CHAPTER 1

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Submitted Date 10/30/2018
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Chapter 1:

There is a youngish guard – maybe a year or two younger than me. No wedding ring. Long hair pulled back tightly into a discreet “man-bun” at the base of his head. He had undoubtedly struggled to preserve that hair. If the warden hadn’t tried to make him cut it, his mother surely had at some point.

I am tapping my pencil against the ice-cold table.

He looks like the type of kid who listens to his mother, though. So, I imagine him calmly and respectfully arguing with his boss about keeping his hair. I know this because I read the employee handbook about haircuts and such.

In preparation for visiting the prison, I read just about everything I could find on the topic. The way my uncle used his charm and blue eyes, I used my research. Always armed and at the ready.

This, among other reasons, is why I am annoyed with this kid. I did not ask for his help or his sympathy. Or, whatever it is. I did not ask and I do not want it.

He intermittently attempts to catch my eye. He is cute in a boyish way that is sort of endearing in the uniform. I imagine it’s his first month or first week. But, that’s just me. I am always imagining something.

He is asking: “You OK?” without speaking.

I have honed two skills in my life; writing and avoiding eye contact and they come as a package. He can tell I am avoiding his eyes. His brow furrows and he says, “You do not belong here…” silently, again.

Everything in this place looks like it is built to withstand the apocalypse.

I slowly move my eyes methodically around the room without resting them anywhere. When I get to him, I just look through him and continue to look until my eyes rest upon the tiny window. (The idea is that if it is fluid enough people think you were just glancing past them and missed them looking.)

He is staring at me so hard for so long that I begin to wonder if he recognizes me but then remember that I have dyed my hair and I am wearing the ridiculous cat eye glasses my best friend had bought for her Halloween costume and then let me borrow when I decided on this crazy plan of mine. It is possible - but not likely – that he does know who I am.

My heart slows back down. I relax both elbows against the tinny slab in front of me and set my left cheek on the tops of my hands. It smells like a bag of nickels.

My mind drifts…

They say the fire was an out of control blaze by the time the firemen made it out to the rural cabin where they were holding the reunion. It was too late to salvage anything, least of all the humans inside. So, they burned up right along with the cheap furniture and bad artwork. I do not know if they were sound asleep, or passed out, or wide awake, but the presumption is that they went peacefully in their sleep and that is what I like to accept as true.

As a kid, I liked to visualize that they were carried away by the smoke. It soothed me.

Suddenly, Ray’s booming voice lurches me back into the present.

My first and only thought is: “strange man.” I am taken back by how much he looks like my mother when he grins. I notice his arms are wrapped in the tattoos that I remember from childhood, plus more.

His is such a blunt, truthful, stunning statement that even I, “Jaded Jo” as my friends call me, am silenced for a moment:

“You don’t belong here,” he declares - but he is smiling.

I want to say: “Then, where the do I belong? I was born addicted to drama and feigned for it from an early age. Like crack babies scream and cry from withdrawals, writhing in their cribs, I desperately reached out with every limb toward a burning, turning, frightening world desperate to fling myself face first into whatever hysteria and chaos I could get my tiny hands on. You have to know that. So, how can it possibly surprise you to see me here today?”

I do not say that. I reach for a pen and my notepad in my shopping bag that I sometimes use for notebooks and pens. “I want the story.”

“I have been waiting on you even though I hoped you would never come. I knew you would want to know.” I am uncomfortable with how relaxed he is around me. “You have come for answers but I do not have anything new to tell you than what you already know.”

“The story where you destroyed my entire family and life? That’s the right story?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.”

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