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Angels' voice broke my trance and I looked back to catch her eye. "Prove it. Talk to me." I pointed at her tight pose. "You curl up like that when you're upset and since Jake told you about that chick, you're curled up all the time."
I really disliked the way Angel thought she needed Jake to survive. She was stronger than she knew, but she would never learn unless she freed herself from that dependency. Independence was a muscle and it needed to be worked in order to grow. Not that I could knock my friends' taste. Jake was hot. Super-hot, in every way, even the way he seemed to reciprocate Angels' feelings. But it didn't mean it was good for either of them.
I was glad Jake and the guys were heading out to California. Angel needed time to get to know herself again. Since she met Jake, everything had been about him and I missed the days when it was about me, too.
Angel set a hand over her forehead. "I drank too much."
The line sounded very much like one of Analog's early songs, which made Angel smile, so I jumped on it and started singing, "Too much, too much drinking! Better call a cab or we'll never make it home!"
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27
-Angel
The lights wake me with their morning buzz.
I sit up just as my breakfast tray slides through the door. Oatmeal, canned peaches, a pat of butter, packet of sugar, a cold piece of toast, two sausage links and a box of orange juice.
No wonder most of the prisoners are fat.
I shove the food away, disgusted. The morning dose of meds will make me puke but I'd rather suffer that than touch the slop they serve. That lime gelatin gave me nightmares.
Back at Canyon View, after breakfast it was shower time. Here, one of the regular guards comes to escort me to the prison library. He says I'll be taken for a shower around ten.
I'm not allowed to mingle among the regular inmates. They keep me separated at all times, for my safety, they say. From everyone except Avery. She always seems to locate me, goes out of her way to bother me. If I'm in my cell, on the toilet, or even out for exercise, she'll find me wherever I am and try to talk. But I won't listen.
The prison library is small and plain. Well, comparatively small. Canyon View, the place I'll be going back to once I'm done with this formal rejection, is a much larger facility and has a library at least twice this size. They have reading groups and a section where you can listen to music.
In this library, my task is to take the books from the return carts, mark them as returned inside the log book, and set them aside to be re-shelved by someone else. It's not interesting, but it keeps me busy.
Everything is done before my shift is up, so they let me leave early.
Just as I am about to get thankful that Avery didn't show up, I spot her walking out of the hall that leads to the showers and nearly jump out of my skin. She walks quickly past, wearing her orange jumpsuit and towel-turban. The bile is rising in my throat and I can't avert my eyes-maybe because she doesn't say anything to me or even look my way.
After my own shower, I'm taken back to the small plain room before the review board. With lights gently flickering, the cameras are already recording as I'm led inside by an orderly and two guards.
The woman has her hair back, still just as tight as yesterday and it makes me wonder if she ever gets headaches. I can't wear my hair like that without feeling a thump, bump, thump, in my brain.
The quiet man is not as quiet today. He's not particularly chatty, either, but I do get to hear his voice at full volume when he knocks on the one way glass that covers the back wall, asking a question to someone he must know. "Hey! You getting it, or what?" I don't see an earpiece, but he nods, as if he's heard something from beyond the glass and then turns to face me.
My fingers brace the scratchy arms of the chair, turning white, going numb with anxiety. Now that I'm in here and thinking about what I need to say . . . . Cold trickles through me as I try to think. I've been dreading this part of my confession, putting so much energy into the idea of telling that I hadn't really considered the actual words to use.
Shaking my head, I say the only thing that comes to mind. "You have no idea how much I hate her."
"Who?" Tight Bun asks.
Me. Avery. "That doe-eyed girl in the trailer. Serving up spaghetti and smiles."
"Why?"
"Because she's an idiot." I was. "She had no idea what was really going on." I didn't. "She had everything and let it slip right through her fingers." I did.
"Could you elaborate, please?" Quiet man asks, adjusting himself in his chair when I meet his eyes. "We are attempting to understand."
I nod, gesturing to the chains that keep me bound. "Most people think they know what it's like to be this way because they read about sorry's and bullshit. They can study and imagine, fixate on the demons; but at the end of the day, they get to go home. They don't know anything." I'm being passive-aggressive. They know I'm talking about them.
"But I know. I understand everything now."
