Seated inside a Starbucks café final February, Grace Bellido, 14, shares a few of her favourite books by penciling the names in a small floral pocket book. “Track of Achilles … the Percy Jackson collection.” She reads largely fantasy, tales of bygone or imagined lands removed from the realities of her college life within the north Houston suburb of Klein. It’s obvious that even speaking by way of writing is difficult for her.
Grace’s blue eyes are broad and guarded, her wavy brown hair streaked with pink. Her palms, wrapped in knit fingerless gloves, clutch the pocket book as headphones quell her nervousness, driving out surrounding sounds that hem her in.
It has been two years since her arrest at college left this once-talkative teen mute. “I made a joke,” she writes about how the incident began…