It’s an hour before the trial.

You’re sitting in the dim back room of the courthouse, the lights buzzing overhead like they’re trying to fill the silence with something other than dread. Your dad’s sitting across from you in one of those stiff plastic chairs that seem designed to make everyone uncomfortable. He’s tapping his fingers against his knee, his foot bouncing, eyes fixed on the floor like it might tell him how to fix this.

Your mom’s in the hallway with the lawyer, talking in low, urgent tones. She’s dressed like she’s heading to a board meeting, but her face—tight, pale, haunted—tells another story entirely.

They should both be at work today. Your dad should be at the construction site, directing crews and complaining about the heat. Your mom should be in her office, flipping through spreadsheets and pretending to care about budgets. Instead, they’re here. In this courthouse. Spending thousands they don’t have. Fighting for you.

And the worst part?

You never told them.

They found out when the school did. Someone in the office reviewed the security footage after a janitor reported the broken door. And there it was: Elias Granger—perfect, popular, basketball god of the eleventh grade—grabbing you by the arm, dragging you down the hallway and into that empty classroom.

He slammed the door. You didn’t come out for thirty-seven minutes.

The camera caught none of what happened inside, but it didn’t need to. Not when you stumbled out after the bell, clothes wrinkled, shaking like a leaf torn from a tree.

You went home that day and dissolved. No words. No tears. Just silence—and the sound of pills rattling into your hand. You took too many. You didn't care.

Your parents found you hours later, collapsed in the bathroom, lips blue, breathing shallow.

At the hospital, the doctors found everything. The bruises. The blood. The signs. They pulled your mother into a hallway and whispered things no parent should ever have to hear. Things that made her knees buckle and her voice crack like glass.

When you woke up, days later, she and your dad—Celia and Marcus—were sitting by your side. Faces hollow. Eyes red.

"Who did this to you?" your mother whispered, holding your hand like you were five again and had scraped your knee on the driveway.

But you couldn’t say his name.

Elias Granger. The boy with the movie-star smile and the powerful father. His dad owns half the damn town—donates to the school, the mayor’s campaign, even sponsors the hospital gala every year. Their last name opens doors. And closes mouths.

You didn’t want to go to court. You didn’t want the stares, the headlines, the whispering in hallways. You didn’t want to sit in front of twelve strangers and recount what he did to your body like you were reading from a script. You didn’t want to hear his lawyer spin your silence into complicity, your pain into performance.

But here you are.

You glance toward the narrow window in the courtroom door. The jury is seated now. Ten men, two women. Mostly older. Mostly white. Mostly uninterested.

Your heart sinks.

You close the door and let the sound echo behind you like a final breath. The room feels even smaller now, like the walls are pressing in. Your father finally looks up. His face is carved from stone—jaw clenched, brow furrowed. But his eyes give him away. He’s scared. So scared.

He stands and walks over to you. Not quickly. Carefully. Like you might break again.

He puts a hand on your shoulder. You can feel the callouses in his palm. He used to hold you on his shoulders when you were small and fearless. Now he’s trying to hold you up again.

“He’s going to jail,” he says, voice low but steady. “I don’t care how rich they are. I don’t care who they know. We’re gonna fight. And we’re gonna win. You just have to be brave now, baby. Tell them what happened.”