“The opposite.”
“Bullshit. You got another letter from that girl. One of them fancy schmancy colored envelopes. Don’t pretend like I didn’t see it, and don’t pretend like I won’t tell the guards if you don’t let me see that picture she sent you.”
“What picture?”
“I know she’s sent you a picture…had to have. And if you don’t hand it over right now so I can jack my shit to her then I’m turning you in.”
“So. You. Can. What?”
“You heard me. You been going to the toilets all day. Think I don’t know what you’re doing in there? Now pass the picture of that bitch up here so I can get some relief.”
I jump to my feet, grabbing him and jerking him down from the top bunk, and throw him to the concrete floor where I proceed to bash his face in.
The sirens wale and seconds later guards are entering our cell. Then it hits me. The picture.
I grab it, stuff it in my mouth and swallow it down whole, choking as the Billy clubs rain down on me.
It doesn’t matter. No one in here sees what’s mine but me. I can take the punishment to keep her away from these animals, even if it’s only so much as a picture of her. But a picture of her means everything.
Yet what I didn’t mean to do was what I just realized I might have done, what’s probably too late.
My parole hearing is now jeopardized with a fight on my record, and this will get written down.
The CO’s continue to wail on me and I don’t resist. I just need to take it, so I can get out of here.
Because I can’t take one more second of being away from my Little Girl.
“Daddy’s coming, angel,” I say softly.
“Shut the fuck up!” one guard yells, just before his thick polycarbonate stick makes contact with my skull and everything goes dark.
8
Josi
The end of the school year is rapidly approaching, including prom, and I haven’t heard from James for weeks.
Maybe I was too aggressive with the Daddy talk in my last message. Maybe he found another pen pal if pen pal is the right word. To me, we were so much more.
I’d never planned on going to prom, but silly little me had this strange idea that maybe he’d get out of prison and take me there. Yeah, I’d completely lost it and reality had set back in. How could someone in a maximum security federal prison be released at the drop of a hat? It makes no sense…or does it?
Knowing that I am indeed crazy I grab my phone and look through what I can from James’ case again. The lack of evidence. The aggressive prosecutor who was up for re-election. The fact that James was an orphan and had no one in his corner to stick up for him. Not only that but I’m not sure how much D.N.A. was being used back then. Throw in the fact that he’d seen another woman in the area where the blazes started and it just seems like too little ‘evidence’ was brought against this man. My man. My Daddy.
Why can’t I shake him like he’s seemingly shaken me? Maybe it’s because after eighteen years of feeling like an outcast finally came to a screeching halt after just a few letters were exchanged between us.
Was he just telling me what I wanted to hear? Maybe, but I don’t think so.
Was he invested in what we were doing or since I was providing the postage paid return envelopes was I just a form of free entertainment for him? I doubt it.
Maybe he saw my picture and didn’t like how I looked? That would be the obvious thought, but I’m still holding out hope that that’s not it. He mentioned the mix-up in the mail from the beginning. Had they caught the error and now he didn’t get my letter?
I pull up his picture from when he was sixteen and just stare at it. Those eyes flash honesty, and I trust this man even though I might be a fool for thinking so.
Since I don’t have friends, which gives me a lot of free time to read, I’m pretty good at school. It’s basically just memorization after all. Now it’s time for a real education. Real thinking. This is life and death, not to mention I don’t want to spend time looking at colleges I’m not interested in just because my stepdad keeps shoving the idea down my throat.
A lump catches in my throat at the thought of losing James, and I pull out my specially wrapped Starbucks grinds I bought at the beginning of my senior year. I’ve only used them twice so far when I had to stay up for important tests. But now? It’s time to call on the energy they can give me for a third time…lucky number three.
Because I felt like the luckiest girl in the world when I found James. And now it’s time to find out what in the world’s going on with him.