From the moment I entered the judge's car to the moment I unbuckled my belt in the parking lot, every muscle in my body remained as rigid as a metal bar.

Jeremy had greeted me at the doorstep. He had told me to call him if I needed anything.

That danger signal in his eyes hadn't faded yet, the one that warned anyone nearby that the little troublemaker was in the mood to break some porcelain.

I wasn't sure why I would need to call him. I wasn't entirely sure what was about to happen, but I felt it was a turning point, what I had been waiting for for days.

"Follow me, Drake."

The judge couldn't hide her annoyance. She was still angry about the school incident.

She headed into a gray and weeping building, a monolith made of shattered dreams and depression.

I followed her, although part of me wanted to stomp my feet and cross my arms. Who was she to tell me where and when to move?

I had tried to like her. I swear I had tried. But at every turn, the judge had confirmed my very first impression of her. She was an arrogant bitch with a stick up her ass.

She was pissed off at me? Well, I was pissed off at her.

The fact that she called me Thomas behind my back made my blood boil in my brain. The fact that she treated Jeremy like a wall-splattered mollusk made me want to throw a brick at her head.

Just the fact that she walked with that princess-like gait, as if she boasted of being able to balance a glass of water on her head without spilling it... well. It got on my nerves.

We crossed a corridor with white walls. After about ten doors, two flights of stairs, and another long corridor, we stopped in front of our destination.

"Esteemed lawyer Tremblay" was the sign hanging on the wall.

Already, I couldn't stand him.

If you call yourself esteemed, you've got issues.

The office didn't look like I imagined, no big mahogany desk and large tomes in the bookcase. There was neither a desk nor a bookcase.

There was just a long white metal table with five people seated on one side.

The judge entered, greeting the others distractedly, and took her seat on the opposite side. No one told me what the hell I was supposed to do, so I sat next to the woman.

In front of me were two men and three women. I had no idea which one was Tremblay, and that was a doubt that remained until the end, because no one bothered to introduce themselves.

The judge immediately launched into a lightning-fast speech of which I barely understood two words. I didn't know what a pending charge was, who the defendant was, what the civil party was, and what the hell constitution of the parties meant.

And no one spent ten seconds explaining any of it to me, so for the first twenty minutes of that meeting, I sat there with a fish face wondering why the hell they had dragged me into that hole for if they didn't even intend to speak my language.

I had been alienated staring at the neon lights on the ceiling for at least half an hour when one of the five addressed me.

"Now we're going to ask you some questions."

I looked at the woman in a suit with a pounding heart.

"Can you tell me your father's name?"

Okay, it wouldn't be one of those impossible oral tests where my ass sweated as soon as the teacher opened his mouth. This one I knew.

"Patrick Fulmer."

The woman looked at the other four and nodded.

"How long have you been domiciled in Sacramento?"

"All my life, as far as I know."

Again a nod, again an exchange of glances.

"Do you know this man?"

The woman materialized a folder on the table from which she pulled out a photo.

He was a clean-shaven guy with bloodshot eyes.

"Never seen him. Who would he be?"

The woman put away the photo without answering me. She moved on to the second picture.

"Have you ever seen him?"

The second man had brush-cut hair and a big crooked nose.

"He's a friend of Dad's. They go out for drinks sometimes."

Three of the five suit-wearers began furiously writing in their notebooks. For what purpose, I had no idea, since there was a recorder on the table that had been running for an hour.

"Do you know his name?"

"Dunno... Carl something. Why is it important?"

The woman went back to burying her nose in her folder. She had no intention of answering me. She had no intention of answering any of my questions.

The man on the left must have sensed that I was getting pissed off, because he intervened before his colleague could produce a third image. "We can't give you information on the case at the moment. It's important that you answer without any preconceptions."

Meanwhile, five photos had appeared on the table.

"Can you point out Patrick Fulmer?" The woman asked.

Why the hell was she asking me something like that? Did they think I couldn't recognize my own father?

I looked down at the images. They were mug shots of prisoners. Dad was in the middle. He had a layer of unkempt beard and that beaten dog expression he put on when I ate the last strawberry yogurt.

He was holding his ID card.

Steve Ward.

They had written another name to see if I could really recognize him?

I pointed to the photo in the middle.

The woman nodded again, picked up the pictures, and made them disappear into her magical folder.

"Why does it say Steve?"

I looked at the five one by one, pleading with my eyes for them to answer me. They seemed uncomfortable, looked at each other, and then ended up leaving the hot potato to the judge.

"Your father invented a false identity to evade authorities. Patrick Fulmer is just a cover name. His real name is Steve Ward."

Those seven words echoed in my ears.

His real name is Steve Ward.

I felt like I had been hit on the head with a mallet.

But my name is Fulmer. I would have protested if I had breath. Drake Fulmer...

Who the hell is Steve?

WHO THE HELL IS THIS FUCKING STEVE NOW?!

"I need to talk to my father." I somehow managed to say it calmly, even though all I wanted to do was jump up and scream like a gorilla.

It was the man on the left who answered me, doing so kindly, but it didn't ease the sting of his words. "It won't be possible until the end of the trial, I'm afraid."

"And how long will the trial last?"

"It depends. The defense is clinging to every possible nonsense. At this rate, it could take more than a year."

A year.

I felt drained. I slumped in that chair with my head completely empty. A year in that situation, without answers, constantly on edge.

