Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 19: I Get a Surprise

I can't sleep that night. Too wired. Waiting for a message to come back down the drain.

But Steak doesn't respond to me. Not the next night, or the next, or the third – by which time Shiv has noticed.

"Maybe you are more basic than Kristina Kelly," she teases, dumping a pile of peeled oranges into her Pruno. "Did you add something while I was at dinner? Ask him if he's more of a Mariah Carey fan or an Arianator? Ask him something even lamer?"

"I didn't," I lie. "Maybe he got sick or something."

"Maybe," Shiv snorts. "But this place is so boring I'd want to be talking the bowl even on my deathbed! You must have said something that really offended him. My old cellie had a huge falling out with her man. Guys are such idiots – he hadn't even meant to offend her! One day he sent down this list of, like, things he loved about her. 'You have beautiful eyes,' 'Your photos make my heart skip a beat' 'I love your small tits.' Well, she didn't think she had small tits..."

On Friday, I give Shiv my phone privileges to distract her. It's not like I have anyone I want to call, anyway, and Shiv's been talking about how her cousin's finally back from backpacking and she wants to hear about the trip.

I sit in the cafeteria and watch her twirl her hair as she chats, dubious that she's really talking to her cousin.

"It's probably an old flame from school, isn't it?" asks Tangler.

"Everyone who'd gone to school with Shiv must thing she's massively cool for getting locked up for impersonating a college student," says Vapor. "Especially because she was top of all her classes..."

I wonder if my stint in jail will make a tantalizing college admissions essay. I could start it with a description of crocs, wet with blood, on a tile floor... Make it sound like I'm in a hospital – or I'm a murderer – then reveal it's just jail and it's hard to get tampons and we have to wear our shoes in the shower... turn it into an impassioned plea for prison reform. (Now I will have to do something with my life to help, won't I? It only proves I am selfish, just like my therapist said... I didn't care what kind of shoes jailbirds were wearing, until Girdle threw crocs at my feet.)

Shiv might be self-centered, too, but at least she's honest about it.

While I'm trying to imagine what kind of boy she's talking to (dark hair and round glasses? Delicate floral neck tattoos, sandy surfer hair? Dark skin and a nose ring?), someone claps me hard on the shoulder. In the gleam of the steel tabletop in front of me, I see a pair of mismatched black eyes...

"Sergeant's looking for you," says Grifta, wincing down at me over her side-skewed nose. "She seems pissed."

Grifta sneers as she points across the room, where Garda Girdle is making an even uglier expression. Girdle motions for me to come speak to her. Reflexively, my hands dart to the waistband of my pants.

"Good luck," Tangler says.

I trudge toward her with my head down, skulking.

Saying Garda Girdle looks pissed is unnecessary because pissed is her constant state of being. It's like saying, "'She looks white,' or, 'she still has black hair,' or 'she has one nose, two eyes, and a mouth today – just letting you know.'"

I do know, already. I can anticipate her pinched-mouth expression without any warning.

I see her disapproving face in my sleep.

"You've got a visitor. Man who put money in your commissary."

I wouldn't describe Mike as a man, even though he is eighteen. (I remember when he was too nervous to drive on surface streets! I remember how nervous he was before he lost his virginity to Stacie Kew – he came over to my house and talked circles around it. He made me check his sex playlist three times to make sure none of the songs were too romantic!)

"Did you ask him to bring you anything?" Girdle squints down her finely-contoured nose at me.

"Bring me anything?" I repeat, flummoxed. Like more money for commissary? I didn't even think to ask him! As Girdle smirks at me, I realize I never even called to thank him.

"He says he's not your boyfriend–"

I'm surprised that the word stings.

"–Not family, either. Is he an associate?"

"An associate?"

"Are you hard of hearing, inmate? Why are you repeating me?"

Garda Girdle stomps one shiny black shoe, impatiently.
"He's just a friend," I stammer. "I didn't know he was coming! I don't think he would put anything up his butt for me, honestly!"

I mean it as a joke, but I don't think Girdle is capable of laughing. She hitches her belt higher up on her tiny, wasp-like waist and sucks lipstick off her teeth.

"We searched him, anyway," she says, haughtily. "Come with me."

I catch Shiv's eye as I'm leaving. She stage-whispers across the room, "She thought he was your boyfriend!" and I make a mental note to ask her later what that means.