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“Uncle Buster, it’s not what they say. I was fooled into believing something else was going to happen tonight. They were all out to get me.”

“You better just go with them for now, Phoebe. I’ll be along,” he said in a tired, skeptical voice.

“But—”

“This is very, very serious. Just do what the police want you to do, Phoebe.”

“Right. Just do what they want,” I mimicked. A lot of good it was going to do me appealing to him for any help, I thought.

“Let’s go,” the policeman said, moving me more forcefully toward the police car. The other patrolman opened the door, and they practically pushed me into the car. Aunt Mae Louise stood on the stoop shaking her head at me and mumbling some prayer under her breath.

“It’s not my fault! I’m not lying!” I screamed back at her.

The policemen got in, and we started out of the driveway. I looked back and saw Uncle Buster arguing with Aunt Mae Louise, and then we made a turn and headed out of the de

velopment. Fuming, I sat back and glared straight ahead. Daddy sure made my life more miserable bringing me here, I thought. I would have been better off living in the streets of Atlanta.

When we arrived at the police station, they put me in a room by myself. It was brightly lit, with bare walls and a mirror. They sat me at a long table, but no one came for so long, I fell asleep with my head down on the table. Then I felt someone nudge me, and I raised my head slowly and looked at a policewoman. She had short, dark hair, beady eyes, and a small mouth. There was a small bump in the bridge of her nose. I had seen policewomen before, but she looked too small and fragile to be one.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s hear your side of this.”

I stared down at the table, my arms folded under my breasts.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone. What good would it do? What good did it ever do?

“You had better start talking. That boy, Skip Lester, he has a concussion and fifty stitches. He’ll have a scar. His parents are pretty angry,” she said calmly. “They want us to charge you with more than just assault and battery. They think you tried to kill him.”

“If I was trying to kill him, he’d be dead,” I said.

“An inch or so to the right, and you would have hit him in the temple and done just that,” she shot back at me. “I don’t think you should be such a smartass, girl.”

I pouted, still fuming too much to speak.

“Now, if you don’t tell us your side of it, all we’ll have is their side, and that doesn’t look too good for you. There’s an assistant district attorney coming here soon to decide how to charge you and what to do with you now. You don’t have to be charged as a minor if it’s a serious felony. You could go to adult court, Phoebe. That’s your name, right, Phoebe?”

“Yeah, that’s my name.”

“Well?”

I took a deep breath and sat forward, wondering just where I should begin. Perhaps I should start with the day Mama left me alone when I was only four and I accidentally pulled a pot of boiling water off the stove, scalding my hand and wrist and screaming so loud, I brought neighbors to the door. Mama yelled at me and shook me so hard, I thought my teeth would fall out. From then on it always seemed to me it was me against the world. This was just another in a series of attacks, attacks that would never end until I did.

“I got into some trouble in school,” I began, and told her the story from start to finish, right to the moment I walked up to my aunt and uncle’s driveway. She listened, which was more than my uncle and aunt were willing to do. After I was finished, and actually as I was speaking, I had the sense other people were watching and listening. The mirror on the wall was probably a one-way window, I thought.

“Okay,” she said when I stopped speaking. “You want something to drink?”

“Some water.”

She got up and a few moments later, brought me a bottled water.

“Just relax awhile,” she said.

“Am I going to jail?”

“We’ll see what’s what soon,” she told me, and left again.

Nearly another hour went by before she returned.

“Okay. For now you’ve been released back to your uncle and aunt’s supervision,” she announced.