The woman asked me more questions, but I didn't bother to understand what she was saying. I went back to staring at the neon light on the ceiling.

When they realized I wasn't going to respond anymore, the meeting ended.

I followed the judge out of the building, half-listening to her litany.

It was important that I cooperate, the verdict would partly depend on my testimony, I shouldn't worry, now I was safe, all my testimony would be confidential, I didn't have to appear before the judge if I didn't want to...

These were things I should have listened to, but all my brain kept repeating was one thing.

Patrick Fulmer, Patrick Fulmer, Patrick Fulmer...

On the journey back home, the woman continued to fill the silence. She complained about the defense lawyers, about their ridiculous strategy. How they were trying to slow down the process with all sorts of absurd requests.

"They even requested a DNA test, both yours and Jeremiah's. They say there's no conclusive evidence that you're really the missing child. As if the fact that you and your brother are absolutely identical isn't sufficient proof. It's truly ridiculous. It's so obvious they're trying to buy time to weave a convincing story..."

The car stopped at the red light.

For a few seconds, there was silence. The judge had finished her speech.

I saw her staring at me from the corner of her eye.

"Drake."

"Mh."

"Uh... uhm. Is... uhm. Is everything okay?" She said it as if she had never tasted those words in her life.

I stopped playing with the seatbelt and turned towards her.

"Are you sure you're a judge? You're not very sharp."

She widened her eyes a little. Jeremy would have pinched me if he were here. But he wasn't. Because the bitch had stopped him from coming.

The light turned green and the car started moving slowly forward.

She didn't say another word until we got home.

Maybe I could make her hate me. Make myself so unbearable that she would regret the day she found me again. Maybe she would kick me out. And maybe she would drop this whole kidnapping story, drop the charges against my father, and I would go back to my life.

Except I couldn't really do that. It wasn't just the trial that was the problem, or the fact that my father was locked in a cell. Even if he were as free as a bird... I wouldn't just go back to my life. I couldn't return to a time when it was just Patrick Fulmer and me.

Steve Ward and Drake Fulmer.

No. There was no Fulmer. Drake Ward.

Thomas Ward?

Thomas Smith?

I jumped out of the car as soon as the garage door opened. The judge yelled something at me as I ran into the house.

Jeremy was at the door, his phone clutched in his hands and that nervous rocking back and forth from one foot to the other.

"Hey. How did it go? Everything okay?"

I sidestepped him and ran up the stairs. I hid in my room, locking the door behind me.

I slumped against the doorframe and felt myself slide to the floor.

I wasn't one to cry. My father had never filled my head with that nonsense that men don't cry, but he never cried either. Even when things were really bad, he didn't cry. He'd have a beer, put on a funny show on tv, and even if he didn't laugh, at least he wasn't worse off. If he was really hurting, he'd go find himself a woman.

I needed to distract myself. Think about something else.

I drowned my brain in my phone. My friends had sent pictures of their latest graffiti on the park wall. They sent a selfie of them with Phil's new boyfriend.

They were having a blast without me.

A new message came from Jeremy's chat.

"If you need anything, I'm here."

This brought me right back to square one. I threw the phone on the floor, away from me. The crack of the screen gave me a strange satisfaction.

Don't think about it!

I pulled myself up and collapsed onto the bed. Before I knew it, I found myself curled up under the covers, knees tucked under my chin.

I don't want to cry. I mustn't cry. I felt like a dam on the verge of bursting. At the first tear, everything would collapse.

Stay calm, it's all okay. You can handle this.

I tried to think about what had pulled me out of this pit in the past, and of course, my mind went to my father. He wasn't a super affectionate person, but he never denied a smile to anyone.

When I was nervous, he'd grab me by the neck from behind and squeeze like I was a doll. It was his way of saying I love you.

I grabbed the pillow and clung to it with arms and legs. I buried my face in the pillowcase and tried to imagine it was a warm body, that there were other arms wrapping around me.

I took a long breath, as slowly as possible, but the moment I let it go, the dam broke.

It had been four years since the last time I cried. Since I climbed the stairs to our apartment with the battered body of my cat.

That time I cried all night and I cried the next day too. Dad held me tight all the time.

Thinking about it made me sob even harder. I tried to muffle the sounds by pressing my face into the pillow. I didn't want Jeremy to hear me and come knocking.

When the tears ran out, it was dark outside. No one came to call me for dinner, but my phone vibrated a couple of times.

I abandoned my pillow and got out of bed feeling suddenly cold. I was in a big, empty, dark room, in a big, cold, unfamiliar house.

I was alone. Completely alone.

I picked up the phone and read the new messages through the cracks in the screen.

"Do you want me to bring dinner to your room?"

"I'll leave it near the door."

I dismissed the notification without opening the chat so that he wouldn’t see that I had read the messages.

For a moment, I wandered around the room with the phone pressed to my chest. I didn't want to go back to bed, I would just curl up like a hedgehog again.

I opted for the desk.

I opened the group chat with my friends and typed a quick response. "Hey! Having fun without me, assholes? 😜"

I stared at the cracked screen for a whole minute, but no one replied. Neither of them was online.

I placed the phone on the desk and took another deep breath. And again, I felt like crying.

My arms tightened around my chest, hands gripping my shoulders. I held myself tight, trying to generate some warmth.