A Perfect World

Chapter 6

I don’t see my friends at breakfast, but I wasn’t really expecting to, since A) This is jail we’re in, and B) I’m the newcomer, so I don’t know where they sit yet. I wander around for a while, not wanting to take chances with whatever oily slime they were calling food to serve today. For a little while, I don’t see anyone and consider choking down the sludge they have, as opposed to starving, when suddenly someone hugs me tightly from behind. I immediately recognize the person as Claire and wiggle around in her embrace to hug her back.

“Morning, sunshine,” Jaydia says, appearing from the crowd, with Meg holding onto her wrist. Claire was smiling warmly, letting go of me and laughing. Next to Meg and Jaydia, Dan and Ty appear out of the crowd of people as well.

“Morning, guys,” I say, Claire’s infectious grin tugging at my mouth, “What was that for?” I say with a slight chuckle to my little sister.

“Do what? Give you a hug after I hadn’t seen you in months? I missed you!”

“Missed is an overwhelming understatement,” Meg adds nonchalantly

“Claire talked about you all day, every day since the day we met each other until you got here.”

“I did not!” Claire says loudly, drawing strange glances from other people.

“Yeah, you did!” Ty adds with a lopsided grin.

“C’mon, you gotta give her some credit. She did stop talking during meals and roll call.” Jaydia says, trying to hide her smile.

“You really missed me?” I say with a soft, sincere smile playing at my mouth.

“Of course I did!” Claire says, throwing her arms around me in a tight hug again.

“Alright guys, let’s eat, ” Ty says, interpreting Dan’s silent speech for us.

“Yeah, let’s. I’m hungry.” I say, a small grin still stuck on my mouth.

I follow the group through the crowd, and past the morning guards, most of which are still groggy, and only partially awake, making our job easy. Meg leads us to a back room, the door locked and tightly closed.

“I thought you left it open, Jaydia?” Meg says in a hushed whisper.

“I did. A guard must have closed it.”

“Let me see. Does anybody have a couple bobby pins?” I say, slipping through them to the front, right next to the door. Jaydia and Claire both pull a pin out of their hair and hand them to me. One I bend into a right angle, and the other into a curved bit, and bending a piece at the end so it’s at about a 45° angle to the rest of the pin. I pop them into their places in the lock and it opens easily in about 25 seconds.

“You still remember how to do that?” Claire says, raising one eyebrow at me, a skill I had never learned, nor ever cared to.

“Of course I do. It’s hard to forget something you did every other day for 3 years.”

“True.” Is all she says, before we all file into the little room, propping the door open behind us. A light clicks on, and the room around us appears. It’s a small, cool closet, filled with crates, some propped open the tiniest bit. With Ty’s help, Dan points out where everything is before we split off and find whatever we want. I find a nice, fresh loaf of french bread, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. I hunt around for a bowl, before settling on a tall-lipped plate. I splash a little bit of oil and vinegar onto it and dip bits of bread into it and eating them while looking around for anything else. I find a pack of beef jerky and some dried jalapeno chips, both of which I eat quickly, but not at a stupidly fast speed. After about 5 minutes, Claire drags me back to the door, where everyone else is already waiting for us.