"I didn't tell you," Amara said slowly, once she found her voice again, "because I wanted to wait until you were old enough to actually understand what happened. I wanted to protect you from something that had nothing to do with you."
She shook her head, some of the shock hardening now into something sharper.
"But you know what, I don't owe you that explanation. Not right now. Not while we're standing here talking about what you did." Her voice rose, not loud, but taut, stretched thin over something that had been building in her for hours.
"You think that's the same thing? A boy is sitting in a jail cell right now, Justina. Because of a lie you told. Do you understand what that means? Real victims, girls who actually go through what you claimed happened to you, they don't get believed, they don't get taken seriously, because of things like this. Because of people who lie about it when it's convenient." Her voice cracked on the last word.
