A cell phone starts ringing from the pile on the carpet and he sends a fragile arm, bending down to answer it. I’d pick it up for anyone else, but not for him. I stand, tall, young, proud, and watch him flailing his arms while leaning one hip downwards miserably, struggling to pick it up.
“Now, now,” he says, waving his cane in the direction of the entrance, finally gluing the phone to his ear. “I have some wedding arrangements to discuss. Off you go. Oh, and Nathaniel? Don’t switch teams. Ours is awfully powerful.” He winks before I shut the door behind me.
Bastard.
I spend my time reading his diary, holding the red notebook at an angle that allows a ray of sun to trickle through a crack in the boarded windows. Yellow light sheds over the pages. I’m getting to know Nate. Getting to like Nate. It’s horrible, to feel positively about your captor. But I do. Can’t help not to. He is broken, just like me. Life has fed him heartbreak, just like it fed me.
DECEMBER 25TH, 2010
“THE HEART WAS MEANT TO BE BROKEN” – OSCAR WILDE
Christmas Day.
Frank heard the news about my mom’s death through the grapevine. He visits me in my cell. Brings in candy bars and Top Ramen. Pedro’s eyeing the sweets like they are f*cking Megan Fox. He’s been trying to land himself a spot in ad-seg to get a shot of the good stuff. Again.
“Crack already, boy,” the old man grunts, punching me in the shoulder.
“Yell. Curse. Break shit. Your mother just died. She was a good woman.”
I agree. She was the best. Right after I killed my dad, she threw herself at the police officers’ feet, begging for them to take her and not me.
“Need a shoulder to cry on?”
I sniff an arrogant “No.”
He leaves, but not before he shoves a few stamps into my orange uniform. “Get yourself something nice, Nathan—I mean, Nate.”
I throw the Ramen noodles against the wall and watch the slimy strings crawl downwards like worms. My throat constricts with emotions, and not the good kind. Never the good kind.
“You’re a weird kid.” I hear Pedro rolling over on his bunk bed. “Let me know if you get the shits again. I really need those meds.”
JANUARY 3RD, 2010
“FRIENDS ARE THE SIBLINGS GOD NEVER GAVE US” (MENCIUS)
I arrive back at the exercise yard after being MIA since news broke about Mamá.
Godfrey and his crew sit at a picnic table, eyeing me like a moving target. Seb grins and pats the bench in a silent invitation. I ignore him and go straight to Frank.
The old man’s there with Stockton’s old schoolers. They’re standing in the corner, rolling up cigarettes and swearing at no one in particular. Frank flashes his false teeth with a rusty “Hello.”
“Yeah,” I say, snatching the cigarette from his hand, even though I’m not a smoker. He tilts his chin down. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, I need a shoulder to cry on.”
And that night, I bawl my f*cking eyes out for hours on a shoulder I used to think belonged to a veteran pirate.
FEBRUARY 3RD, 2010
“AGE IS A CASE OF MIND OVER MATTER. IF YOU DON’T MIND, IT DON’T MATTER” (SATCHEL PAIGE)
I’m in the cafeteria when Frank shows up, slapping backs as he strides along the lengthy benches. Good mood is playing on his face. When he sits next to me, I find out why. Frank got me a gift for my twenty-second birthday. A paperback of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. The irony tickles my lips with unfamiliar laughter. I haven’t laughed in a long time, but getting a prisoner a book about freedom is pretty dope.
The book is bent and you can see it’s been rolled up for hours when it was smuggled in.
No one’s given me a birthday gift since I was eight.
I cry a little on the inside, but on the outside, I let out a yawn.
He hooks my neck in a headlock and my cheek crushes against his saggy chest as he ruffles my messy dark hair.
“Fucking brat. I know you wanted this more than wet *.”
“How?” My fingers dig hard into the book. It feels like home in my palm. Like it belongs there. His friend Sergio gives me an odd look, his eyebrows pop in surprise.
“He a fag?” he enquires, jerking his thumb in my direction. Frank shakes his head and pats my back. “He’ll grow up to break bones and hearts in equal measure. Hey, Nathan—Nate,” he says with a cluck of his tongue and gives me his peach. I love peaches, so I take it. “The correctional officer? Officer Bouscher? Beth?”
I stare at him blankly. I know Beth.
“She wants to f*ck your brains out. Know how you talk to her about poetry and shit?”
“It’s not poetry, it’s fiction.” My wry voice is clipped. Which only sends Frank into a fit of even crazier hoots.
“Poetry, fiction, the goddamned weather. Don’t matter, pretty boy. She doesn’t give a damn. When you talk, when she watches your lips move, all she thinks about is how they’d feel on her lips. And I ain’t talking about the ones on her face.”
This makes the old schoolers cackle like hyenas.
I’m not a virgin. I had plenty of sex before coming here, with so many girls I can’t even try to count. Everywhere I go, women ogle me, slip their numbers into my pocket and send their giggling friends to stutter some bullshit about how they never do this. Which is why I’ve never been overly occupied with women in the first place. One never appreciates what he has in spades.