My sister stole my grandmother’s silver bracelet, attacked me when I demanded it back, then smiled outside the courthouse and whispered, “Enjoy prison, Laurel”...

The ringing was not sound.

It was the absence of sound, sharpened into a white-hot wire that pierced through the right hemisphere of my skull. It pulsed in synchronization with my carotid artery. *Thump. Whine. Thump. Whine.*

When the bailiff shoved me into the holding tank beneath the municipal court, the clang of the iron gate reverberated through my teeth. The women on the concrete bench did not look up. In county lockup, nobody looked at anyone unless they were planning to take something. My wrists were chafed raw by the double-locked Peerless cuffs, the skin slick with dried perspiration and antiseptic soap that smelled of industrial pine and urine.

Across the room, painted on the grease-stained cinderblock, hung a laminated poster detailing the rights of the accused.

*Right to counsel. Right to a speedy trial. Right to be free from excessive bail.*

Words written by men who had never felt their own sister drive six inches of graphite and cedar through the cartilage of their ear.

"Laurel Holloway," a guard barked an hour later.

I stood up. The room listed thirty degrees to the left. Vestibular damage. That was what Dr. Kelsey Morgan had scribbled on my triage chart before Officer Denton had pulled me out of the trauma bay in zip-ties. When your inner ear is punctured, the fluid leaks. When the fluid leaks, the earth forgets its center of gravity.

I stumbled against the iron bars. The guard sneered, catching my arm with enough force to bruise. "Save the drunk act for the magistrate."

The magistrate was a tired man named Abernathy whose spectacles hung from a beaded chain around his neck. He looked at the file, then looked over his half-moon lenses at me.

"Felony aggravated battery with a deadly weapon," the assistant district attorney droned, reading from the charging sheet. Her voice had the flat, practiced cadence of someone reading a grocery list. "Domestic violence enhancement. The State notes the defendant engaged in an unprovoked, premeditated assault against her sister, Annabelle Holloway, in the residence of their mother, Eleanor Holloway. Given the severity of the victim’s emotional distress and the violent nature of the attack, the State requests bail in the amount of seventy-five thousand dollars."

"She stabbed *me*," I whispered.

The microphone in front of me was dead. My voice did not carry across the mahogany rail.

My appointed public defender—a twitching man named Miller whose poly-blend jacket was stained with old coffee—barely turned his head. "Your Honor, defendant has no prior criminal history. She is a graphic designer with steady employment. We request personal recognizance or an unsecured bond."

"Seventy-five thousand dollars," Judge Abernathy ruled, stamping the file without looking up. "No contact with the victim, direct or indirect. No contact with the witness, Eleanor Holloway. Defendant is barred from returning to the maternal residence on Sycamore Crest."

*Crack.*

The gavel fell.

Just like that, reality inverted.

In the gallery sat my mother.

She was wearing her camel-hair coat—the one I had bought her for her sixtieth birthday with my first corporate bonus. Her silver-streaked hair was pinned into an immaculate French twist. She did not meet my eyes. Instead, she held Belle against her side.

Belle was dressed in a soft powder-blue knit sweater that made her look sixteen instead of twenty-four. She had a theatrical white gauze pad taped over her left forearm—covering the red marks where I had pushed her away as she lunged at me. She leaned her head into our mother’s shoulder, trembling with rehearsed delicacy.

When the bailiff hooked his fingers beneath my arm to lead me back to the tunnel, Belle lifted her chin from Mom’s shoulder.

Her eyes were completely dry.

Her mouth twisted into a small, tight, vicious curve.

*Enjoy prison, Laurel. You'll never get out.*

The memory of her whisper in the courthouse corridor hit me harder than the cold floor of the transport van.

My bail was paid three days later, not by family, but by Marcus Chen.

Marcus was my former art director, a man of sixty who lived on black espresso and despised bureaucracy. He had mortgaged his commercial printing studio to put up the ten percent collateral for the bondsman. When the heavy steel door of the detention center buzzed open and let me out into the blinding autumn noon, Marcus was leaning against his beat-up Volvo station wagon, a cardboard cup of black tea in his hand.

He looked at my face, at the taped bandage over my ear, at the bruised collarbone where Officer Denton’s knee had pinned me to the floor.

"You look like hell," Marcus said quietly.

"I can't hear out of my right side," I said. My voice sounded flat in my own skull, vibrating like a dead string on an untuned cello.