Anger Is Only a Shadow

Seventeen-year-old Lil is anything but small. She's rebellious, she's loyal; she's figuring out what kind of good person she wants to be, or if she wants to be a good person at all. But more than anything? Lil wants to be free. Because Lil is on probation. She's just out of juvenile detention, and is living a strange kind of new normal at home with her Mami, Papi and baby sister Omaris. And she's trying really hard to be New Lil - follow the rules, keep her head down, take a breath and smile till her court hearing in three weeks' time. It's not easy with the ankle monitor, the curfews. The sideways glances she gets at school. The deafening silence from her beloved older brother Aldwin away at college. And Old Lil keeps rearing her head - the one that wants to go, run, find a way to open the pot lid to let the angry steam out.