"Thirlwall! Get up and cuff up!" A loud voice yelled. I groaned, rolling out of bed regardless. Normally when a correctional officer yells for you to get up in the middle of the night it's to tell you to gather up all of your shit because you're moving to a new cell or a whole new facility, but the CO wouldn't tell you to cuff up.
Half asleep, I put my hands through the rectangular slot and felt the familiar feeling of metal handcuffs wrap around my wrists. After I pulled my hands back into my cell, the distinct sound of a buzz rang through the pod and the door to my cell opened.
Now, I'm not exactly sure what time it is or how long I had been sleeping, but either I was really tired and I was seeing double or there were in fact 2 people standing before me. I blinked a little harder to wake myself up a bit more to find a CO that definitely had it in for me and a small blonde girl who looked absolutely terrified. She was dressed in the same disgusting blue shirt and pants I was in, holding a bag and her mattress as best as she could with her hands cuffed together in front of her. Great.
In my entire first year of being locked up, I didn't have a roommate. Or cellmate. And I fucking loved it. Nobody was around to bother me or touch my stuff or generally piss me off.
"Meet your new cellmate Thirlwall," the CO grumbled before yelling for the door of the cell to be closed. The blonde girl stumbled in, dropping everything she was holding in the doorway. I rolled my eyes at her. She's clearly new.
The officer kept the slot open on the door and signaled for us to put our hands in to get rid of the restraints. The blonde girl was stumbling over all of her stuff so I just pushed past her and had the CO take off my cuffs first. The blonde girl still looked completely frazzled and it took her a second to move and actually get the handcuffs off. I shook my head and went to lay back down and go to sleep, but the blonde girl spoke before I could.
"Hi, um, I'm Perrie," she said, sticking out her hand for me to shake. I raised my eyebrow at her and she put her hand down.
"Jade. Top bunk is yours, don't touch my shit and I'm going back to sleep now," I said, turning around and laying back down on my bunk. With my eyes closed, I could hear her shuffling around, trying to put her matress on the bunk on top of mine and put away all of her hygiene items as quietly as she could (which wasn't very quiet). I could faintly feel her step on my bed to boost herself up to the top one.
Just as I was about to fall asleep, Perrie started making noise again. Except this was far more annoying. She was sniffling, and those sniffles were loud.
"Perrie, not to be mean or anything, but you should probably shut up and sleep. We get up at 6 here and it's not exactly pleasant." I said, keeping my eyes closed. Perrie coughed and muttered a small apology. Thankfully the rest of the night was uneventful.
~~~~~~~~~~
Not even one whole day into Perrie being my cellmate did I find another issue with sharing a cell.
"Um Jade?" I hummed back. "I need to uh, I need to pee." I looked up from my book to find Perrie sitting at her "desk" with a sort of pained expression on her face.
"Well you can either hold it for the next," I glanced at the clock, "hour and a half when we're let out for tier time or you can suck it up and go now," She looked at the toilet/sink as if in debate before standing up.
"Can you look away?" She asked nervously. I sighed but rolled over on my bed so I couldn't see her.
"You know blondie, you're going to have to get used to things like that." she finished doing her business and started washing her hands so I turned back over to face her, "Weren't you strip searched on your way in here? I think that's far worse than taking a piss." she shook her head as she dried her hands.
