Chapter 15: Lawyer

The call came at 8:15 AM on Tuesday.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating toast that my mother had burned the way she’d been burning toast since June, the way she burned everything when she was distracted, which was most of the time now. The rooster clock was ticking. The judge was asleep under the table, his nose resting on my bare foot. The morning light was coming through the blinds in stripes, falling across the floor like the bars of a cage someone had forgotten to lock.

My mother’s phone rang.

She looked at the screen. Her face went paler than usual, paler than it had been at the hearing, paler than it had been when she told me I was expelled.

“I’m a lawyer,” she said.

“What lawyer?”

“I don’t know. Someone from Phoenix. Someone who saw the news.”

I set down my toast. “Are you going to answer it?”

My mother stared at the phone for another moment, long enough that I thought she might let it go to voicemail, long enough that I thought she might throw it across the room, long enough that I started counting the rings.

One. Two. Three. Four.

She answered.

“Hello?”

I watched her face as she listened. The pale shifted to something else: surprise, maybe, or hope, or the kind of emotion that doesn’t have a name because it doesn’t happen often enough for anyone to bother naming it.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I remember that case. My husband,” She stopped. Swallowed. “My husband followed your work. He said you were one of the best.”

A pause.

“Yes, she’s here. Yes, she’s “ Another pause. My mother looked at me, her eyes wide, her hand trembling against the phone. “She’s not wearing clothes. No. That’s not a joke.”

I could hear the voice on the other end muffled, indistinct, but persistent. The kind of voice that belonged to someone who was used to being listened to, someone who didn’t waste words, someone who had been in enough courtrooms to know that every second mattered.

“Okay,” my mother said. “Okay. I’ll ask her.”

She lowered the phone. Covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

“Her name is Sarah Chen,” my mother said. “She’s a civil rights attorney. She worked with your father on a case about ten years ago about protesters in downtown Phoenix. She wants to represent you. Pro bono.”

“Pro bono?”

“Free. She says she’s been following your story. She says she thinks you have a case.”

I stared at my mother. The kitchen was quiet, the rooster clock was ticking, Judge was snoring, and the refrigerator was humming its low, familiar hum. But underneath all of that, there was something else. Something new. Something that felt like the first note of a song I hadn’t heard before.

“Let me talk to her,” I said.

My mother handed me the phone.

“Ms. Anderson,” the voice said. “Or do you prefer Lottie?”

“Lottie.”

“Lottie, I’m Sarah Chen. I knew your father. Not well, we only worked together once. But I remember him. He was the kind of lawyer who made everyone else in the room feel like they weren’t trying hard enough.”

“He had that effect on people.”

“He had that effect on me.” There was a pause, not awkward, just ... deliberate. The kind of pause that someone takes when they’re choosing their next words carefully. “I’ve been following your situation. The dress code. The suspension. The expulsion. I think you have a strong case.”

“You do?”

“I do. The school board changed the rules specifically to target you. That’s called a content-based restriction. It’s very difficult to justify under the First Amendment.”

“But I’m not speaking. I’m just ... existing.”

“Existing is speech, Lottie. Sometimes it’s the most powerful kind of speech. Your father understood that. He once told me that the most important cases aren’t about what people say, they’re about who people are.”

I leaned back in my chair. The wood was hard against my spine, the same chair I’d been sitting in for years, the same chair my father had sat in, the same chair that had held this family through everything.

“What would we be arguing about?” I asked.

“Several things. First, the dress code is unconstitutionally vague; it doesn’t give students fair notice of what’s prohibited. Second, that it’s being applied selectively, you’re being punished for something that wasn’t against the rules when you started. And third, that your nudity is a form of symbolic speech, protected by the First Amendment.”

“And if we lose?”

“Then we appeal. And if we lose again, we appeal again. The law is a conversation, Lottie. Your father told me that, too.”