Brooklyn paced the floor of her bedroom for about half of a New York minute, and then she stopped. 

She sat down on the edge of her bed with the sunflower motif comforter. Clothes lined the floor. Hair ties in assorted colors were sprinkled on top. Gum wrappers and long forgotten single earrings rested not far from her feet. Her bedroom was not actually that big and it was kind of boring to just pace the floor. 

But pace she must, Brooklyn thought to herself. 

She had already gotten through the really difficult part of the past ten days. This is useless, she said to herself. This is so absolutely boring to just pace. She stopped once and for all. She didn’t need to do this. 

Losing the control of not being able to set her eyes on Leo had been more than Brooklyn could fathom. It really had turned her world upside down. 

But she was lucky. 

Brooklyn was pretty strong and even though she was preoccupied with seeing Leo, she was able to pretty much get it back together after about a week of crying, sulking, and trying to lie to herself that she really didn’t care.

At dinner into the third week of Leo’s stay at juvie, Brooklyn’s father casually told her that it was probably a good thing that Leo was there and she could just focus on her homework now. Like before. 

“Um, ok?” was all she had retorted back. 

Brooklyn hadn’t even known that her father had really known. She had made it a point not to share that with him, about Leo being now in a juvenile detention center. She knew that he wouldn’t think it was just some sort of misunderstanding. He would consider it a done deal and would probably lecture her about making better decisions about who she hung out with. Or something like that. But none of that actually happened.

Brooklyn decided at the last minute to go to visit Leo at the first opportunity that visiting time would be open. The juvie facility was about ninety minutes away, further than she thought it would be. But what did she know? She didn’t know much about juvie and where it was. 

She went a few weeks after Leo’s mother had gone for her second visit to see him. They only allowed family members to come at first. 

When Brooklyn arrived, Leo’s eyes had hooked her into his deep psyche almost immediately. She would have liked to just look at his eyes for a while, but right away after she had sat down in the most uncomfortable plastic chair she asked how he had been liking it there.

Those were probably the wrong words to say she had thought to herself. 

“Well, I am actually not liking it here but,” Leo hesitated. “It’s um nice to see you.”

She looked away. It was too much. Too much to know that she would have to leave in about fifteen minutes after the visiting time was over. And he was even being nice to her after she had said those mean things about him. She wondered if somehow he knew now. And would she even be able to come back next Saturday?

Then Leo had looked at her with his head sideways. He squinted his eyes. “Why did you say those things?”

By then Brooklyn had forgotten about the specific words she had said actually. But those words had clearly gotten back to him. 

She had felt so lost then. 

“Oh that. Just forget about it,” she brushed it off. 

And then the thoughts that came into her mind were, “I’m forever yours, Leo.” But she knew without a doubt that would be really cringey, and so she said instead, “I didn’t mean it.” 

“When are you going to get out of here?” she said after kind of a long and uncomfortable pause.

Leo was just amazed that Brooklyn was sitting in front of him, even if there was plexiglass between them. They only allowed family members to come behind the plexiglass and sit at the tables.

Leo still felt a bit raw from the words he had heard that she said. Did she think something was wrong with him, or not? Because she had said that there was. And maybe there was. Maybe that’s why he was there, in juvie, actually. And she had said some other piercing things too, but what now? She was sitting right there. And she looked like she wanted to be there.