by Spencer Baum
Green, blue, red, yellow, orange, and purple—every door on the course was a different color and every door was closed.
Were they locked? Jenna figured they had to be. Six doors and six keys, that’s what Margo had told them.
But where were the keys?
Margo lined them up. She gave the command to start the race. The other prisoners ran straight to the nearest obstacle (the pedestals) and started climbing. Jenna chose to wait, taking a step back to get a better look at what was in front of her.
All the courses they trained on before the Qualifier were linear. You started at the beginning and worked through to the end. But this course was different. This course was like a maze that wound back on itself. There were four or five different places you could begin.
On the pedestals, a prisoner named Zane made it to the green door and was trying to open it. He banged on it with his shoulder but it wouldn’t move. He tried navigating around the door but it was too wide. It took him to the edge of the pedestal, and as he tried to swing around the edge, his bodyweight got the best of him, and he fell into the water pit below.
So there is no passing through the pedestals without the key to the green door, Jenna thought. But where is it?
Scanning the course, she saw something shiny hanging from the ceiling among the training rings. An oversized key with a purple head.
There’s one key—how do I get to it?
The only way to reach the training rings was up the tallest climbing rope, the one that stretched to the ceiling, but to get to that rope, you had to pass through the green door at the end of the pedestals, which wasn’t possible without a key.
Was there a key with a green head somewhere?
It was getting rowdy on the course now. Bodychecks, shoving, tripping, punching, bodies falling to the water pits—Jenna stayed on the ground and ignored the chaos, continued looking for keys. She spotted an orange key high on the course but to get to it…
No, there was no way to reach it yet.
The purple key is hanging with the rings, but to get to it, we need the blue key, and that key is…yes, blue then purple then orange, and before any of them, green.
She widened her gaze, hoping to spot the green key, and found it hanging above the pedestals, attached to a rope.
Release the rope and you release the key.
The rope rose to the ceiling, wove through the rafters, and descended on the far end of the course, where it was attached to a climbing pole.
Jenna ran to the pole and began to climb.
One hand ahead of another, her legs wrapped around the pole beneath, her knees grabbing onto the smooth steel and pushing her along. The course was getting quiet around her. They were watching her climb.
She reached the top and, with one hand, untied the rope. It flitted away from her like a kite carried off in the wind. On the other end of the course, the green key began to fall from the ceiling.
Quiet turned to bedlam as everyone figured it out at once. From all ends of the course they ran for the pedestals, where the green key was now in play. Jenna slid down the pole and joined the chase. A sprint to the pedestals, she leapt from one to the other, behind the crowd but catching up, thinking about the doors and keys ahead of her.
Blue key hanging with the rings.
Someone would get there first, meaning the blue door would be open when Jenna got there.
Orange key at the end of the ropes.
She was figuring out the game. It wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage to be in last place before all the doors were opened. The game was to figure out the sequence of keys. Blue then purple then orange. Put yourself in place to be near the doors when they open. Make sure you don’t choose a path that leads to a dead end.
She was working the ropes now, swinging from one to another. She was amazed at how much more agile she had become during her time here, how sprightly her muscles felt. She cruised past Robin, then Zane, then Evan.
She came up on Nathan Cavanaugh. Watching him swing from one rope to another, she started timing her pass. Catch him on the left. Grab the longest rope and ride it in. Wait for it…it’s coming back to you…wait…
She grabbed the rope at the height of its arc and rode it down. The rope would have carried her all the way to the platform, but halfway through his swing, Nathan changed course, grabbing a rope Jenna didn’t expect and swinging into her path.
They collided hard. The force of it was too much for her. Jenna lost her grip and plummeted to the water pit below.
A hard splash, the surface of the water slapping the side of her body, and then she was sinking. She tried to slow her descent but found her arms and legs strangely unresponsive. Her limbs were floppy noodles, shaking in the water as she sank, completely out of her control.
What the hell was happening?
She was six feet underwater now and completely unable to move. Had she broken her spine? I fell wrong and snapped my spine. That had to be it. Why else would her arms and legs refuse to move?
She told herself to relax. Get to the surface, take a breath, figure this out.
Figure what out? She was still sinking!
Your natural buoyancy will take over soon enough. Just hold your breath until it happens.
Her descent was slowing. She was halfway to the bottom, trapped in the silence, waiting.
I will wait. I will float to the top. It may take awhile, but I will find a way to hold my breath.
For a moment in time, maybe half a second, maybe longer, she was suspended in place, perfectly caught between the pull of gravity and push of water. Then she began to rise.
It was getting harder to hold her breath. She wanted so badly to wave her arms and kick her feet but they were in full-on rebellion against her, listening to nothing her mind told them to do.
She started counting. One Mississippi two Mississippi…she stopped there. Counting was only making it worse.
Her ascent towards the surface was slow, like dust floating up a sunbeam.
Keep holding, Jenna. As long as it takes. You’ll be at the surface soon. You can hold on and take a breath when you get there.
