No Such Person by Caroline B. Cooney

of person who could afford the land would bulldoze their beloved little place to build a mansion. Her father says they are the last people who will ever live here.
    Where does he go to college?
the police ask.
    The state of Connecticut is small. She has friends on almost every campus, and has visited Wesleyan, Trinity and the University of Connecticut; Yale, Conn College and the University of Hartford. She and Jason compare parties on those campuses. She speaks from hearsay. She is not a party person. Her friends love the buzzy diminished control that comes from drink and weed, but nothing is interesting to Lander if she cannot run the situation.
    She is not running this.
    I don’t know where he goes to college, she thinks, and there is something profoundly horrible about this. She knows nothing about the man she loves.
    They bring her out of the cell again. Cuffed.
    This cannot be her life. She cannot be a person under suspicion of
murder.
    They pass a cell with several female prisoners. The women seem to reach for her, arms flapping like insect legs, as if they might crawl onto her and use her flesh for their escape route. She is grateful that the police realize she is not the kind of person who should share space with such scary women.
    The hall turns a corner, and at the end of this hall is an exit door, which someone opens from the other side, and now they are away from the cells and in a regular corridor. The acrid smell of her vomit and other people’s toilets is gone.
    There is a door labeled RESTROOM .
    She stops walking.
    She does not normally ask permission to do things. That is simply not on her chart. But this is like kindergarten. She has to have permission to use this bathroom. She whispers to the hallway, because she cannot look at the policewoman leading her by the arm. If she meets her eyes, this is going to get real. She cannot let it get real. She whispers to the hallway instead. “May I use the ladies’ room?”
    “There was a toilet in the cell.”
    “I can’t use that.” This is a fact, and she feels the policewoman should understand.
    And the woman does. She unlocks the restroom door. She unlocks the handcuffs. She cuffs Lander to a large metal wall handle, too solid for hanging a towel. It’s for attaching a prisoner.
    There is a seat on the toilet, but it’s up, since it was last used by a guy, and the guy—or many guys—had lousy aim. The thought of touching that seat, lowering it, sitting there brings her to tears yet again. She despises tears. Tears are for the weak.
    But she is bursting.  The policewoman stands in the door, watching.
    She pretends this
is
kindergarten, and this is her kindergarten teacher, being a warm, fussy sweet help. Mrs. McCune was her kindergarten teacher. Mrs. McCune loved to draw on the whiteboard with colored markers, and she drew a scene for every season, and all the children were in awe.
    This gets her through the use of the toilet, and there is a sink, although the soap dispenser is empty; at least her hand is rinsed. There is no mirror, which is probably a good thing.
    And now they are back in the little room with the two chairs and the little table. Her left wrist is fastened to her chair. It’s medieval. It’s wrong. She will become an attorney instead of a physician and go after police brutality.
    The policewoman asks questions softly and kindly, as if she is Mrs. McCune.
    There’s a man here too, but apparently not a policeman, because he is not in uniform nor is he armed. He wears a suit, and leans on the wall casually, as if part of some other event.
    “Come on, honey,” says the policewoman. “You were nice and chatty when we found you on the boat. Just start up again. You’re in real trouble and you’re making it worse. Protecting your boyfriend is not helping you.”
    If he’s her boyfriend, why isn’t he here?
Is
she protecting him? From what? What does she think Jason has done?
    But that’s the whole problem. She can’t figure out