When the prosecutor was finished, Mrs. Eisenhart didn’t ask Rich a single question. As he was being wheeled out, Rich whispered, “Hang in there, brother,” and gave Dylan a thumbs-up. Dylan didn’t respond; he knew if he so much as nodded he would be six years old again, bawling like a baby.

After Rich testified, things in the courtroom pretty much stopped making sense for Dylan. People came and went without reason. Colors got brighter and brighter until Dylan had to squint to keep them out. Voices were superloud. He could smell things with a dog’s nose: traces of his lawyer’s perfume would choke him; the stink of an old cigarette on somebody behind them would make him sick to his stomach. The walls crept in, making the room smaller.

This whole-world cacophony made him crazy.

Crazier.

One day the prosecutor called Vondra Werner. Dylan pulled hard on the places where his brain was being sucked out of shape so he could pay attention. Vondra and her family had only lived next door six months or so, but she was always around, snooping and trying to talk to Rich. Dylan didn’t think she knew he existed.

“Pink, of course,” Mrs. Eisenhart hissed.

Vondra had on a pink dress. She looked pretty, shy, and nice. Dylan didn’t know why that made his lawyer mad. In a low voice, Vondra told everybody how she and Rich had been together. Except she didn’t say they were necking; she said they were “making love.”

When it was her turn Mrs. Eisenhart made Vondra tell how she was always watching, and following Rich around, and maybe was jealous of his family, and maybe didn’t like Dylan. Dylan thought for a minute the lawyer was going to get Vondra to break down like Perry Mason got confessions at the end of the show, and Vondra’d confess she’d done everything.