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The next morning I headed to the probation and parole office, arriving with plenty of time to spare before my meeting. I sat stiffly on the hard plastic chair in the waiting room, legs crossed and arms folded, as I stared at the cheesy motivational posters on the dingy wall and avoided making any sort of eye contact with the other two people in the room.

I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and I straightened, noting with mild amusement that the others did as well. Officer Garza came around the corner, and the two slumped back again.

He gave me a slight chin lift. “Come on back, Angel.”

I followed him down the hall and into an office that might actually have been spacious if it hadn’t been crammed full of furniture and filing cabinets. He motioned me toward a chair while he took a seat behind his desk, an odd expression lingering on his face.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

“I think so,” he said, pushing the papers away from him and leaning back. “See, I was going to talk to you today about your GED studies and tell you that as soon as you passed it I was going to put you in for early termination of your probation.”

I stared at him in surprise for several seconds. “Seriously? All I have to do is pass it, and then I’m done?”

He snorted. “Well, I was going to say that. But then something happened this morning that changed those plans.”

Elation shifted to terror. Had someone seen me at the factory? Was I about to be charged with arson or some shit like that?

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“I got a phone call from the governor’s office not half an hour ago,” he said. Then a bemused smile came over his face. “You’ve been pardoned.”

“I…Hunh? What?” I blinked. “What the hell?”

He shrugged. “Don’t ask me to explain it. But there’s no mistake. Trust me, I checked. Three times. Full pardon. Record expunged. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Then he leaned forward, expression fierce again. “I don’t know what the hell this is all about, but I swear to god, Angel, if you blow this and get into trouble again, I swear I’ll throttle you.”

I grinned. Then I laughed. Pietro Fucking Ivanov. “Don’t you worry about me. I’m not going to screw this up.”

I was even going to go ahead and take the damn GED. After all, I had a feeling that pretty soon I was going to need all the smarts I could stuff into my brain. pqdm.com