Proven Guilty (Treadmill III)

VII

Escaping from jail is difficult. That's probably why most people don't do it.

It requires a certain delusional confidence in specific abilities that you've never actually demonstrated in your lifetime. But they're abilities that you're positive you possess.

It also, more often than not, requires an accomplice. Rebecca had been my accomplice for months at that point, and why end a good thing?

'Good' is subjective there.

My entire life had been leading up to this moment, and I know how that sounds. It sounds like something that a morally bankrupt action hero says in the movie that's named after them, and they're usually a guy. That would explain the delusional confidence. But for me, I could pinpoint dozens of instances in my life that had prepared me for what I was about to do. That prepared me for who I was about to hurt.

I had already hurt too many people, and I didn't want to hurt anymore. But in order to ensure that more people didn't get hurt by the actions of Lydia and my father, I had to hurt two more people before everything was said and done. One of them knew that they were going to get hurt, and the other was blissfully unaware.

Although, I suppose I wouldn't call preparing to defend two accused murderers very blissful.

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December 30, 2020

2 Days Until the New Year

Kennedy Abrams was sitting in her cell.

It was something she did often. Being in jail and everything.

She stared at the wall in front of her when she sat in her cell, and that wall varied based on where she sat. At 10:02 in the morning on December 30, she was sitting on the ground, back straight against the wall to the left of her cell door; the door where she could see that other girl across the hall from her. Kennedy had seen her during meals sometimes. She was pretty sure she had heard one of the other women call her 'Nel.'

Nel's cell had a few things in it, from what Kennedy could see. Some pictures on the walls, scattered around in the haphazard way you throw your clothes from your bed to the floor when you need to sleep. There were dark markings on the wall parallel to the cell door that looked like they could be drawings, if you got closer.

I should ask one of the guards for a pen. Drawing sounds like fun.

Kennedy had never before thought the words 'drawing sounds like fun.'

Nel looked like she could be Kennedy's age. Maybe a few years older. She was the only other living, breathing human who Kennedy could see through her door every second of the day, so she had had ample time to study her.

She had a sleeve on her right arm, but she was never close enough to Kennedy so that she could make out the individual tattoos. Blonde hair, but straight and cropped—a stark difference from Kennedy's long, wavy—albeit messy—hair. Sometimes she wore glasses. Most of the time, she didn't. She was paler than almost anyone Kennedy had seen before, which made her wonder how long ago Nel had been legally allowed to tan by the side of a pool.

Kennedy had thought up a life for Nel while she sat in her cell. She had given her an entire, fabricated backstory, like one would do while creating a movie character. Not a real person. Kennedy had never seen Nel up close. She wasn't quite a 'real person.'

In Kennedy's mind, Nel was a 25-year-old artist who was trying to make it big. She had gone to the top art schools, whatever those were, but was struggling to make ends meet once she graduated. She sold a few paintings, but they never went for as high as she knew they were worth. She didn't have a family to fall back on, so she had started waiting tables to pay the bills. Jail had taken most of the imagination out of Kennedy. The starving-artist-waiting-tables-to-make-ends-meet cliché was played out, but she was tired. It was hard to think up backstories for people you had never met when you didn't have a creative bone in your body.