So I told her — about the party, the arrest, even the plan for me to take the blame.
She didn’t hesitate before telling me straight up that it was a bad idea. “You can’t save her,” Julie said. “Nobody can. You can’t make that deal with Carla. It’s just going to mess up your life, too.”
“But she’s my sister,” I said. My voice seemed to echo in the empty locker room. “She’ll go to jail.”
Julie shook her head. “You might go to jail,” she said. “Where you should go is to Al-Anon. That’s where my mom took me and my brother, to help us when dad got so bad. You remember when we had to live in that trailer? At Al-Anon, they tell you you have to look after yourself, and your dad or whoever has to hit bottom and then put his life back together himself, but you can’t do it for him. You can’t do it for Carla. Only Carla can.”
Julie sounded like she was making an Al-Anon commercial, which got on my nerves. I understood what she was saying, but it wasn’t like Carla was a drug addict or an alcoholic. She wasn’t a falling-down drunk like Julie’s dad had been. She just partied too much and got into trouble — and now she’d gotten me into trouble, too. It wasn’t at all the same as Julie’s dad.
“I got her to promise to go to AA and stuff,” I said. “She’s serious about making herself better.”
Julie shook her head again, only harder this time. “She’s just saying what she thinks you want to hear.”
Then she looked at me funny. “Have you told anybody else? Have you told Kevin?”
I said no. “He would flip if he knew.”
“But he’s your boyfriend,” Julie said. “Don’t you sort of have to tell him? Isn’t that in the boyfriend-girlfriend contract?”
“I don’t remember signing anything,” I said.
Julie shrugged her gym bag over her shoulder. “Well, good luck with that.”
Kevin was waiting outside in his car, next to my motorcycle. I climbed in the front seat next to him. He handed me a box. It wasn’t wrapped. “For our anniversary,” he said.
“It’s our anniversary?”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “What? You forgot? We started going out five months and five days ago. So it’s like our five-month–five-day anniversary.”
I tapped him on the forehead with the box before I kissed him. “God, Kevin,” I said, smiling. “You’re such a girl sometimes.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “So open it already.”
It was a scarf. The whole time we’d known each other, I’d never worn a scarf. I hated anything like that around my neck, plus I was pretty sure I’d seen his mom wearing one just like it.
I thanked him, though, and let him drape it over my neck and pull me to him again. We made out for a while until I was ready to crawl over into the backseat with him right then and there. I was actually panting. And then he stopped. It was the reverse of the other night by my house.
“I have to go,” he said. “Sorry.”
“No, no,” I said, or panted. “You can’t. Not yet. Just a little longer.” I started to pull my T-shirt off, but he stopped me.
“You know how my dad is,” he said. “I told him I was going to the library after soccer practice, but it’s closed soon. He’ll make me sit out my next game. Sorry, Sadie.”
Now I was pissed. When Kevin wanted to fool around, I was right there for him. But when I was the one feeling desperate, suddenly it was all about him and his damn curfews.
I almost blurted out what I’d been keeping from him for the past four days: Can’t you see what’s going on here? For God’s sake, Kevin, we have to jump on the opportunity while we can, because who knows what’s going to happen when you find out, or how your uptight parents are going to react? Carpe diem, you jerk.
Mom came into my bedroom late that night, after she got home from a double shift at Target. I was dead asleep, but she turned on the light anyway and woke me up.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, as if we’d already been in the middle of a conversation. Carla must have called her and filled her in on my grand sacrifice. She rubbed her temples and combed her fingers through her hair.
“I’m not even sure I’ll allow it,” she continued when I didn’t say anything or do anything except blink. She pressed her cool hand against my cheek, just kind of cupping my face and looking into my eyes. It was the tenderest thing she’d done in a long time, since long before the arrest even. Then she pulled her hand away abruptly, as if she’d just remembered she was supposed to still be mad.
