Sara looked at the water stain on the wall and imagined it was an island. She wasn't sure if that was because it actually looked like one or just because she so desperately wished she were in some tropical paradise far from Brooklyn and this tiny room on the eighth floor of Kings County Family Court.

She sat across the table from her public defender, a massive man in a rumpled suit named Randall Stubbs. His bulky frame hunched over as he scanned her file. "This doesn't look good," he muttered, because stating the obvious was apparently something they taught in law school. "You're lucky they've made such a generous offer."

"They have?" Sara asked, surprised. "What is it?"

He looked up from the file and said, "You plead guilty to all charges and get thirty months in juvenile detention." Two and a half years in juvie didn't sound generous to Sara, but it probably wasn't much worse than her last few foster homes. She was tough for a twelve-year-old. She could handle it. "And, of course," he added, "you won't be allowed near a computer."

This, however, was unacceptable.

"For how long?"

"For the duration of your sentence. Maybe longer as a condition of your release. That'll be up to the judge."

"But all I did was-"

"What?" he interrupted. "Hack into the computer network for the entire juvenile justice system of New York City? Is that what you were going to say? Because that's not what I'd call an 'all I did' situation."

"I know, but I was only trying to ..."

"It doesn't matter what you were trying to do," he said. "All that matters is what you did. You're lucky you're twelve. If you were thirteen, they probably would've bumped you up to a higher court to make an example out of you."

The weight of this hit her hard, and for the first time she regretted her actions. Not because they were against the law. Legal or not, she had no doubt that she'd done the right thing. But she'd never considered that she could be banished from the one corner of the world that made sense to her. The only time Sara felt at home was when she was sitting at a computer keyboard.

"I'll never hack again," she said. "I promise."

"Oh, you promise?" he responded sarcastically. "Maybe you can cross your heart and hope to die once we get in court. I'm sure that'll fix everything."

Sara struggled when it came to controlling her temper, a diagnosis confirmed by multiple counselors and at least two school psychologists. Still, she tried to keep cool as she looked at the man who was supposed to be helping her. She couldn't risk angering him, because he was her only hope for a positive outcome. So she took a deep breath and counted to ten, a tip from one of those counselors whose name she'd long since forgotten. "If I can't use a computer," she said, barely masking her desperation, "then I can't do the one thing I'm good at. The thing that makes me special."

"Yeah, well, you should've thought of that before you-" She probably would've lost her temper right then and there if the door hadn't suddenly flown open, and into the room stepped a man who was in every way the opposite of her attorney.

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