“Something happened when I was sixteen…it was really bad,” Levi said as he turned to look at me. My gut tightened as I realized what he was talking about.
“I don’t want to tell you about it now, but it…” He shook his head and dropped his eyes. “It changed everything.”
I wanted so badly to tell him I knew what he was talking about, but not only would telling him confirm I’d been lying to him from day one about who I was, I still didn’t know for sure that he didn’t have plans to go after Seth.
“I dropped out of school because it just didn’t seem important anymore. I was failing a lot of my classes anyway. I tried to save up enough money to get away from Ricky and my dad, but it was hard. And then I got arrested and went to prison.” Levi paused briefly before saying, “I thought I knew what to expect. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I was so fucking clueless.”
A good minute passed before he continued.
“I was raped in the showers the day after I arrived. The guy who did it decided to make me his play thing. It went on for a few weeks. I actually thought the guards would help me if I told them what was happening. I didn’t realize we were no better than animals and as long as we didn’t turn on them, they turned a blind eye to everything else.”
I closed my hand around Levi’s and watched as he played with our fingers, linking and unlinking them.
“Gun found out I went to the guards. He let a bunch of guys take turns with me and then he used the handle of a broom to…”
I didn’t even bother to try and stop the tears that fell as I pulled Levi’s fingers up to my mouth and pressed kisses against them.
“I thought for sure I was going to die,” Levi whispered. “I was so fucking relieved,” he added. “But then I woke up in the infirmary and I knew it wasn’t over. I knew I deserved it for what I’d done, but I was a coward. I couldn’t take it. I started making plans to hang myself when they returned me to my cell.”
“Levi,” I said brokenly as I cradled his hand against my chest.
“But they didn’t take me back to my cell. They put me in with this guy named Hank. I was so fucking scared because the guards wouldn’t let me cover up my tattoo with a Band-Aid like I always had before I’d gone to prison. Even though Gun and his guys did what they did, they also protected me because there were all these different gangs in prison. I guess they saw me as their pet and didn’t want to lose me to a rival gang. The tattoo was like this neon sign that I couldn’t escape. Anyway, the guy they put me in a cell with, Hank, was black.”
I stilled at that and braced myself for the worst.
“I knew when they put me in there, that I wouldn’t have to worry about figuring out how to hang myself. But Hank…”
Levi shook his head and then, to my surprise, he smiled. “Hank was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“How so?” I asked.
“He was the one who found me in the shower after Gun and his guys left me lying there on the floor. Hank got me help and then he convinced the warden to put me in with him.”
“How?” I asked. “Inmates don’t have that kind of power.”
Levi shook his head. “Hank was...I don’t even know how to explain it. He had a lot of respect, I guess. From the guards and the gangs alike. He wasn’t an ordained priest, but he’d been studying the Bible for a long time, so he became like a spiritual leader, I suppose. The guy who was the leader of one of the larger gangs, Jasper, respected Hank and he made sure he was always protected. The guards and warden liked that Hank could keep the peace for the most part…most of the gangs saw him as a man of the cloth, even though he wasn’t officially one. I guess that’s why the warden agreed to his request. Hank took pity on me and, despite the tattoo, he convinced Jasper to extend his protection to me, too. No one laid a hand on me after that. Not Jasper, not his men, not Gun.”
He paused before saying, “I didn’t deserve any of it, but I took it just the same. As bad as things were, I didn’t really want to die and I knew that was what would happen if Gun or any of the other gangs got to me.”
Levi lifted his eyes. “Hank was proof that my father was wrong. The color of a person’s skin isn’t the measure of who they are. I wanted the tattoo gone with a passion after that. I never wanted someone to compare me to Ricky and my father ever again. I share blood with them, but nothing else. When I got out of prison, I went to talk to a tattoo artist about removing it, but it was so expensive that I knew it would be a while before I could afford it. I searched for alternative ways to remove it on the Internet, which is where I saw the thing about oven cleaner, but I wasn’t that desperate at the time since I could just keep it covered.”