Question: On what grounds could the judge fire Lizzie? She didn't do anything wrong and when she got to the courtroom, she explained why she was late.
Question: How could Fred have been trapped in the jack-in-the-box for so long? He could make himself appear whenever he wanted and could always appear someplace else, so shouldn't he have been able to appear outside of the toy after it was covered in duct tape?
Answer: When she trapped Fred in the box, she was closing off the part of her imagination. The part of the brain that stops believing in fairy tales and decides to grow up.
Answer: Being late and unreliable is what she did wrong. It's possible it was a pattern and she was warned about her tardiness before and not just a one time thing. Even though we can only speculate this, since that is all we see, it makes sense and adds to showing her life spiraling downwards.
Bishop73