The Innocents

Chapter Eighteen

I had been correct in my earlier assumptions about Mrs. Warren.

On the outside was this contained, polite person, but on the inside she was honing this very real hate for you. She did it all underhand, nit picking and relaying info to Warden Games which almost always resulted in something getting banned for a short period of time. Miles wasn't that observant and I knew this because of what he had let Marla and I do. I kept my distance from her.

Jo was slipping further into herself. It was one of those things that felt like she was aging backwards and soon she'd wake up one day an infant wailing for a nipple. Anyhow, she told us all a story about creatures called Waggles that only came out at night. According to her, they protected us from the basement monsters that were once girls from the prison like Lena whose soul had been corrupted by the Devil and ultimately tried to eat us. Which I guess any dead person with a superiority complex would do. She drew them to look like those big weirdos from Where the Wild Things Are but shrunk when daytime came and lived on our eyelashes. Even I found myself wiping my eyes more often than not.

One day her drawing had disappeared and we spent over an hour trying to locate it before finding it in shreds in one of the bathroom trash cans. I have to say this and this is probably the only time that I trusted in something that Gladey had told us. She said that Mrs. Warren had taken in when we were in the showers. She said it was because Jo had given away her pudding the day before and giving away food was.... when every other words fails.... banned.

Jo cried which made Fidola cry and soon I feared the whole ward would be sobbing and we'd all end up in an ocean of tears like Alice had when she had grown too big to fit through the door in the rabbit hole. I had to do something before that happened so I took the torn up drawing and Jo, half dragging her, to the craft room. By that time, she was wailing so hysterically that I couldn't concentrate on what I was doing. After a few minutes, I found a teeny bottle of gold glitter glue and laid out the pieces of her drawing on the table there. Then I told her to sit.

She plopped down limply into the chair looking like a melted snowman. Her face was wet and her eyes were the color of Mrs. Krenshaw's office.

"We can fix this easy enough," I told her, already beginning to glue the pieces. "The Japanese pour gold into the cracks of things like bowls and vases because they believed that just because something was broken didn't mean that it wasn't still usable. By adding gold to the spaces, it made the item ten times more valuable."

She listened to this, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her jumpsuit. I continued.

"In this philosophy, we are better people for our cracks because we can fill them with happy memories-gold-and that makes us beautiful. See. Everything is okay."

I told her about the book The Outsiders and I summed up the whole story with the one phrase I thought was fitting for this moment. Stay gold. I wasn't exactly sure what the meaning behind it was for the book, since I had read it a long time ago, but I think our meaning was far better.

Well, there is what you hope will happen and then there is what actually happens.

Jo became detached so much that everyone in the ward began to notice. It was like having sunlight every day and then suddenly you have nothing but gray ugly skies with a threat of rain. That was how it felt and we all knew that lack of sun feeling literally which was why we understood.

By this time Miles and I were on a first name basis which I guess was weird at first, but we only did it when nobody else was around. Anyhow, I asked him for a favor which I shouldn't have because I had nothing to offer him in return, but I'm the type to try even when the odds are against me. He liked me. I knew this and I knew that taking advantage of this wasn't selfish because I wasn't doing it for me.