Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 35: A Bad Decision

I think Shiv's joking about Kristina Kelly but I can't be sure. For the rest of the night, any time her eyes twinkle I wonder if she's thinking about love or if it's just the Pruno making her brain go fuzzy.

I think about writing to Steak and asking his opinion, but then I remember he and Kristina Kelly used to be an item, and I really don't want to know any more about that.

Every time I think about them, I wonder if he ever made her a tampon bouquet. Am I right in my feeling that he likes me? Did he feel what I felt when we kissed? Or am I just this month's forbidden fruit? Someone to pass the time with?

Guys come up with all kinds of games in jail: they make their own weights out of laundry and sheets; they learn to braid bracelets and make rosary beads from torn-up magazines; they make Pruno and prison-weapons and talk on the bowl with whatever girl'll have them. (I mean, with whatever girl is below them.) Maybe Steak scratches a tally into his wall for every girl he's kissed in here...

I toss and turn in my bed, unable to find a comfortable position when my spine is still tingling and my stomach is overcome by butterflies.

Shiv surprised me when she confessed her feelings about Kristina Kelly and now I'm overthinking everything. Maybe she's also been hiding a secret past with Steak. Maybe she's joking. Maybe he's joking about liking me?

You definitely feel like you know someone when you share your room, your shower, your open-air toilet, and all your meals with them – but Shiv's confession has me thinking: can I trust anyone in jail? Should I tell anyone, including Steak and Shiv, how I really feel – or is it best to keep the most vulnerable pieces of myself to myself?

But if I can't be stripped bare and vulnerable reduced only to my essentials in jail, where can I be? If I wrote a letter to myself, just to get my thoughts out, I'd have no choice but to actually eat it – if I didn't want anyone to see it, it wouldn't be safe enough to throw it out or flush it down the bowl or hide it in the wall.

I try and calm the butterflies in my stomach, and try and force my brain to accept that the worst thing that can happen is I get a little embarrassed, and I write to Steak instead:

Weird thing is: you can never know if someone likes you. If you meet in an office or at school you're like, Is this just because it's convenient? Because we're in close proximity every day? Because our schedules are the same? (You said something like that in your first-ever kite to me.)

If you like the way someone tastes or smells, they're just like, "Oh, so all I'm good for is my fucking pheromones?" If sex is great, is that the only reason they're into you? If they like intelligence, and you got lucky enough to go to a good school and have parents that read to you as a kid, is that it? What if the first thing they noticed is you're a blonde and that's exactly what they're into?

It's so fucking weird. If you weren't worthy of the nickname Steak would Shiv have made me write to you in the first place? If your letters weren't funny would I have cared to keep going?

I like you now. That's the point of this and I'm rambling and I don't mean to. I'm just wondering why? (As if you could even know!)

It doesn't make sense that I know a couple of things about you and they all add up to me feeling like I was going to die when I kissed you. In a good way. I guess what I'm asking is – what's important to you? What do you hope I like best about you? Do you want me to be most into your looks or your writing or the fact you cleaned up my puke? I don't know if I can control for that, really, but I'll try because I want you to feel like I really like you and not just all the little things that are a part of you. Am I making any sense? Shiv got me drunk on Pruno.

Sending a drunk, ill-conceived text is easy. You just press a button. Sending a drunk kite on the bowl requires I bail out the toilet, call it up, make a new spoon-reel, feed in my line, and flush. At every step, my better judgement is screaming for me to abandon mission and go to bed, but I know I'll fall asleep thinking about him anyway. (And he'll be the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning...)

Why not tell him what I'm thinking about, if all I ever think about is him?