Free Forbidden: A Standalone by CD Reiss Page B

matter what he says, we have lawyers. Our lawyers have lawyers. If Hitler needed to walk, Hitler would walk. What I’m worried about isn’t the law. Deacon is my law. He’s the only one I have to obey. I’m worried about what I did . How it affected him. Us.”
    “You have a very strange sense of entitlement.”
    “I’m told it’s affluenza.”
    He smiled ruefully. “Session over. See you tomorrow.”

CHAPTER 12.
    I  could have eaten in my room, but I wasn’t good at alone time, and I’d already had a bit too much of it. So when Jack sat next to me, I was relieved by the human contact. At the same time, I didn’t know what to do with it.
    “Last day is tomorrow,” he said, breaking his artisanal bread and dunking it in his sweet whipped butter. “What’s your guess?”
    “I think they’re going to let me out.”
    “You’ll get picked up before you’re out the door.”
    I shrugged. “They’ll set bail. I’ll go home, and then we’ll see.”
    Split pea soup with hand-cut bits of ham. Grilled vegetables. Marinated tri-tip. All the meals had been like that, and by “like that,” I meant the very worst of what I’d ever had in my life, unless I was deliberately slumming or in a neighborhood south of the 10.
    I pushed my tray away. “This food sucks.”
    I wanted something, but it wasn’t on my tray. The roil of anxiety built in my chest. I had no relief for it, at least not in the pills they were feeding me. Not in the therapy or hypnosis. I had ways to manage myself, and they had all been taken away.
    “They’re going to expect me to be sober when I get out, aren’t they?” I asked.
    “Probably. But whatever. Just get someone else to drive, and they’ll never know the difference. No one gives a shit what you do as long as you’re not hurting some middle-class honor student. Then you’re up shit creek.”
    The way he rubbed his bread around his bowl, as if he was just flipping off some commentary, should have told me he didn’t mean it personally. He wasn’t trying to jab at me. He wasn’t trying to twist my sore places. But he did, and I decided it was careless and cruel.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
    He barely stopped eating. “Means we can get away with self-destruction until we hurt someone who doesn’t have anything. Then it’s off with our heads.” He drew his finger across his throat. “Seriously, I’m in here because I sold an ounce of sky gum to a teacher. The news was all about how much my dad made versus how much she made. And I’m like, seriously? I sold four grams to Rolf Wente, and I got crickets.” He stopped chewing. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
    “People cared about Amanda.”
    “No. You cared. The rest of them were slowing down to see the blood on the road.”
    There had been plenty of it. Rich blood. Blue blood if you counted Charlie’s cut head. Amanda’s flowed with the webbed lines of windshield cracks as I sat in the passenger seat in a half daze. I thought she looked like a cartoon character sticking her head through a wall, and she’d just pull it out and make a goofy face. I put my hand on her ass and patted it, whispering, “Tight and sweet, baby. Tight and sweet. You’re going to be okay.”
    “You’re not going to cry,” Jack said, incredulous. “You’re not allowed to have problems, sweet tits. Sorry.”
    I didn’t know what was going on with Jack. Something must have been happening in his world, because he was ornery and defensive, but I didn’t care. The thought that no one had cared about Amanda dying, even though it had been in all the papers and her parents turned people away from the funeral, pulled at my heart. He was right. No one cared about her.
    And how did you make people care? Amanda Westin died in a drunk-driving accident, and the driver walked away because his dad was a duke in some tiny European backwater, and the news vans came, and the flowers were imported from India, but how could I make