I am frightened.

I don’t know what the next year holds, let alone the next ten.

If I were him, looking at me, I might say the same things.

He isn’t wrong about the risk.

He’s only wrong about one thing, and it’s the thing that isn’t in any file.

Because here is what the state’s attorney couldn’t know, arguing so reasonably about my inexperience: I had spent every night for three weeks lying awake running the same terrors he was reciting, and more besides.

What if I couldn’t do it?