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The sting of her rejection takes me off guard. I physically step back, realizing that not only is Rosie getting my texts, but she’s also leaving me on Read.
You’re the definition of pathetic.
I turn away to get myself a cup of coffee.
“What is going on with you? Are you … into her? You can tell me. I won’t tell Duke.”
I reach for a mug, my hand shaking. I pour the coffee, unable to lose the uneasy feeling deep inside my gut.
It’s called rejection, fucker.
“It’s not like that. She’s been helping me sleep. Ever since prison …” It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Dolly about my time spent in solitary confinement.
She would understand. She would more than understand, probably sign me up for therapy or buy a cot to sleep on in my room, forcing everyone to take shifts as my sleeping buddy. My inability to ask for help from my family is some combination of being the oldest child and losing my mother in adolescence, then being raised by an absent alcoholic father with four younger siblings.
I don’t need help.
I don’t have the luxury of help.
Soft fingertips touch my forearm, jerking me back to reality. I look down at Dolly’s young face.
“Holden, what did they do to you?” she whispers.
TWO AND A HALF YEARS EARLIER
Hours bleed into days, which bleed into weeks and months. Time passes on a continuum that I have no control over and no grasp of.
I stare at the white walls, praying like I’ve never prayed before. I don’t understand who God is anymore or what my purpose on this earth could possibly be.
Twice a day, someone drops food outside of my cell before opening an eight-by-eight-inch door. The bowl sits there, filled with rice, beans, overcooked meat, along with a bruised banana occasionally. They never speak.
I grow accustomed to the bananas, looking forward to the days when they’re served in the mornings. I start to notice that every three days, a brown-and-yellow banana is in the little food window. I start laughing the day I realize there’s a pattern, shaking my head as I peel it.
The next time it comes, I catch myself mouthing, Thank you.
Thank you? What the fuck is wrong with me?
Then, the nightmares start. It’s been weeks, but I don’t know how many.
I’m only let out of the ten-by-ten-foot cell twice a week for thirty minutes. Two guards flank me as I’m shuffled into a small field, surrounded by a razor-wire fence. They’re both armed with guns and mounted on horses. There are three additional guards stationed on the exterior of the fence.
I run the entire thirty minutes, doing sprints back and forth. The expelling of energy seems to be the only thing that gets me through the next two to three days before I’m let out again.
Every time I’m put back in with gen pop, another group attacks me within a few days. I defend myself, and I’m put back in isolation.
I ask the guards if I can get books or something to write with in my cell, but they ignore me.
I ask them if I can talk to my lawyer, but they ignore me.
It doesn’t matter what I ask; they never answer.
I start fantasizing about killing them. One by one, in my dreams, I annihilate each one. First one, I have to take a rock and bash his head in. Once he falls from the horse, I grab his gun and shoot the next one.
It always ends the same. I wake up in a cold sweat in my empty cell, no sounds, except the rats in the hall scuttering about. I drop down and do one hundred push-ups. On a tiny divot in the rock wall, I can hold on long enough to get in forty-five pull-ups before I lose my grip.
I collapse onto the cold concrete, my heart rate skyrocketing. My mind races to latch on to a new fantasy to keep me occupied, to keep me grounded to reality.
Rosie Dixon’s face on the night I killed her uncle flashes through my mind. Her gaping mouth as she watched another woman going down on me is my last vibrant memory before I found my sister being violated by a man twelve years older than her. Then, I shot him, and I was arrested.