An unwelcome sentence followed in her mind. Or you could inhale a big gulp of water now and be done with it.
She tried to silence that line of thought but it kept coming. Apparently it wanted to be heard.
You’re fooling yourself if you think you have a chance of winning this race. Your odds were already 36 to 1. What are they now that you can’t move your arms and legs?
She forced a thought in response: I don’t know what’s going on with my arms and legs yet. I will get to the surface, take a breath, and deal with the rest later.
But her mind would not relent. I think you do know what’s happening. You hit the water hard.
I didn’t hit the water that hard.
You can’t move.
I told you—I don’t know what that’s about.
But you do. You hit the water wrong and now you can’t move. What other explanation could there possibly--
A click. The most horrid and painful jolt she’d received yet. It started in the implant at the back of her neck and shot through her body in a wave of pain that seared her nerves.
And then she could move again. Her mind and body still reeling, she hardly knew what she was doing, but her arms and legs were mobile and she couldn’t help but swim for the top. Before she had any conscious awareness of what was happening, her face broke the surface and she was sucking in a deep, cleansing gasp of air.
Her ears, newly aware of sound, heard Margo’s voice booming through the training center.
“That’s it, inmates! Twelve have crossed the finish line! The rest of you got zapped.”
Jenna swam to the edge of the water pit.
“Gather round, let’s wrap this up,” Margo said.
Jenna put her hands on the edge of the water pit and pulled herself out. Light-headed and exhausted, she collapsed on the floor.
“Hurry up, Duv
all unless you want another click! My kid has a football game tonight and I don’t want to be late!”
Another deep breath, then Jenna forced herself to her feet.
“Those of you who got zapped be thankful for it! Let it be a reminder to you of what’s at stake on Sunday!”
Jenna was so dizzy it was hard to stand. She leaned towards the sound of Margo’s voice and let her stumbling feet carry her in that direction.
“The live course won’t be nearly as neat and tidy as this one was, in part because it will be full of creatures that want to kill you.”
Sensing she was near the others, or close enough, Jenna stopped walking. Her eyes closed, she tilted her head back, opening her rib cage to fill her lungs.
“Enjoy your swim?” someone whispered to her.
She opened her eyes to find herself looking at a face covered in a swirl of tattoos.
“Fuck you, Nathan,” she said.
The words were immediately followed by a click, and then a rush of pain that made her fall to her knees.
“That’ll be enough of that, inmate,” came a new voice, this one belonging to a guard in a Devlin Security uniform.
“Is everything alright back there?” Margo said.
“We’re good,” said the guard. “Just an inmate speaking out of turn.”
“Who, Jenna?” said Margo. “She’s just determined to make me late. Give her another click, would you?”
Jenna looked up from the ground at the guard, whose thumb hovered over his clicker. Like all guards at the complex, this one had a name patch sewn onto his uniform. Arnold...
She looked in his eyes, one human making contact with another, begging for mercy.
None came. Arnold’s thumb squeezed the clicker again and Jenna collapsed in her own puddle, screaming in pain.
CHAPTER 10
Bad Decision #1, Or, Be Careful With Compliments
Excerpted from A Victim of Circumstance: The Memoir of Jenna Duvall
Every death row inmate, even one who is innocent, is hung up on what an unlucky bastard she is, what a loser in life’s lottery, what a victim of circumstance.
But she’s also someone who knows she made at least one poor decision. Regret is a poison that hangs in the air on death row. It seeps into your skin, infects your soul. It makes the past loom larger than the present. It makes your mistakes the key events in your life.
I made three poor decisions.
The first came on an autumn afternoon during my first semester at Hillerman. I was at Umberto’s with Sunny, my third or fourth after-school meetup at the coffee shop with her.
I don’t remember everything we talked about that day. But I do remember where the conversation was when I made the decision. The bad decision.
We were talking about my pen pal.
“It’s so cool you’ve got that,” Sunny said to me. “It’s why you’re so grounded.”
“Grounded?” I said.
And then Sunny told me I was the most grounded person she knew. She said most college students were leaves blowing in the wind, but I was a tree with strong roots.
She said writing letters to a good friend can do that to a person. She said that every time I set my pen to paper to write to my friend, I was forcing myself to think carefully about who I really was. She said that letter-writing was a great way to pull a coherent flow of ideas from a jumble of thoughts and that’s why all the great leaders of history have a famous trail of written correspondence.
This was all like catnip to me. None of my old friends from high school understood the letter-writing thing. To hear Sunny tell me that this activity was making me a better person...
She was just masterful at manipulation like that.
Be careful with compliments. Sometimes, maybe most times, flattery is like water flowing over a stone. But say the right thing to the right person at the right moment and the stone breaks loose. Gets carried by the current.
I made a terrible decision that afternoon at Umberto’s. As I listened to Sunny speak kindly of my letter-writing habit, and beamed with self-congratulatory pride, I had an idea that seemed brilliant at the time, but looks suicidal in hindsight.
