No Matter How Loud I Shout by Edward Humes

thirteen-year-old first-time offender accused of breaking into a car. As often happens in such a case, the prosecutor horse-traded the case down from a felony to a misdemeanor, something few judges would care about, but which Dorn hates. Felonies carry longer sentences—they let Dorn take charge of a kid’s life for years, rather than the few months that misdemeanors allow.
    â€œYou on the wrong side of the table, that’s your problem,” Dorn announces, employing the greatest insult possible for a prosecutor—accusing him of acting like a defense lawyer. Then he pointedly stares straight at Peggy as she sits in back. “Maybe no one has taken the time to explain to you how Juvenile Court works. . . . Next time, check with me before you tie my hands. I’m the judge, not you.”
    Most of the people in court crane their heads around to see whom Dorn is addressing. Peggy just smiles, waits until the next case is called, then walks out, if a little stiffly. It was all posturing, she chafes later. Dorn accepted the misdemeanor plea anyway, then imposed exactly the same sentence as he would have had the kid received a felony conviction: probation, a seven o’clock curfew, and the cemetery-penitentiary lecture. For better or worse, first-time auto burglaries are routinely pleaded down to misdemeanors—the system would seize up like an engine with no oil if such deals were not cut daily and every case went to trial. Dorn knows this—he was a prosecutor himself once, Peggy says. The criticism is just his way of announcing who is in charge.
    As Peggy leaves, she stops in the hallway to chat with a juvenile probation officer who wants help with a girl gangbanger named Carla James. In the background, though, Peggy can’t help but listen to the young thief Dorn just sentenced—a sharp-faced little kid in surf dude clothes and a blond mushroom haircut—leave court and say with dripping sarcasm, “Great judge.” Then, safely through the door and into the raucous hallway, he blows a raspberry in Dorn’s direction.
    â€œYou’d better cut it out,” his father says weakly.
    The kid, showing who in the courthouse is truly in charge, stalks off, but not before glancing over his shoulder and telling his dad with practiced scorn, “Just shut up.”

CHAPTER 2
Home Girl
    On the day Carla James became a casualty of juvenile crime, she earned an A on her English test, a B in math, and a mild rebuke for missing a history paper deadline, and then she stayed late after school. The staying late was not for the purpose of punishment, but so Carla could perform her regular volunteer work in the school office, taking care of files, answering phones, doing photocopying—generally making herself indispensable to the school staff. Carla was always offering to help out, the kind of kid adults naturally trusted, who did what she said she would do and did it well. Some of her teachers even joked that, some days, Carla seemed to run the place. Her face would split into a huge smile at that—everyone said her smile was dazzling—and she would nod and say something cocky like, “You’re right. I do.”
    This day, though, Carla had been uncharacteristically quiet. She kept pausing in her work to root around inside her bulging backpack, as if she were afraid of losing something inside. Each time, she carefully snapped shut the pack when she was through, then stowed it out of sight. Five minutes later, she’d be rooting again.
    â€œYou look tired today, Carla,” the school counselor commented, poking her head into the office area. Carla appeared startled for a second, almost guilty, then quickly closed and put aside her book bag. The counselor said, “Is everything all right?”
    Carla looked up and smiled then, that broad, infectious grin of hers, a model’s straight, white teeth gleaming. “Sure,” the girl said. “I was