“I got a message from Vance at work,” she said. “They pushed back your hearing by a week. They had a heavy docket or something.”
I pulled myself up in bed, and drew my knees up under my chin, relieved, but not very. “What about Carla’s thing?”
“Her preliminary hearing?”
“Yeah.” Carla hadn’t said as much, but I kind of had the feeling that if I was going to confess, I had to do it before her preliminary hearing. “What is that, anyway?”
Mom smoothed out my bedspread. “It’s just where the prosecutor tells the judge he thinks they have enough evidence to go forward with the case. He says what the evidence is. The judge decides. Usually he goes along with the prosecutor. Carla’s lawyer won’t make his case until the real trial, which is set for later on. If there is one.”
I was impressed that Mom knew so much about the court system. I wondered how much of that came from Carla’s previous arrests and how much came from quality time with Vance, or with Dave the magistrate, who said he’d be calling her about dinner.
Mom was quiet, still smoothing out imaginary wrinkles in my bedspread.
“Is there something you’re not telling me, Mom?” I asked.
She looked up at me and then quickly looked away. “If they don’t drop the charges against her at the preliminary hearing, the judge will most likely revoke her probation pending trial.”
“Wait.” I sat up straight. “She would go to jail already?”
Mom nodded.
“When?” I asked.
Mom kept nodding. “It’s next week, too. The preliminary hearing. Unless the prosecutor decides to drop the charges before then. They would have to work that out — Carla’s court-appointed lawyer and the prosecutor.”
“You mean they’d have to have me sign a statement about the drugs and that Carla didn’t know anything. She was like an innocent bystander or whatever?”
Mom nodded again, then looked hard into my eyes.
“Was she?” Mom asked.
I hesitated. “She was really drunk, Mom. And high, too, I think. I don’t know what the guys told her, but whatever it was, she was way too out of it to know what was going on.”
Mom didn’t take her eyes off mine. “Did you know?”
“About the drug deal?”
“Yes. Did you?”
I shook my head so hard it practically made my brain rattle, though I wondered if it would ever be hard enough to make her believe me.
I’m the first one out when they unlock the cell doors at 0600 the morning after the Jelly Sisters break my nose. I’ve long since forced myself out of bed and made my bunk, washed my face — slowly and carefully — and raked my matted hair back as best I could. God, what I wouldn’t give for a little concealer to at least try to hide all the bruising and swelling.
The Jelly Sisters are the next girls out of their cells, and I flinch when I see them. I flinch again when they grab chairs next to me at the tables, just as they did my first night on Unit Three, but I try to play it off as though I’m just cold.
Wanda, predictably, speaks first. “You look like shit.”
Nell grunts. “Like ass.”
“Yeah,” I say, determined not to let them intimidate me. “I know. Can’t do a thing with my hair in this humidity.” I look left at Wanda, then right at Nell. “Y’all sure look pretty, though. Nice outfits. Whose idea was it to go with the matching jumpers?”
I lean back in my chair so I can see both of t
hem at the same time. Wanda glowers as if she might hit me. Nell glances furtively at Wanda, calibrating how she’s supposed to react to my sarcasm.
Wanda clears her throat. “You know it’s possible for you to keep on having accidents in here,” she says. Nell nods.
I shrug. “Look,” I say, mostly confident that if they’re going to hurt me, they won’t be stupid enough to do it here and be so obvious about it. “I don’t know what set us off on the wrong foot, but I’m not looking for any trouble. I just want to do whatever I’m supposed to do and then get out of here as soon as I can, and that’s all.”
“Then how come you taking up with that Gina bitch soon as you move onto the unit?” Wanda asks. “How come you saving her ass from the spork?”
The other girls have come out of their cells by now, including Bad Gina, and all of them give us as wide a berth as possible. Bad Gina does her best to not seem to be staring at my face, or watching what’s going on between me and the Jelly Sisters.
