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I stood near the plain wall while he did it.

Sunshine looked away once.

I pretended not to notice.

When I sat back down, she gave me another drink of water.

By then, I was mostly impatient to be finished. The final bell had rung while we were doing paperwork.

I wasn’t going to let some asshole at a gas station take the entire rest of my day.

Then I heard the front doors. Sadie came into the hall with Marion a few steps behind her.

Sadie stopped in the doorway long enough to look at me properly.

“Show me,” she said.

I held out my arms.

She came closer, examined them without touching the bruises, then looked into my face.

“I’m here,” I told her. “I was here the whole time.”

Her shoulders eased.

She took the empty chair beside mine.

Marion touched my hair, kissed the top of my head, and went across the hall to Dad’s office with Sunshine. I could see both of them through the open doors.

Nobody had gone far.

The young officer stepped out to make copies of something.

A moment later, the front doors opened again.

This time I knew who it was before I saw them.

Riot came down the hall first. Chief was directly behind him, with the other four following closely enough that somebody at reception asked them to wait.

They stopped.

Chief didn’t.

Riot put a hand on his shoulder long enough to slow him, then let him come through.

The officer returned with a few sheets of paper and looked at Clayton’s black eye. Then Ruckus’s face.

“Were all of you involved?” he asked.

“No,” Sadie told him. “The rest of them came like that.”

Ruckus laughed.

The officer looked at Dad.

“They weren’t there,” Dad clarified.

I might have smiled if Chief hadn’t been looking at me.