Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 21: The Truth

"You're supposed to know the day before!" Shiv moans. "You get a warning, so you have time to shower, brush your hair, get ready. She thought he was your boyfriend and she wanted to make you look bad in front of him!"

"That's cruel," I say, although I'm half-hoping it worked and Mike never wants to visit me again.

I haven't known her long but already Shiv seems to understand me better than Mike ever did.

"Alright," she says, perching on the foot of my bed. "You don't seem Evil-Bitch-Mad, you seem Boy-Mad. What did he do to annoy you? Spill – wait!"

She jumps off the bed and checks on her Pruno, stashed under the desk in a rolled up paper bag and behind a pile of trash. Sniffing it she says, "This batch is almost ready. Might get you a little buzzy if you need it. Better if we wait, but."

"It's fine, I'll pass." I say, shaking my head. "I'm mad enough I don't need booze to uninhibit me, I'll tell you exactly what he did."

"Ooh let's plan his murder, then," Shiv says, looking excited and conspiratorial.

She hides the Pruno and sits on my bed again.

"First of all, he scheduled a visit days after my arraignment – so he had no confidence in me getting out of here. Then, he made this comment about me and Steak–"

"You told him?"

"Well I mentioned talking the bowl and I said we were in the best room for it. He said something like, 'I'm glad you found someone, so you can stop following me around.'"

"Ouch."

"And then I remembered... it's–"

It's almost too fucked up to mention, if I'm wrong. But the second I admitted I was angry with him, it swam to the forefront of my thoughts. "I think he might have known the cops were coming," I confess. "Right when we found the fireworks, we had a moment."

"A moment?"

"We were excited, our eyes locked. He said something like, 'It would make my whole life if we stole these,' and he looked at me like there was more to the sentence. Like, unspoken, he'd meant: 'if we stole these together.' 'If this bonded us together.' And we weren't really couple-y usually, but we were such good friends I always wondered if we could be. And he looked right at me, and sort of leaned in..."

Shiv does it now, eager to hear the rest of the story...

"And then his eyes darted over my shoulder, scared, like someone was about to see us. At the time I thought he was nervous to be seen kissing me. Maybe he'd spotted someone we knew driving by. Maybe he just chickened out and wanted to look distracted, because he knew if he kissed me it would change things between us. Stupidly, I thought him being distracted was about me. But now I wonder... immediately after that he volunteered to get his car to load up the fireworks. He ran off. A minute later, I was surrounded by cops. I've been wondering if..."

"If he saw them," says Shiv. "If he just left you there!"
I nod, throat suddenly too tight with anger to explain the connection myself.

"So he could have warned you," says Shiv, "Could have grabbed your hand and run off together, but he pussied out and left you there to take the fall for it! You really think he would do that?"
"All this time I've been wondering if he liked me, but today he said that mean thing about being glad I have Steak now so I don't have to 'keep hanging around' him. And before that, when I told him I got six whole months, he looked so guilty. Like it was eating him up inside. Like he thinks I know that when we both had time to run, but..."

"That bastard!" says Shiv.

My throat closes and my nose starts to run. Any second now my eyes will tear up...

But before the tears can spill over, someone knocks on the bowl –

Shiv bolts out of bed, checking that no guards are passing our window before she answers the knock. She bails water out of the basin as fast as she can and calls up, "You got a message?"
"For Josephina!" someone yells back.

Suddenly excited, my tears evaporate like scared-away hiccups. My heart races. My nerves are steadied by the ritual: tie the spoons and floss, thread them into the drain, flush... Fish out a message – even thicker than the last one – blush while Shiv leans over my shoulder to read it.