Free Heart of Ice by April Henry, Lis Wiehl

actually,” Allison said, acting embarrassed.
    Elizabeth knew the type. The kind who bragged about themselves, but pretended not to. The kind who pointed out that they thought they were better than you by pretending they weren’t doing any such thing.
    She consoled herself with thinking about how Allison had struggled in boot camp. When her face went pale and she started biting her lip during a ninety-second plank, it had lightened Elizabeth’s heart. So she had tacked on fifteen more seconds without telling anyone.
    “And this is Nicole Hedges,” Cassidy persisted. “She’s an FBI special agent.”
    “It’s good to meet you.”
    Nicole’s smooth dark face didn’t give anything away. She reminded Elizabeth of Grandma’s cat, too good to come when you called it.
    Twenty-five years earlier
    E lizabeth didn’t like to think about Grandma. Grandma belonged to another person, a girl with a different name. A girl with bad things in her past. But she had left the girl behind.
    The girl who had been called Sissy Hewsom.
    When she was seven, the first of the bad things happened to Sissy. Her parents were arguing, the way they always did. But then her dad stormed out of the house and came back with a small black gun. And her mother’s eyes went wide and there was a boom and then there was a bloody hole where her right eye used to be. And then her dad slipped the gun into his own mouth, not even seeing Sissy. Not even seeing her! Just leaving her alone with two bloody things that used to be her parents.
    At their funeral, everyone dressed in black and cried and cried. Sissy had cried. She had to go live with Grandma, who smelled like an ashtray and who made her drink milk out of yellow melamine cups stained brown inside from years of coffee.
    As she got older, more bad things happened. They weren’t Sissy’s fault, no matter what anyone else said. But still, when Sissy was thirteen, she found herself in the Donald E. Long juvenile detention center awaiting trial.
    Grandma visited just once.
    Sissy ran to her, threw her arms around her. She knew she only had one chance to get this right. One chance to sway Grandma to do anything she could to get her only grandchild out of this awful place. Because Sissy couldn’t stay there one minute longer. Where you ate your food with a plastic spork and the lights never went off, not even at night.
    But instead of hugging her, Grandma pushed her away. She didn’t even sit down at one of the tables. Around them, other kids met their family members, who hugged and kissed and cried and bought ice-cream sandwiches from the vending machine.
    “I’m only going to say this once, Sissy.” Grandma’s mean little eyes narrowed. She looked like a snake. “They say it’s possible you might get out before you’re eighteen. If so, don’t come crying to me. I never want to see you again.”
    She was forced to make her pitch in a hurried low voice. “But, Grandma, what happened was like a mistake. It’s not like they said. They’re making up lies about me. They think just because Daddy was bad that I am too. But I’m not.”
    Grandma didn’t blink. “You can lie to whoever you want. But don’t bother trying it with me.” Her jaw clenched like a bulldog’s. “I found Snowball.”
    “But I didn’t—”
    “Stop. Just stop. I saw what you did to him.”
    Sissy made her eyes wide. “What are you talking about?”
    “The twine around his legs. You did it to him. Whatever you did. Did you make him suffer?” She lunged for Sissy, her fingers hooked in front of her like claws. Like she was determined to do what the cat had not been able to.
    “No!” Sissy got up and started backing into the corner.
    One of the guards grabbed Grandma and took her away.
    And that was the last Sissy ever saw of her grandmother.
    Her second day in the detention center—which was a jail, no matter what they called it—they gave Sissy an attorney pro bono, which meant free. But when they brought her in