Page 3 of Sawyer
Russell heard her but must have decided he was done talking. He didn’t say anything. Instead, he let the silence speak for him. That's the reaction she always got whenever she tried to defend herself— silence so thick it made her want to scream.
She needed to face the reality of her situation. It was going to happen. She was going to prison, and there was nothing she orHector could do to stop it. She clasped her hands together to still their trembling.
Closing her eyes, she watched her future vanish in a puff of smoke. Her life had never been a fairy tale, and it wasn’t going to end with a happily ever after. No prince was riding in on a white steed to rescue her.
Russell must have sensed her surrendering, giving up. Sliding the papers toward her, he said, “The deck is stacked against you. For what it’s worth, I do believe you.”
She couldn’t hold back her gasp of surprise. “You do?”
There was only sadness in the smile he gave her. “I do. I always have. And that’s why I’m counseling you to take the deal. I know it looks like forever to you. At twenty years old, five years, hopefully three, seems like an eternity. You can be out by the time you’re twenty-three. You can move on and start a new life somewhere. You’ll have your whole life to look forward to.”
She held back her words, though she couldn’t hold back her humorless laugh. The truth was, after she signed these papers, she would have no life. The General had taken that away. She’d be under his control for as long as she drew breath.
With still trembling hands, she took the pen Russell offered her and signed the paper. It might as well have been a hammer driving the final nail into her coffin.
She’d tried to live the life her father wanted for her. She’d failed. Sometimes the best you could do is recognize when it was time to give up. Shoving the papers back to him, she lowered her head to rest on her arms and sobbed.
CHAPTER 1
Three years later…
The bus ridefrom prison to Elk Jaw lasted two hours and seventeen minutes. She could probably have timed it to the exact second if the shirtless man sitting next to her on the bus hadn’t stolen her watch.
She’d spent the past two hours and seventeen minutes staring out the window, clutching her black cat stuffie, Lucky, to her chest while sitting next to him. Her seatmate spent the time singing off-key with the imaginary songs on the imaginary radio he held in his right hand every mile of the way. His left hand rested on her thigh, except for the one time he’d moved it to pull the watch Hector had given her as a college graduation present three years ago from her wrist.
It also turned out he’d been very fond of having people sing those imaginary songs along with him. Two hours and seventeenminutes was a long time to spend whispering song lyrics along with a crazy man on a bus.
In prison, she’d learned to go into her happy place and stay there until the bad things went away. Her happy place was so much better than real life. She should be grateful she’d only spent the past three years in constant terror of bad things happening. If it hadn’t been for Mama Sam, bad things would have happened. For some reason, the woman had taken care of her and kept the bad people away. Mama Sam was in prison for doing bad things, but she’d been good to Lele.
She hoped Hector wouldn’t want to talk when she got home because, after two hours and seventeen minutes of singing, her voice was shot, along with her nerves and her patience. She would have told you three years ago there was no end to her patience. If that had ever been true, it wasn’t anymore. She’d traded patience in for a protective shell that was impenetrable.
That shell was hard. Diamond hard.
Her smile.
Her eyes.
Her heart.
She wasn’t anywhere close to the innocent do-gooder she’d been three years ago. Not that anyone except Hector had seen her that way. No matter how hard she’d tried, trouble found her. She’d never taken drugs in her life. Until the past three years, she’d never even seen any. And yet, her name became tied up with them all the time. She’d always been what kind of people would label as quirky, so it had obviously been easy for people to take the leap to drugs being the cause.
It grew from there. If there were ever any vandalism or robberies around town, for some reason, her name came up. She held the town record for the person most frequently invited to come to the police station totalk. If it hadn’t been for Hector, she probably would have wound up behind bars much sooner than shehad. Eventually, her luck had run out. She’d run up against trouble he couldn’t get her out of.
Not being on the right side of town didn’t bother her. How would a conversation go with the people she used to know, anyway? It wasn’t like she had a lot in common with them anymore. The girl who stepped through the gate of prison with a bus voucher and clothes that weren’t hers and didn’t fit was nowhere close to the naïve, innocent girl who’d entered through those gates before.
That person was never coming back, and it wasn’t fair. The allegations made against her hadn’t been true, but in the end, it hadn’t mattered.
Prison had changed her at every level. And the most tragic thing of all was she’d made it back out, but the Little who had been such a large part of her had not. The only comfort she had from that life was Lucky. It still made her feel safe to hold a stuffed animal. She didn’t question why. The fact that her stuffie could give her that feeling was good enough for her.
She wouldn’t be returning to her childhood home. The person who’d lived there didn’t exist anymore. The small house on the other side of Elk Jaw, the seedier side of town, was where she belonged now.
The house Hector had rented for her looked about as she’d expected. “I know what you’re thinking, Lucky, but who doesn’t want to live in a peeling mint green house with torn window screens and dead grass?” Hugging Lucky tighter, she tried not to cry. She had no right to cry. This was the house she’d told Hector she wanted.
The bars on the windows would be the first thing to go. She’d looked through barred windows long enough. No way would she avoid flashbacks and nightmares with cages over her windows. Those bars would definitely be going away.
She’d seen pictures of the little house. But did it have to look so much worse in person?
It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be there much. Not to mention, once she started getting paid at Videotopia, the adult gaming bar Hector owned, she could paint it a better color. Giving Lucky one more squeeze, she said, “Well, this is our new normal, Lucky. The inside is probably better.”
