Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 11: I'm Getting Out

I don't meet the table of girls under the window. I listen when Shiv's talking – about Kristina Kelly, and the bowl, and her college boyfriends – but not really.

My arraignment's tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, I keep telling myself. I'm getting out in the afternoon, tomorrow.

Probably.

I barely eat. I don't drink enough water. What's the point? I'll be out in a couple of hours and all of this will just feel like a bad dream... It's not like I need to settle in or get used to things. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow it'll all be behind me...

Every time I see a guard I make eye contact, hopefully. Hoping they're coming to tell me my parents are on the phone, ready to apologize for scaring me, for letting me get locked up, for not bailing me out sooner.

Maybe I'll even hear from Mike's family! They could pledge their fealty, too, I'd love to have their eternal loyalty for taking the fall for their son...

Not that I'm not responsible for my actions. I know I was in the wrong – but was it go to jail wrong? Shiv committed identity fraud! The girl in the cell next to us has a tear drop tattoo that I'm pretty sure means she murdered someone! I understand my parents want to scare me straight but surely one meal of jerry-rigged jail potatoes (Shiv says they're made of paper pulp and I can't tell if she's joking) is enough?

My parents leaving me in here isn't turning me into a better person, it's just breaking my heart. The second I realized my parents aren't going to call me, weren't going to answer my phone call, I realized: I've never been shown loyalty. Not once in my life.

My parents spend all their time traveling and detoxifying at hotel spas, and ordering me "presents" on Amazon prime that they're never home to wrap – sometimes they get me the same thing, weeks apart, because they never keep track.

(So my love language definitely isn't gifts. I think about telling Shiv, but what's the point if tomorrow is my last day in here?)

I had baby sitters and nannies and house keepers growing up, but they always told on me the instant I did something wrong ("crimes" like not finishing my vegetables or putting my plate in the sink instead of the dishwasher). Then Mike was really my only friend at school, and when the cops came he was gone too... Maybe my life on the outside isn't worth returning to...

My closest confident in the outside world was probably my therapist, who'd tell me, whenever I complained that Mike or my mom or whoever didn't seem to love me back that maybe what I really wanted was a reason to have love to give:

"Maybe you resent them because you notice yourself becoming like them," she'd said. "You think they're selfish but you've never had an opportunity to perform your own truly selfless act..."

When she'd given me the bondsmen's numbers, Garda Girdle had said I could call friends and family as well. Realizing none of them were going to answer hurt worse than getting locked in handcuffs, thrown in the back of a squad car, and getting sent to jail.