The Innocents

Chapter Twenty

Jackson visited for the first time approximately seventy-five days since I arrived at The Iron Rose.

The first time was awkward. He looked like a scared puppy at first. If he had floppy ears, they'd be flat against this head. He was wearing a cable knit sweater and khakis and his dark hair was combed over to one side of his head. He looked so normal. He looked like he always did.

I wanted to collapse into his arms but we had a table between us and they had brought in extra guards because of the nature of our relationship. I didn't ask what had taken him so long. Maybe because I didn't want to hear the excuses. Denial is a wonderful thing.

He told me that he had applied to one of those really elusive private colleges and I thought it was wonderful news. He nodded and didn't speak any more of it. He was sparing me. I appreciated it because the college was on my short list after my two years were up at prep. Hearing the name made me sad. He said that his parents didn't know that he was here. I wanted to ask what had happened to them, but I didn't want to be rude and he didn't offer the information so I let it drop.

Jackson's parents had always looked at me a little crookedly. That girl with baggy band t-shirts and dirty Converse would never suffice for their, sweet, golden child. Their looks always said it: He deserved someone more refined. Someone who didn't know how to belch the National Anthem. I don't have many notable talents. To them, I was a stray puppy that he had picked up off the street. I guess now they're giving a different look to Jackson. The one that says, "I told you so."

We were both trying really hard to be normal. I knew it would take time for the both of us to adjust to this. I told him that I was all right and that things weren't as bad as they seem in the movies. He joked that I was going to come out with a MOM tattoo and a scar from being shanked in the shower for my shampoo. We had a laugh that lasted about a minute. He said he liked my hair short and I said did too. He offered to send me books which I said it was all right because my father was already going to do that and I didn't want to seem greedy.

Then he asked if I was okay. It was one of those really in depth questions that deserve such an immense answer unless you say, yes, I'm okay which would be a lie seventy-five percent of the time and you know it. Unless you just won the lottery or banged some famous person. In that event, you're totally right to say that you're okay because in that instance, you're fucking stellar.

I tell him that I'm okay.

"I'm not dead," I tell him. "I still have my limbs and my sanity, for the most part."

He lingered on the last part with incredulity.

"I spend a lot of time thinking of ways to escape," I admited soft enough for only him to hear. "I mean, we're allowed to roam the prison like we're just here for a stay. Like some freaking hotel. There are ways to get around the guards. Most of them don't even care what you do half of the time. Some of them are kinda prone to outbursts. It's a little scary. There's one girl who thinks this is, like, some sort of pride of lions and she's Mufasa. She is really cruel so she's more like Scar."

"Stay safe, Drew," he told me. "You don't belong here. Don't give them a reason to keep you longer than you have."

"Yea," I said. "I am part of the criminal element now."

"You still don't belong here."

"Someday I'm going to make a lot of money and use it to sue him. Then he'll be the one in a heavy orange jumpsuit eating mystery meat and showering with forty other people."

"How are you going to make a lot of money, Drew?"

There was something harsh in his words and he shook his head to shake it free.

"Sometimes I feel like a normal person and other times I feel like I'm in somebody else's body, living their unlucky life and one morning I'll wake up and I'll me again and I'll have a paper due and Faye will call me and tell me all about the new guy she met. I'd take a long shower and be able to look at myself and not see some sort of alien staring back. I'll worry about grades and whether or not I'm getting enough vitamin C and cleaning my coffee maker and all of those mundane things that made up my life. Now I worry about screaming in the middle of the night and waking everybody up and having to do extra duty because I wanted another pudding cup and seeing this therapist who thinks I'm a fucking child with a post traumatic stress and issues with authority and this girl who thinks I'm her mother because I told her about her period. I can't deal, Jackson. I'm not okay."

Our time was up. I grabbed his hand under the plastic keeping the roses clean and held as long as I could before a guard came and told him to leave. We stood up and were allowed to hug. His arms were like home. I didn't want to leave them.

"You think that I'm so brave," I said to him. People around us were saying their good-byes. Someone's little sister was crying.

"You are," he replied. "I'll bring you roses every time to show you as much."

I hold back tears and say good-bye one last time. I watch him leave the room. I'm ordered to stay since they have to search us before we go back to our respected wards. After that's done, I head back to the Thorn and this is where I finally get to tell you why we called it that.

Rebecca was one of those people that you forget the moment you see them. She didn't do anything worthy of remembering, kept her nose out of trouble. Campy with vacant eyes and dirty blonde hair. She looked like she could be pretty if she had a little makeup and the tools to pluck the eyebrows that bordered on a uni. She had really deep smile creases which made her look like she was always smirking.

I walked by her on my way to my bunk. I didn't notice her watching me, but she must have been because she knew exactly where I put the flowers. We weren't allowed to have them for more than a few days and since I didn't have a vase, I took the tops off and set the heads in the middle of the hardcover version of Dante's Inferno and slammed it shut. This is a way of preserving them so they don't break apart when they're dried out and you can't hang onto them if you're sentimental like that.

I had thrown away the stems in the trash bin by the Fish Bowl. Mrs. Warren was on duty. She had some bizarre, foreign rap playing so I fashioned some earplugs out of pieces of cotton ball in plastic wrap from the muffins they serve at breakfast and tied it with a rubber band so that I could pull it at the loose end when I wanted to take them out. I'd pretend that they were headphones and closing my eyes to the music of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, basically the most impressive piece of classical music that I have ever heard. Listen to it. I am sure you will feel the same if you're into that sort of thing.

Picture this: I am sitting on my bunk, earplugs in and feeling pretty sordid about poor Isolde whose love affair with the knight Tristan ended up in a tragedy reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet except in this story, Isolde didn't fall for Tristan as rapidly as Juliet did though their love did result in the deaths of more than a few people. Well, through all of this, Rebecca strolled up to the Fish Bowl and it looked to me like she had fallen against it with her arms raised and was sliding down like she was in an elevator. When she fell to the floor, we all saw the streaks of red on the glass. It looked like paint. I jumped from my bunk, as we all did and watched Mrs. Warren go to Rebecca's side and seemed to be calling for help through the little radio on her shoulder. More guards rushed in. There was chaos for about three minutes as they wrapped her wrists and carried her out of the ward.

As all of this happened, Wagner's tale in song of death and fates flooded my ears like a deluge and humming beneath my skin. I sat back into my bunk, my knees pulled up to my chest resisting the urge to scream.