “Told you that spring tryouts weren’t the end of it.” Dad motions for me to follow Rob. “Go HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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    blow him away.”
    HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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Beth
    THE OLDER PRISON GUARD, the nice one, walks beside me. He didn’t put the cuffs on
    supertight like the other dickhead guard. He isn’t in my face, trying to scare the shit out of me. He’s not trying to reenact a scene from Cops . He just walks next to me, ignoring my existence.
    I’m all for silence after listening to a girl come down from a bad acid trip last night.
    Maybe it was today.
    I don’t have a clue what time of day it is.
    They gave me breakfast.
    They discussed lunch.
    It must be morning. Maybe midday.
    The guard opens the door to what I can only describe as an interrogation room. Other than the holding cell I’ve shared with the fifteen-year-old who’s way too strung out for my taste, HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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    this is where I’ve spent the majority of my time since they arrested me for destruction of property. The guard relaxes his back against the wall. I sit at the table.
    I need a cigarette.
    Bad.
    Unbelievably bad.
    Like I would rip off my own arm if I could get one drag.
    “What are you coming down from?” The
    guard stares at my fingers.
    I stop tapping the table. “Nicotine.”
    “That’s rough,” he says. “I never kicked it.”
    “Yeah. It fucking blows.”
    The police officer who arrested me last
    night—this morning—steps into the room.
    “She speaks.”
    Yeah. Didn’t mean to. I clamp my mouth
    shut. Last night, this morning—who the hell knows—I managed to keep silent when they
    grilled me on my mom, my home life, my
    mom’s boyfriend. I refused to talk, refused to say one word, because if I did, I could have said the wrong thing and sent my mom to jail.
    There’s no way I could live with that.
    I have no idea what happened to her or her HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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    boyfriend after they snapped the handcuffs on my wrist and sat me in the back of the squad car. If God’s hearing prayers from me, then maybe Mom’s in the clear and the
    asshole’s sharing a urinal with the other felons-of-the-month.
    The officer resembles a twenty-year-old
    Johnny Depp, and he smells clean—soap with a hint of coffee. He’s not the one who tried to talk to me last night. Just the guy that arrested me. He settles into the seat across from me and the guard leaves.
    “I’m Officer Monroe.”
    I glare at the table.
    Officer Monroe reaches over, unlocks the
    cuffs, and slides them to his side of the table.
    “Why don’t you tell me what really happened last night?”
    Just one drag. Oh God, it’d be better than a deep kiss from a really hot guy. But I’m not kissing a hot guy and I don’t have a cigarette because I’m currently being questioned in purgatory.
    “Your mom’s boyfriend, Trent—we know
    he’s bad news, but he’s smart. We’ve never gotten enough to put him away. Maybe you can HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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    help us and yourself. Help us put him in jail, then he’ll be away from you and your mom.”
    I agree—he’s Satan. Other than the fact that he’s a washed up has-been of a football player who traded tackling men on the field for
    beating the shit out of women, though, I have nothing to tell them beyond rumors I’ve heard on the street. The cops who walk the south-side beat are well aware of our bedtime stories regarding The Asshole Known as Trent. The tantalizing tidbit that he hits me and Mom could get us a flimsy piece of paper with the words Emergency Protection Order on the
    header, but domestic violence offenders rarely sit inside jail cells for long, plus Trent burns EPOs and puppies for fun.
    Even before my mother got involved with
    Trent, the police were after him, but he’s the walking, talking real-life version of an oil spill—impossible to pick up once he’s been released. Helping