Noah

July 9th 2014

"Hey, newbie!"

I tried my best not to look around. I hadn't been here very long, and already people were picking me out as the new kid. What made it worse was that I was bigger than quite a few of the others here, which made me a physical challenge.

I went and picked up my slop of food, and sat down at one of the tables, my back to the woman who had called me. It was no secret that she was one of the toughest around here- most of the other prisoners (and even some of the guards) stayed well away from her. Except, of course, for the thugs she had 'employed' to wipe her arse.

The table I sat at was empty except for a girl in her early twenties with short hair, more tattoos than I could count and a permanent scowl.

"You can't sit there." she said. I glanced around at the empty table.

"What, you saving the seat for someone?" I asked.

"No," she replied coldly. "I just don't want to be around you when Chloe gets to beatin' the shit out of you."

"Alright," I said, getting up with my tray. "Cheers."

I looked around, my eyes scanning the hall for another reasonably empty table. The only other free table was near the back, where a girl about my own age sat alone.

She was just under five foot, with a slight build, making her one of the smallest inmates, with a pair of thick glasses and a mess of acne scars clustered on her face. Her long blonde hair was pristine, despite waking up in a cell every morning.

I went and sat down at the table, dropping my tray of slops down.

The girl looked up briefly, then back down to her food, pushing it around the tray.

"Uh, hi." I said awkwardly. The girl looked up and tipped her head to the side slightly as though I were a complicated problem.

"Hello." she said, abruptly straightening her neck again so she was looking me in the eyes. I couldn't help but notice she had a black eye and a swollen cheek.

"What happened to your face?" I asked.

She shrugged, then glanced around nervously. "I don't get on well with the other inmates." she told me. "Easy target."

"Right." I said, suspecting I would find myself in a similar predicament soon. "What's your name?"

"Chris- Christen West." she said formally.

"Oh, I think you're my new cellmate." I said. "Number one-two-three, right?"

She nodded. "I know who you are." she said brightly. "You're Noah Wells. We don't get many new people around here. It's pretty quiet."

"People have been talking about me?" I asked.

"Yeah." Chris replied. "Especially that big girl, Chloe. I think she's imposed by you because you're the same size as her."

"How did you end up in here?" I asked, steering off the topic of Chloe, who I expected to confront me any day now.

The thing with prison was that it was like putting a pack of hungry wolves in a pen together. Everyone here was eager to prove she was the alfa male, and ran the place. Because it was an all female prison, Chloe was one of the biggest inmates. I wasn't too far behind though- and that made me a target.

"I set fire to a petrol station." Chris said. "Well, I set fire to quite a few things but they seemed most angry about the petrol station."

"You're in here for arson?" I asked skeptically. "I thought this was the sort of place they send murderers and terrorists, not arsonists."