I decided to write Sunny a letter.
I didn’t tell her about this idea at Umberto’s. I waited until I was home again, until dinner and dishes and homework and practicing were done, until laundry was sorted and the living room was picked up and the mail was opened and Kyle was in his room, playing his video games.
Late that night, in my pajamas, I sat at my desk, took out my favorite stationary, and wrote Dear Sunny.
In that first letter I told her that I enjoyed our coffee visits together, that I was glad we were friends, that I was excited about college because of people like her.
Be careful with compliments.
To say my decision to write Sunny a letter had unpredictable consequences would understate how quickly my quiet life became batshit bonkers, but those stories will have to wait until next time. The prison librarian is pointing at her watch. It’s time for me to go back to my cell and spend some more time miring around in the muck of my own regret.
CHAPTER 11
Jenna went straight to the living quarters of the cellblock. She dumped her wet clothes down the laundry chute. She took a shower. She got dressed in the T-shirt and sweats the staff had left at the foot of her bed, neatly folded.
Little workerbees they were, the staff at the prison complex, always buzzing in and out when the cellblocks were empty. When prisoners were away at training, the floors got swept, the counters got scrubbed, the beds got made, food was put in the fridge, and neat little stacks of clothes got put on the beds.
After she got dressed Jenna went to the lounge.
Fashioned like the parlor in an Old-World mansion, the lounge of Cellblock G had high-backed chairs positioned in a conversation circle with an antique coffee table in the center. Victoria and Robin sat on opposite sides of the table.
“See, Jenna isn’t crying, and she got clicked,” Victoria said to Robin. Robin, sitting sideways in one of the chairs, her legs curled up underneath her, lifted her head to look at Jenna. Her eyes were red and puffy. Her cheeks were soaked with tears.
“Jenna knows crying won’t do shit,” Victoria said. “You think Margo gives a fuck how you feel right now? You think the Devlins are gonna give you a break because you’re sad?”
“No, of course not,” said Robin.
“Then quit your crying already.”
“Just shut up and leave me be.”
“Sheesh, listen to this bitch,” Victoria said, allowing a grin to come over her face. “Telling me to shut up.”
Jenna sat still and said nothing. She had spent enough time in prisons to know when it was best to stay quiet.
Victoria and Robin, who had started out as equals in the hierarchy of this particular prison, had seen their roles shift after the Qualifier. Victoria came out of the Qualifier mentally and physically unscathed. If anything, she seemed more confident than ever.
Robin, however, returned from the Qualifier as a broken, frightened shell of herself. Victoria (as inmates were apt to do) exploited Robin’s newfound weakness for fun.
“You think this bitch would tell me to shut up if we were on the streets?” Victoria said. “How brave you think this bitch would be if there was no implant in my neck?”
Jenna said nothing.
“Shit. Bitch thinks she can disrespect me ‘cause she knows I get zapped if I fight back.”
“You’re the one who’s being disrespectful,” Robin said.
“Is that so? Why don’t you come over here and say that to my face you weak-ass bitch?”
“Shut up, Victoria!” Robin screeched. “Please, just shut up!”
Victoria hopped out of her chair. The response from whatever eyes were watching was instant.
The sound of the click, then the sound of Victoria’s scream, then the sound of Victoria falling sideways to the floor.
“
Oh shit,” she moaned. “Fucking shit.” She pushed herself up onto her side. “You fuckers!” she yelled. “I’m tired of this shit! You hear me! I’m tired of it!”
Another click. She yelped again and fell back to the floor. “Oh…oh God, why the fuck do they do this?”
“Now who’s crying?” said Robin.
Jenna wanted to get up and leave, but knew better than to try. Now that the men on the other side of the security cameras had active trigger fingers, the odds of Jenna or Robin getting a jolt for even the slightest perceived infraction went up dramatically.
Her hands on the armrests of her chair, her feet on the floor, Jenna closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.
“Thinking about what you’d do differently?” Robin asked. “If you had it over again?”
Jenna opened her eyes. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Or were you fantasizing about what your life used to be?” Robin said. “For people like us, it’s always one of the two. Either you’re reliving your life in your mind, trying to change it, or you’re reliving a memory that takes you far from here.”
Jenna looked down at Victoria, who was slowly pushing herself back to her feet.
“I like to play the what-would-you-do-differently game,” said Robin. “I started doing it in solitary. It was the only thing that made me relax.”
“What would you do differently? Shit. Waste of motherfucking time,” said Victoria.
“What I do is go back in my memory,” said Robin, “and try to find the very beginning.”
“You mean like Adam and Eve, or are you talking like the big bang?” said Victoria.
Robin leaned in closer to Jenna, purposely excluding Victoria from the conversation.
“You start with something recent,” Robin said. “The most recent change you could have made that would have kept you out of here. For me, it was the night I confessed to the cops.”
“You fessed up to the cops?” Victoria said. “The hell kinda stupid are you?”