Page 12 of Deliver Me

“Sure, we wanted to help some people out, make their sentences a little less miserable. It’s just … we all got car thieves or people locked up on petty drug charges and you got a murderer who is never getting out of prison.”

“Yeah,” Kennedy agreed. “Dan got picked up for possession charges, so he’ll be out soon. They might even parole him and move him to a halfway house before his sentence is over.”

Mia stared at her. “So?”

“I don’t want you to get too close with this guy,” Lilly explained. “He seems dangerous.”

“You said so yourself, he’s never getting out,” Mia reminded her. “He can’t hurt me. All he does is draw me pictures and talk to me about music and stuff.”

Lilly fell silent and a stern look from Mia kept the rest of them from speaking up again. The conversation turned to other topics as Mia leaned back in her chair and pretended to nap.

It irritated her, how quickly they’d dismissed him once they’d found out why he was in prison. She’d tried to explain to Lilly about her connection to him and her theory that God had brought them together, but Lilly hadn’t understood. Every conversation about him ended up much as this one had, and her worries had quickly gotten under Mia’s skin. She knew they loved her, but Lilly was being far too overprotective.

Mia let her mind drift as she listened halfheartedly to her friends as they talked about the last few fleeting days of summer and their return to college classes. It left her feeling strangelyhollow and sad inside that Gabriel had missed out on all of that over the years, the good and the bad.

“Jesus Christ,” Alex snapped irritably. “You’d think keeping us in decent air conditioning would be considered a basic fucking human right in this heat.”

The dark wet spots down his spine and beneath his armpits gave silent witness to the truth of his discomfort.

Gabriel hummed, too hot and miserable to do more than that. The heat was intolerable in early August, leaving them all feeling like they were crammed into this hell like sardines in a tin can that someone had stuffed into an oven.

The whole place smelled like stale sweat and aggression.

His fingers left damp imprints in the paper as he read Mia’s most recent letter.

Gabriel,

Thank you so much for the drawing you sent with your last letter. I can’t believe you remembered my favorite colors and that daisies are my favorite flower! That was so sweet of you!

I have a wall full of your art now (I have to admit I’ve framed every single one of them because they’re so beautiful) but I think that one is my favorite so far. We’ve already written quite a few letters, haven’t we? It’s almost time for my classes to start and I can’t seem to figure out where summer has gone this year.

It’s a bit disappointing if I’m being honest.

Summer is supposed to be something magical, right? I didn’t feel any of that this year, it was just more days hiding inside for the air conditioning and hanging out at the pool with the same friends I’ve always had. It was identical to everyother summer. I thought getting older was supposed to change things, but I feel stuck in the same place I’ve always been. Like I’m not really growing up and becoming an adult like I thought I would.

It seems like there’s something missing in my life, and I can’t figure out what it is.

Maybe it’s because I’m not really set on my major so I’m not excited about finishing school and starting my career?

I feel so restless, and I know I always end up rambling to you about something unhappy and I’m really sorry about that. I hate writing to you about this stuff, especially knowing that you didn’t get to have any of this for yourself.

You’d probably give anything to have the things I take for granted and it makes me feel awful. It’s so easy to talk to you and I forget that it makes me seem like an ungrateful brat when I whine to you about my life.

I wish you could have been with me at the pool today. I think that would have made it a great day for both of us.

Mia

If things had been different, if his parents hadn’t sent him to Richard’s or he hadn’t ended up running the streets for Seth … Maybe they would’ve met some other way in that hypothetical life, and he could have been with her.

Maybe he would have made something of himself, and she wouldn’t have been ashamed to be his friend if he had. He could have been someone she could introduce to her friends, instead of someone she had to hide. She’d never told him exactly what had been said, but he knew her friend Lilly had discouraged her from writing to him too often or sharing too much.

Just looking out for her, he knew, concerned about her safety, but it hurt, and it made him nervous. He didn’t like the idea of someone trying to take her away from him, this first friend that he’d had in so long, not when life had already taken everything else from him.

His mind slipped away, flashing back to his first days in juvie after he’d been arrested and how terrified he’d been when he realized that the inside of a prison might be all he ever knew.

He looked around, taking in the small cell and Alex still ceaselessly bitching about the heat, the putrid smell, and the inescapable feeling of hopelessness. He’d been right, this was all his life would never amount to, but he didn’t want her to know that, or how much it hurt him.

Mia,

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