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Show 150 TWENTY-SEVEN It was Tuesday afternoon when Mrs. Greenaway opened a side door at the Juvenile Court Building and ushered .Dyna in ahead of her. "Wait there," she told Dyna, pointing to a bench in the lobby. Lydia Greenaway was stout and fiftyish, a seasoned, no-nonsense detention counselor whose favorite expression was "bloodywell." As in "You'd bloody well see to it!" or "You know bloody well what will happen if you're picked up again." Naturally, she'd garnered some interesting nicknames over the years, most of them gory. Dyna sat on the cool marble slab while her counselor stepped to the receptionist's desk. The clock on the wall facing her said 1:44. Her time had finally come. In a quarter of an hour she'd be nose to nose with Judge Levi Kranes, who had skipped right over his own adolescence. At least that's how he'd impressed her a year ago: severe, steely-eyed, dispensing lectures that sounded as if they'd been dispensed before. Dyna shifted on the hard bench. Glancing to one side, she saw a young boy sitting with his dad. They stared at their feet, the little one a carbon copy of the big one, both with their heads hanging. Farther over three people stood together-mother, father, a son bigger than either of them, all pasty-faced, avoiding each other's eyes. God, it was awful! "Come along, Dyna," Mrs. Greenaway said, carrying a set of keys she'd picked up at the desk. "Can't I wait and see Gram?" "Nope. Detention procedure. You get a little time alone here." Greenaway led her down the hallway to room 28, a six foot cubicle behind a glass wall. There were two plastic chairs in the room. They sat down facing each other. Greenaway, smiling her one-sided smile, reached over and patted Dyna's hand. She was a strange one, but there was something motherly about her gruffness that Dyna liked. "Are you doing okay?" she asked. "I'm scared-" "You'll be all right. You've been a good girl in detention and that counts." Dyna exhaled noisily and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. She was puddling with perspiration and she hadn't even reached the court room yet. |
