Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 34: I Never Saw This Coming

I didn't ask when he gets out. I didn't ask where he lives. Is he leaving for college, as soon as he's free? Is he going back to his parents weird cult thing? Is he going back to that girlfriend who –

No, she betrayed him. He's over her. Really.

Kissing Steak gave me butterflies worse than when I heard the police sirens. Worse than when the handcuffs clicked shut and I was put in the back of the cruiser. Worse than when the judge said my name at my arraignment...

Because before I met Steak, I didn't have anything to lose. Sure I'd lost my outside world privileges, temporarily, for six measly months... But wanting Steak takes everything from me:

My interest in other boys. My insistence that I like sleeping alone and hogging the blankets and spending Sundays by myself just browsing the internet and not answering my phone or talking to another living soul... Stealing fireworks got me six months in lock up. Feeling fireworks when Steak kissed me might have just ruined the rest of my life...

"Because what if I always think about him now?" I ask Shiv, the next evening. "What if I can't get over it?"
"It's a forbidden fruit thing," she says, taking a deep sip of Pruno. "Here, this is too. It's finally ready."

She pulls out a stolen paper cup from under her mattress and pours me a large glass. I sip it and shudder. It's acidic and disgusting and tastes spoiled.

"It'll do the job though," says Shiv, pouring a cup of her own.

As the Pruno makes me feel warm and light-headed, I describe how Steak makes me feel even loopier: "It's like he hijacked my body! It's chemical warfare! One second I didn't care about having a boyfriend, I really didn't. It was a nice to have not be looking for anyone, to not feel like I was missing something in my life by not having anyone, and now, just being away from him for a few hours feels like a real punishment!"

"Says the girl incarcerated..."

"It ruined all my life plans because now he's in them! And what if something goes wrong? What if he gets time added to his sentence? What if he never gets out?"

"He's got Chet's guard in his pocket, you could always do conjugal visits..."

"That's not what I meant, Shiv. Do you get what I'm saying? It was one of those, when you know you know kisses. It felt like home."

"That's saying a lot, in a dump like this."
"Isn't it? I mean we were on the floor–"

"Oooh."

"In prison scrubs, in a dusty library – if you can even call it that – and it felt fucking perfect."

Shiv laughs and slops Pruno down her front. "Shit! Help me mop this up."

I toss her a spare pair of my socks – dirty ones – to dab at the stain.

She grimaces but does it. "Prison makes people close," she says. "People get weirdly attached in here – thanks." She tosses the Pruno-wet sock back to me.

"But sometimes it's real isn't it? For Tangler and Chet it is."

Shiv laughs into her cup again but manages not to spill it. "Yeah, I don't know about them."

"Have you ever felt crazy about someone? Anyone, in here?"

"Not from talking the bowl," Shiv sighs. "But – oh god I'm totally drunk already! I shouldn't tell you this –"

"What?" I laugh, "When have you ever held anything back?"

Shiv pauses for a long moment, fixing her eyes heavily on me.

"Fine," she whispers, "but it's a huge secret. Tell anyone and I'll let them know your love kites are hidden somewhere in the library, it'll be like a scavenger hunt."

"You wouldn't."
She shrugs. "After she left I realized... I didn't really hate her... I wanted to hate fuck Kristina Kelly."

My eyes go so wide it kind of hurts. "Did you? But I thought –"

"I wanted to make a big prison dildo out of a condom and rolled up socks–" I push mine under the bed with my feet, away from her line of vision – "And just go to town on her with it. She was crazy fucking beautiful, suddenly! Not, like, aesthetically but once I really started thinking about it... Crowdsourcing her notes to Steak was kind of genius..."

"You thought that was so lame!"

"She was like a version of me from a parallel reality. If I was raised differently, and had the chance to go really fucking crazy. If I hadn't gotten into school–"

"You didn't–"

"If I hadn't decided to go to school and had to educate myself on the streets instead–"

"I thought you said she was too dumb to commit her own crimes! That she was just an accomplice to her boyfriend and if Steak had talked to her for more than a few minutes he'd have realized she's as boring and unimaginative as–"

"But that was before she found her henchmen," Shiv says, her eyes sparkling. "She really hit her stride in here, I have to admit that. Just before she left, she was really starting to become something. Sure, she'd never been smart, but she was a copycat. I noticed it with Steak's letters at first, she'd steal sentiments from other girls, from books, from Girdle... Then one day, Needler got her bell rung in the showers. Grifta learned a bit of BDSM from one of her feet-pic sugar daddies...

"It's called breath play. Choking someone until they pass out. It's super dangerous, you can have a stroke, easily. Later that day Grifta did something to annoy Kristina Kelly, in the library – god I love this place, every sentence sounds like a fucking murder mystery – and Kristina Kelly choked her out, perfectly. She'd picked it up in an instant! You could tell from the look on Grifta's face she wasn't expecting it. It wasn't something she'd taught her friend.

"This was like two weeks before she left, but it caught my attention. I started watching her every day. She was picking up all these little things. She'd never been the brains of an operation but she could be the muscle, and I think that's something she never noticed on the outside, with her boyfriend. She was only ever the lookout. Didn't occur to her she could replicate what she'd seen. I saw a little creative spark in her in the last days, like I said before, no one realized she was getting out early – but I think she knew and was trying to find a way to get herself more time, so she could stay in here with Steak."

"And that's attractive to you?"
"I like to be surprised," says Shiv, taking a big swig of Pruno again. "I never expected it, but when I saw her choke out Grifta I kind of fell in love with her, a bit."

"Shut up."

"Didn't realize it myself, at first! It grew on me for a few weeks, now I sort of miss her. I like to imagine what she could have become if she'd lived up to her full potential in here. She was just starting to find herself, but. We could have been a power couple."