Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 20: A Vendetta in Visitation

Girdle has me wait in the hallway while she and another guard sweep the visitor's room. There are two other girls waiting with me. One of them is Vapor.

"I'm gonna see my baby!" she grins. "We're gonna run that tattoo shop together one day. She's in kindergarten, just starting to learn her letters. Her hand isn't too steady yet but it will be. Once she learns cursive I'll have her start on calligraphy, so she gets really good at swirls and shit. Lots of people like tattoos like that. She already likes drawing roses, I'll make her practice those more, too. And shamrocks... anchors.... compasses and things like that..." Vapor's blue-white eyes go misty.

"My baby's name is Laureline. When I get out of here and can give her a sibling, name's either gonna be Dorian or Coraline." She nudges my shoulder, hard. "See? Told you I read."

The other girl is there to see a boyfriend. She's front of the line and can see Mike through the small window, apparently, because she says, "Oooh, I like yours better," to me.

"He's not my boyfriend," I tell Vapor, who scratches at a spot on her chin, curiously. "We're just friends."
"Friends don't visit prison," she warns me. "They pretend like you're traveling and when you get back they're wary of you and they hide their valuables, no matter what you went in for – even if it wasn't stealin'. Good thing is, you never get asked to babysit any more."

I must look confused, because then she says: "Oh I like my kid just fine. She's a gorgeous little genius who shit rainbows. It's other brats I don't want to look after."

I hear a kid whining as Garda Girdle re-enters the room.

"Jessica, Leslie, you know the rules. I'm restating for Josephina's benefit since she's new. There are glass partitions between your visitors and you. You will speak over a phone, if you raise your voice you lose visiting privileges. If you slam, break, rattle, throw the phone et cetera you lose visiting privileges. Your call may be monitored. Don't say anything you wouldn't say in front of me, your mom, or God."

I hate that Mike checks her out when we enter.

Objectively, I understand it: Garda Girdle's pretty hot. Plucked, painted, and polished, she looks like Dita von Teese in a prison guard's costume. But she's made my life so difficult, been so unnecessarily rude to me, that I can no longer see her as beautiful.

"Jos!"

Mike looks better than I remember him, and I can tell from his surprised expression that I look worse. He's combed his hair, smoothed it down and to the side, like he's going to a funeral or church. I know I brushed mine this morning, but it's been up and down and up and then shaken out of a ponytail again so many times that I doubt it still looks nice...

(He's also never seen me without my eyebrows brushed and my eyelashes curled. I wish, at the very least, I was wearing chapstick and I'm not even a full-face of makeup kind of girl!)

"Hey," I say, feeling my eyes immediately well up and wondering how many other people have streamed snot and tears onto this phone. I hover it next to my face to try and avoid the germs.

"You look rough," Mike says, being his usual bluntly-honest self. "How are you holding up?"

"I've got six months," I admit, relishing the way his face falls with shock. "Yeah, it's not so bad but that's a long sentence, considering..."

Considering I have to do it alone, and I shouldn't.

It was his idea! He should be in here with me!

"I feel terrible," he says. "Have they let you use your commissary?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

"I heard twenty bucks in there is like a million, right? Everything's dirt cheap, you probably feel super rich. I mean, even more than normal."

He's wrong, and it annoys me, but I don't correct him. He sent me twenty bucks and thinks we're even? I know my anger is misplaced – I chose to steal the fireworks, too, I went along with it, dumbly – but I'm seething. Seeing him clean and normal and kind of excited, like he thinks visiting jail for a day is a fun bucket-list excursion, makes my blood boil. I remember how he looked at Garda Girdle and wonder what he'll tell the kids at school about her:

It's not even that bad! The guards are hot as shit! And you can get anything in commissary, for like, pennies! She's basically in camp for six months, and then it's not like she really did anything that bad, anyway. She'll still be able to get a job! People will still date her!

"You replaced me yet?" asks Mike. "Made any new friends?"
"It feels like high school again. They've got cliques."

"Any of them being bad influences?" Mike smirks. He was always the one getting us into trouble. He looks at Vapor, and I think I sense a little jealousy behind his smile.

I decide to tell him about Shiv, first. I let him know she's sort of the ring leader in here, she's shown me all the ropes, taught me every jail secret I know. I didn't plan on doing it, but I even tell him about talking the bowl.

"I'm sorry what?" he says.

"I know. That was my reaction too! We write little notes and send them through the toilets."

"So it's Toilet Tinder," Mike says, smirking. "But what if you don't like the guys in above you?"

"That's why you have to hope for the best room. And I've got it."

"You found someone already?"

I relish the tension in his voice. Is he jealous?
"The best someone," I tease him. "The one everyone else wants."

"Have you got a price on your head, then?" Mike wriggles his eyebrows suggestively, showing fake concern. "All the other girls want to off you to get at him?"
"Maybe. But he's got special privileges," I exaggerate. "He's allowed to roam outside of his floor, doing chores and stuff. But if anyone started shit, he'd protect me."

Unlike you, I mean.

I want Mike to think I'm doing just fine in jail, that I'm happier in here without him, that I don't even need his commissary charity because I've got a way cooler, more powerful boyfriend on the inside. It's dumb and petty and juvenile and the feminist in me doesn't want to pit men against each other, making them vie for the chance to protect me, but –

"Guess I'm glad you finally found someone," Mike says. "Can't hang around me forever."