HERE IS WHAT HAPPENS when you go to juvenile detention, which turns out to be a low-slung, brick-and-cinder building in Sierra Vista.

You ride in a white van with four other girls. Everybody stares straight ahead, or checks their nails. One girl just cries, but silently, tears running down her face and neck.

Not-Karen rides in front. She’s in charge of all of you. She’s the one who gives all the paperwork to the woman at the front counter, who sits in a kind of half-cage, half-desk contraption. There is a metal detector you have to go through, and a pat-down. Two of the girls have been here before, because the guard at the metal detector says their names. Hi, Raisa. Hi, Trini.

When you look back, Not-Karen is gone.

They fingerprint you.

They make you sit for hours in a hot room with the other girls. One by one, you’re called out to sit in another hot room, where you get photographed for an ID, asked questions about your periods and health and are you pregnant do you think you could be pregnant have you ever been pregnant are you currently on medication are you on drugs are you hiding drugs on your person are you withdrawing from drugs.

The girl-bug stirs. You are nothing now.

They take you to yet another small white room, where a woman runs her gloved fingers through your hair, your mouth, your ears, looking for you don’t even know what. Then you strip, and they do even more horrible and embarrassing things in embarrassing places, and if you didn’t feel like nothing before, you do now.

They give you a beige jumpsuit with a front zipper and plain slip-on sneakers, three pairs of underwear, two flimsy bras, and wait while you hand over the dress and change. You ask, Will I get my dress back? and the guard says, You’ve got other worries now, girl.

Another guard shows you your bunk in a huge room filled with bunks. They assign you to a sour-faced girl named Wee-Wee with lots of holes in her ears and she walks you around an entire building filled with sour-faced girls, pointing out the showers, the nurses’ office, the psych office, the dining hall, the TV room, the tiny library. “Don’t even try to get in to see the psych,” she says. “The line is always too long. Better off seeing the nurse. At least you get to lay down and stuff. Take a load off.

“We got classes,” she says. “Like if you’re here a while. Math and stuff.”

Bored, she ticks off her fingers what will get you demerits, what will keep you “in good.” She looks around covertly and then leans close. She smells like old milk and pudding. Then she pinches your arm very hard, says, “Dig? That’s as nice as I’m gonna get,” and walks away.

You sit in your bunk trying not to cry, because you’ve seen television shows about prisons, which is the closest thing to where you are now, and you know what happens to people who show weakness. You wish you had the superpower to become invisible right now.

The beige jumpsuit is itchy. The shoes are too big. The bra is too thin and doesn’t have underwire, so your boobs feel loose and uncomfortable.

You choke back tears, because no one should see you cry, here.

You wonder how you got from there to here. From a mom to none. From a friend named Cake to a girl named Wee-Wee. From ashes to darkness to ashes to foster to kid prison.

In a little while, you get up and walk to the library, because it’s the only place you remember how to get to. You don’t make eye contact with anyone. You stay there, in the stacks, holding yourself, trying to cry without making a sound. The smell of books is familiar, and makes you feel better, but not much.

Not much at all.

You wish like hell your mother would come to get you.