"What a wicked game you played to make me feel this way."
Jo Jameson doesn't need help. At least that's what she tells everyone.
Following the disappearance of her best friend, she's made a lot of changes - be it from the hair dye or the...
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"How do you cope with it, how do you sleep with yourself at night?"
She dreamed the jumpsuits were pinstriped, not orange. The handcuffs dug into her wrist uncomfortably. Ever since she'd been tried and found guilty of playing a role in the death of Alison DiLaurentis, it was as if nothing was comfortable anymore. Not just handcuffs.
Wake up before the sun. Breakfast. Process the Linens. Spend the afternoon in the yard. Dinner. Lights out.
It was bland and mundane and so boring that she didn't want to make it to breakfast. But today was different.
After processing the linens for nearly a month, she had earned enough to make a call on the phones provided by the prison. Jo stood eagerly with the phone pressed to her ear, her fingers twirling and untwirling the cord around them.
It rang thrice before it picked up. "I'm surprised you're calling."
"You promised me an update." She insisted, ignoring her mother's unhappy tone. "I want to know how the transfer went."
It was silent for a moment. "Well, he made it to the prison."
"Thank God," Jo breathed, thumbing the cross tattoo on her forearm. In the months past, she had become weirdly religious. Praying like she never had before. With no one else there, God had become her only friend.
"But there was a riot. He didn't survive it."
"He didn't make it out alive?" It didn't process at first, not entirely anyway.
"No, Josephine," She could picture her mother pulling off her reading glasses to massage those eyes that had seemed ever so tired since she'd last visited. "Jason is dead."
But then it did, and she felt wounded. Ripped to shreds and smashed.
She sobbed loudly, horribly, grossly, not caring about the glares she got from other inmates trying to listen to their loved ones on the lines. Jo collapsed to the ground as her knees gave out, smacking her head painfully against the wall. Her wailing only hurt her face more, allowing the blood from her injured nose to run into her mouth. But none of that matter as she clutched the phone to her chest like her last lifeline.
She never got a goodbye, a final chapter to the story of them. And she never would. Somehow that felt worse than spending the rest of her life alone in a cement eight-by-ten.
If only she never agreed to that drink, never let him get so close to her in that garage. If only she'd been a better friend to Alison, never encouraged her antics, never went behind her back. Maybe, just maybe, the DiLaurentis family wouldn't have buried their children in plots meant for their elders. Maybe blonde hair and blue eyes wouldn't have become such a rarity in Rosewood.
