Only the Moon Watching

Chapter 57: All I Remember...

The golf cart purrs, I step harder on the pedal. I feel it mirrored by the thrum of adrenaline in my chest.

Fireworks for Mike. We'll go to the edge of the golf course, by the manmade lake. Set them off...

But no. They're like the Milky Ways... We don't even have to use them – it's enough just to have them. That's what loving him is. I don't need him to call himself my boyfriend... I don't need him to say he's only ever, and will only ever, be in love with me. I have him with me, beside me, and that's proof enough... I can tell he matters, I matter to him, even if the stolen chocolates don't.

But...the fireworks actually mean something. Just the fact that he'd asked me to steal them means we mean something. He'd take risks for me. Do something bad for me. Do anything for me...

...It's called Toilet Tinder, says Shiv. She loves me, too, I can tell about her eagerness to let me in. Her old cellie betrayed her, she could have distrusted me, but she wanted a friend...

...This is Tangler. Needler and Vapor, you can guess which is which. Even Ripper I'll someday miss...

...Steak wrote he lo – me. Then he changed it to say like. But he started to write he loved me...

...My own parents couldn't visit me but Mike, Shiv, Steak, Tangler... They'd do anything for me. I'm a better person in jail than I ever was on the outside. I have loyalties now. I'd make sacrifices...

Jail. That's where I am. I'm in jail.

I'm in jail?

How do I get outside?

Steak and Shiv and Steak and Mike and Kristina Kelly, stepping on me in the shower... My head throbs, I feel like my eyes are sliding to opposite sides of my face, like Grifta's... My pulse clicks on the inside of my temple, I think I hear Garda Girdle's shoes clicking against the floor. I think I hear someone knocking on the toilet, flushing something down the bowl... But I'm not connected to anyone in here...

...I'm in Ad-Seg. I remember now! I feel like I'm in the story Shiv was writing, with the asylum and the scissors through Girdle's eye... I was drugged, I was kept cloudy, in a fog, but now I remember where they've got me...

...I'm alone and Steak can't help me here. I couldn't help him. I tried but I couldn't. Girdle must have found the drugs...

...My mom, golf carts, police lights in my face like when my dad would shine a flashlight in my eyes when I was little and rolled out of bed, woke up on the floor. "She's alright!" he'd say, but now I'm not. Ad-Seg isn't fine.

Is this what ADHD TV feels like? A thousand thoughts, disconnected, but the same, swirling together, all and none making sense. Thoughts like a kite in the bowl, clacking against the spoons...useless if only one person is fishing... I need someone to reach in, feed in their own spoon line, pull me out...

Help!