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heap, blood spilling from the cut on my cheek, hating him for having the power and myself for having none. I’m blacking out to blessed peace beneath the pain. But it scares me. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is what it feels like in the moments before death. I’m not ready.
    I have more stories to write. I have people who care about me. The white wooden house next door floats across my mind’s eye. I can see Mama and Papa T. They call for me not to go. My best friend yells, “Don’t you dare die on me, man!” Gabi’s and Maria’s little arms are outstretched, trying to reach me. My mom’s there, too, telling me to hang on, that it’s too soon. But the face that pulls me out of the darkness is Dee’s. She’s wearing the crooked smile that appears in her rare playful moments. “Get back here, Mick,” she says. “We haven’t even begun yet.”
     
    I jerk awake. I touch my right cheek. My stomach. My side. Christ! The memory’s real but it was only a dream. Drenched with sweat, I kick free from the tangle of sheets and bolt naked from the bed. I stand in the middle of my room, my heart racing like I’ve run a hundred-meter dash, sucking in air, until the dream slowly leaves me.
    And all that remains is the image of Dee and her crooked smile.

 

     
     

     
     
    I WAKE UP WELL BEFORE the alarm with a dull ache behind my eyes from too much wine, too little sleep, and the crisis facing me.
    Badly in need of a shot of caffeine, I throw back the covers, swing my feet to the floor, and stub my toe. “Damn him!” I take my mood out on the silence. How dare Mick put me in this untenable situation?
    I’ll give you twenty-four hours to think about taking the case. Twenty-four hours to think about a boy who needs your help. Twenty-four hours to think about the family you deserted.
    Grief and guilt strike me simultaneously. Would Mama and Papa T understand the choices I made? Would they forgive me for leaving when I couldn’t quite forgive myself?
    Shaking myself out of that emotional reverie, I trudge into the kitchen and make a pot of coffee. After pouring a mug full, I rip open three packages of Sweet’N Low and stir in the fake sugar crystals. My stomach grumbles and I glance at the fridge. Last night, I didn’t trust myself to eat and stop. This morning, I still don’t.
     
    The orange glow of the dawn breaking greets me when I arrive at the office. Lena won’t be in for a while, so I disengage and reset the alarm. After checking messages and email, I spend the next couple of hours on the case involving my nine-year-old client, Gracie Maxwell—a foster child who longs for a permanent home. I’m petitioning the court to allow Gracie to be eligible for adoption. After six years, her parents still demonstrate they are unfit to care for their daughter or any of their other four children. Yet Gracie continues to be bounced in and out of foster care. Caught in a system that I learned firsthand works for some, but fails too many others. This is the kind of case closest to my heart and the reason I became a child advocate.
    At ten minutes to nine I hear Lena deactivate the alarm just as the main line rings. I would have answered except my ever-efficient assistant beats me to it. Moments later, she pokes her head inside my door.
    I glance up from the computer screen with a smile for the twenty-four year old I hired when I first started my practice, trading experience for affordability. With her sapphire-blue Mohawk, multiple piercings, and tattoos peeking out of her long sleeves, it would have been easy but wrong to prejudge Lena as a party girl. She happens to be a talented drummer for a punk rock band, and she uses the money from her day job to pay for studio time. Information I never would have discovered if I had judged her on appearance alone.
    I know what judgment is like. In school, I was always the fat girl, the blob, thunder thighs…whatever cruel names could be imagined, I heard them all. I wore baggy