Petals on The Moon || Reyna Ramirez-Arellano x Fem!OC

LXVII

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

"You are in soooooo much trouble!" Mom smacked me right in the face, then sat in the metal chair next to me. "Are you insane? Or are you just stupid? I leave your grown ass alone for one minute-"

"She assaulted Suki!"

"SO YOU WAIT UNTIL NOBODY ELSE IS AROUND AND IT'S ALL DARK TO DO YOUR WORK!" She howled, slamming the table so hard, a dent formed. I stared at the crinkled metal in fear. "NIGHTTIME EXISTS FOR A REASON, YOU IDIOT!" She grabbed my file. "And representing yourself? Do you want to go to jail?!"

"Relax, okay?" She hates being told to relax, and she looked at me like I had cursed her bloodline. "I've got this. Worst case scenario, I take a plea and do some community service."

"You think you can get community service for destroying their house?!"

"Yes," I said simply. "But I need to talk to Suki before I iron anything out. Otherwise, I mean... Well, I'll probably get probation either way. Without Suki, I might do, like, a month."

"You already missed a year and a half of school!" She shouted, making me back away to save my eardrums. "If you miss another year, you'll- You'll be one of those creeps that can't leave high school!"

"I'll just get a GED."

She scoffed, got up, and began to pace. "How can you have so little regard for your future?"

"Wha- All I think about is my future!"

"No, all you think about is your dreams, but you can never give me any concrete way to get there," she replied. "You didn't get a summer job like you said, you didn't get an after-school job like you said, you don't know what you're doing for the rest of your education, and now, you're destroying houses in broad daylight? Think, Sebby, think!"

"You saw what she did to Suki," I argued, warranting a depressed flash in her eyes. "You heard that whole fight, and all the months leading up to it. Now, I have a solid case, because get this; nobody read me my rights."

She picked her head up like an electric volt had gone through her. "What?"

"Now, I did some reading a few years ago, and technically, New Rome is not a recognized government or territory within or outside the United States of America, which is why most of our laws factor into the American legal system." She blinked and just stared at me, and I realized she didn't understand. "It's like at a college or something. If there's a harassment case, they'll usually report to campus security or the headmaster, and the next stage is simply the county legal system, right? So if a girl is raped and the University does nothing, she can go to the American legal system. It's just like that in New Rome. We're just one big private college."

She frowned. "So... what does it mean if- if they didn't read you your rights?"

"It means just about anything I said is inadmissible in court, it means the prosecution loses most validity in court, it means I can argue that without knowing my rights, I didn't understand what was going and and was subjected to unfair treatment." She continued to just stare at me. "Case ain't closed, but I just made it a helluva lot harder for them to lock me away. If I get Suki or even you to testify on my behalf, I'm telling you, ain't shit gonna happen to me."