"I'm not asking you to be brave," Elijah said. "I'm asking you to be honest. It's not the same thing, and I think you already know the difference."

The older man held his gaze for a long, long time. Then he let out a ragged breath, dropped the unlit cigarette, and ground it into the concrete with his heel.

"Hell," he said. "My daddy would've been ashamed of me if I didn't."

He stood up, wiped his hands, and held one out.

Elijah took it. The grip was rough, warm, and shaking just slightly.

"I'll be there," Dent said. "But kid? You better be ready. Because if you stand up in that room and fail, they won't just come for you."

Elijah nodded.

"I know," he said. "That's why I won't fail."

Chapter 5: Pro Se

The paperwork that nearly broke him was only four pages long.

He had asked three of them. The first, a woman at a downtown firm, looked at the Carrington file and said, "I'd love to help, but we're swamped." The second, an older man in a gray suit, laughed out loud when he learned how old Elijah was. The third did not even return his call.

So he did it himself.

* * *

On a Tuesday afternoon, sitting at the corner table under the dusty window, he wrote out the motion by hand. He would type it later, at the library computer, but he wanted to feel each word first. He wrote it slowly, in the formal language of the statutes, and when he reached the final paragraph, he stopped and read it aloud to the empty room.

Whereas the Defendant, Isaiah Marcus Carrington, being of sound mind and having been fully advised of his rights, wishes to proceed pro se at the preliminary hearing; and whereas the Defendant desires that his brother, Elijah James Carrington, aged seventeen, serve as his representative in said proceeding, the Defendant respectfully requests that this Court grant such designation under the allowances of the Official Code of Georgia.

It sounded so grown-up. It sounded like somebody else's voice.

* * *

The harder part was getting Isaiah to sign.

On the following Saturday, he sat behind the scratched glass at the jail with the typed motion pressed to the window, and for a full minute his brother said nothing. He read each page twice, his lips moving slightly. His eyes, the same warm brown as their father's, grew wide and then wet.

"Eli," he said at last. "You can't be serious."

"I'm serious."

"You're seventeen years old. You're a kid. This is my life we're talking about."

"I know what it is."

"If you mess this up, if you say one wrong thing..." Isaiah's voice broke. He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. "I'm not gonna let you do this to yourself. Carter says I should take the plea. Maybe he's right. Maybe it's easier."

"It's not easier." Elijah pressed his palm flat against the glass. "It's just faster. And you know the difference."

Isaiah lowered his hand and looked at his little brother. He saw the oversized collar that was not yet oversized, because Elijah had not even put on the suit yet; he saw the ink-stained fingers, the tired eyes, the jaw set in the same stubborn line their father used to wear. And something in him gave way.

"Tell me why," Isaiah whispered. "Tell me why you'd do this."

Elijah took a breath.

"Because when Dad died," he said, "you were fifteen, and you stopped being a kid. You got a job. You gave Mama half your pay. You taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels, and how to throw a punch, and how to say 'yes, sir' to people who didn't deserve it, because you said sometimes that's how you stay safe." His voice shook. "You protected me. All those years. And now somebody's trying to take you away, and I'm the only one left who's willing to stand up."

The room was very quiet. The guard at the door pretended not to hear.

"I'm not doing this to be a hero," Elijah said. "I'm doing it because you're my brother. And because it's true."

Isaiah's mouth trembled. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his jumpsuit.

"Okay," he said hoarsely. "Okay."

The guard handed over a pen through the slot. Isaiah signed with a hand that was not quite steady. His signature, a loopy, boyish scrawl, slanted across the bottom of the page, and Elijah felt something ease in his chest that he had not known was clenched.

"I trust you," Isaiah said.

"I know."

"If it goes bad, it's not on you. You hear me?"

"It's not going to go bad."

"Little brother." Isaiah's smile came back, slow and real. "You always did think you could do anything."

"I don't think," Elijah said. "I've checked."

* * *

Filing the motion was almost an anticlimax.

The clerk's window at the Miller County Courthouse sat behind a wall of dull green tile, and the woman behind it, whose nameplate read Doreen Whitlock, examined the document for a very long time. Twice she glanced up at Elijah over her glasses. Twice she looked back down. Finally she stamped the first page with a heavy, satisfying thunk.

"Well," she said. "It's in order."

Elijah could not hide his surprise. "It is?"

"It's technically in order. Never seen anything like it, though." She tore off a carbon copy and slid it under the glass. "Judge Tolbert will see this on Monday. I'd tell you not to expect much, hon, but I'm not in the business of discouraging people."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Mm-hm." She studied him, and something softened at the corner of her mouth. "How old did you say you were?"

"Seventeen."

"My nephew's seventeen. Can't even keep his shoes tied." She shook her head. "Good luck to you."

On Monday morning, Elijah learned that Judge Raymond Tolbert had signed the order without comment.