Tallulah LaFontaine wasn't dealt a great hand, but she learned how to play with what she was given. After being taken away from her home and family, she grows up and returns home to find that some things never change... but some things do.
"I've not...
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A/N: Okay, I've written a ton of chapters on this book and I keep seeing people adding it to their reading lists and I can see that it's being viewed, but I'm not seeing a lot of votes or comments or anything, aside from one very special reader who's been with me through all of my first book and this one (you know who you are ❤️). So I don't know what people think of my work. Please let me know. Just tap that little star or comment or *something*. Pretty please.
Tallulah's POV
Bang bang bang
The echoes of the gavel reverberate through the nearly empty room, finalizing the proceedings and declaring my freedom to the handful of people who showed up.
Freedom.
I sat dazed for a moment, the last ninety seconds finally catching up to me. They were letting me go. No. Judge Bellevue up there was letting me go. They wanted to keep me. Age me into the adult system by default.
But, by some fucking miracle, I had a different judge than usual and she saw right into their corrupt practices. She heard me. For the first time since this shit storm started, an adult actually heard me. And I'll remember her name for the rest of my life because of it.
The prosecutor, Barbara Smith, was now slumped over her desk, no doubt frustrated and disappointed that years of hard work and shady practices had failed to keep her greedy talons sunk deep into my flesh. She was definitely just as surprised as I when the judge scolded her and her cronies and ordered me freed and uncuffed at once.
Sorry, bitch, looks like there's no protecting your precious society from me.
I gazed, bemused, at the table where she sat, surrounded on either side with two staff members from the JDC that had been my cage for nearly two years, refusing me my final test for my GED so they could keep me after I had turned eighteen. And that was what had been their downfall.
The judge was ready to move me on to the adult system given that I was less than two months from being nineteen but hadn't completed my GED as required when I was sent to JDC. But when she went on to scold me for my lack of motivation given that there isn't much else to do besides further your education when you're in a brick cage, I spilled the beans.
"That's not fair!" I had declared. "I completed all the courses and all but one test! They wouldn't give me the last one! I've been ready more than a year and they refused!"
"Is that true?" The judge had asked, turning to the administrator sitting next to the prosecutor who was busily shuffling her papers and avoiding eye contact.
"Well-*ahem*- yes, but we-," began the stuttering man who had looked so confident minutes before.
"Enough. I hereby order Tallulah LaFontaine released. Bailiff, please remove her restraints. Court is adjourned."