Two new guards roll in the breakfast cart and toss Styrofoam containers in the middle of the tables. Still no sporks. Wanda and Nell peel open their jelly containers first thing and toss them back just like Chantrelle said — like Jell-O shots.
I open my breakfast box and force myself to eat. Not that I’m very hungry; I’m just damned if I’m going to let the Jelly Sisters touch another bite of my food.
“Well?” Wanda says, waggling a glob of scrambled eggs in her fingers. “I asked you a question.”
“Two questions,” Nell chimes in through a mouthful of toast and eggs.
I take a long drink from my orange juice cup. A bite of potato patty. “Look, I didn’t do it to protect Gina. I haven’t taken up with her or whatever. We would all have gotten in trouble if they didn’t find the spork. You heard what Officer Killduff said.” I forced down some slimy eggs. “I don’t know about you girls, but the one cavity search at Intake was enough for me.”
“That was just bluffing, to scare us in case Gina was innocent,” Wanda said.
“She was innocent,” I say. “I don’t know why you took her spork, but —”
“I didn’t take nothing,” Wanda snarls. “You ever say otherwise and you’ll wish the only thing wrong with you was your swole-up nose.”
I shrug again. “Like I said, I don’t want any trouble. But I’m also not about to go through another cavity search just because you have a problem against some girl.”
“That bitch deserve to be in trouble,” Wanda says. “And this here is the only warning you’re gonna get: anything else happens and you try to protect her ass, then your ass is the one getting it instead.”
I can practically feel Bad Gina straining to hear the conversation from the other side of the tables. Nobody else seems to be talking. The night-shift guards are busy at their desk, writing down stuff and drinking coffee.
“Fine,” I say. “Whatever.” I finish my potato patty. “What do you have against Gina, anyway?”
Wanda waves her toast at Nell. “You can tell her.”
“OK,” Nell says. “She was the one that gave Cell Seven what she cut herself with, some kind of a sharp metal that that Gina trash got hold of from somewhere. She was always whispering stuff to Cell Seven, probably talking her into it or something, getting her worked up. Cell Seven already got mental problems, depression and stuff, from when she first come on the unit.”
“How do you know all this?” I ask.
Wanda takes over. “How we know? How we know?” She knocks her toast against the edge of my Styrofoam box. “Because we know, that’s how we know.”
“Of course,” I say. “So why did she do it — give Cell Seven the metal or whatever?”
“Because she’s a evil bitch,” Nell says.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“Isn’t that enough?” Wanda says.
“An evil bitch,” I repeat.
“Evil and a bitch,” Nell chimes in, as if she needs to correct my phrasing. “Plus she been doing Killduff, or didn’t you notice?”
“Oh, really,” I say, wondering just how anyone would go about that in here, when we’re watched like lab rats.
“Yeah, really,” says Nell.
I’m all but certain that they are making this all up, but I know better than to say it. “What’s Gina doing Officer Killduff have to do with Cell Seven?”
“Got nothing to do with it,” says Wanda. “Just the kind of a bitch she is, the kind that will do anything. Even do Killduff.”
I know I should just let the whole thing go, but I kind of want to see how this will play out. “How does she get away with it? Or how does he?”
“The other guards are scared of Killduff,” Nell says. “And the guy they got doing shifts in the control room, monitoring all them cameras, is a buddy of Killduff’s. That’s what I heard.”
I shake my head. “But Gina did get in trouble for the spork,” I say. “Killduff was the one that ordered Officer Emroch to do a full-body search on her. And they put us all on lockdown.”
“Yeah, but think about it, dummy,” Wanda says. “Even Killduff had to do something for Gina losing her spork — or trying to hide it — and getting caught right in front of everybody. But I guess you didn’t notice she didn’t lose phone privileges or visitation, and she didn’t get no extra lockdown. And wouldn’t surprise me if Killduff gave her a little visit while everybody on lockdown and Emroch in the bathroom or whatever and his buddy on control-room duty.”
One of the night-shift guards yells, “Time!” and then, “Spork count!”
We all just sit there, confused. We don’t have any sporks.
The guard laughs once she realizes. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “Never mind.”
She tosses a garbage bag on the tables. It lands right in front of me and the Jelly Sisters. Neither of them moves, so I end up having the honors.
The guards herd us down to the phones that night after dinner — very dry chicken breast, congealed gravy, flaky mashed potatoes that clearly came from a box, green beans so mushy they probably came from baby-food jars, stale roll, juice box, and Jell-O cup. Still no spork.
There are three phones mounted to a green wall across a small room from the control center, which is a reinforced glass booth where a guard monitors the surveillance cameras and I guess controls all the electronic door locks.
It’s my first night with phone privileges, and I can’t wait to call Mom, even though she’s probably out at bingo and I hate interrupting her there. It’s about the only fun thing she does for herself, plus she usually makes at least a little money playing.
“Sadie!” she practically shouts my name when she answers, and I can hear bingo people laughing in the background. “Is everything OK?” she asks in a quieter voice. “Hold on.” She muffles the phone for a minute. “There. That’s better. I’ve got somebody working my cards. Let me duck out to the lobby.”
Friday night bingo is in a fire station meeting hall a mile from our house. Every now and then things get a little crazy when there’s a fire and the sirens wail and the trucks race off. The bingo people don’t get distracted, though — including Mom. They have great concentration. I’m actually a little surprised that she took my call so quickly.
“So how is everything?” she asks. “I thought you’d call earlier in the week.” She doesn’t sound angry, just worried.
“I lost my phone privileges because I forgot to make up my bed,” I explain. “They’re really strict in here. But it’s OK.”
Mom says to just remember to do whatever I’m supposed to do, and I assure her I will from now on. I should probably go ahead and explain about getting my nose broken, but she’ll just worry and I’d rather tell her in person Sunday during visiting hours. So I make up a bunch of stuff instead. I tell her how great everything is going, how nice everybody is, how I’m keeping up with schoolwork and getting plenty of sleep and exercise, how it’s practically like being away at summer camp, or what I imagine summer camp to be if you’re the ki
nd of family who can afford it.
“How are things at home?” I ask. What I really want to know is if Carla is going to AA and if she’s quit her job at Friendly’s. But I’m afraid of the answers.
“Oh, fine,” Mom says. She tells me that Lulu has been sleeping with a picture of me under her pillow, plus a pair of my high-top basketball shoes.
“Carla wasn’t going to let her, but Lulu got hysterical and your sister caved in the way she always does,” Mom says. “I told Carla to at least put them in a plastic grocery bag since they’re so dirty and smelly. Lulu doesn’t seem to mind, though. I’m going to wash them next time she’s over here.”
“Why don’t you give her one of my jerseys?” I ask. “I bet she’d like something like that, and it would be more comfortable. And wouldn’t smell as bad.”
We talk like that for a while, about nothing, since I can’t tell her what’s really going on with me and since she probably can’t tell me what’s really going on with her or Carla or Lulu.
Good Gina takes my phone when I hang up. Chantrelle and Nell are still chatting away on the other two phones, and the other girls, including Cell Seven in her suicide pad, are waiting their turns. The only empty seat is at a table with Bad Gina and Weeze, about the last place I want to sit, but I don’t have a choice. I take my time walking over, hoping another seat opens up at another table.
“First call home?” Bad Gina asks.
I nod, surprised she noticed.
“Sucks,” she says. “First time I got to call home, I bawled worse than Cell Seven. Girls were threatening to beat me up if I didn’t stop. I got so homesick, I threw up in my cell. Guards made me clean it up myself.”
“Lovely,” I say.
She grins her sunny grin. “I know, right?”
Somebody slams a handset down on its phone hook, and we all turn to look. Good Gina is banging her forehead against the wall next to one of the phones, crying.
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