Hard Time Read Online Free Page A

for job searches, and to practice filling out online applications. It wasn’t quite a class, more a free-for-all. There were only two computers, so men had to sign up for them in advance. The rest of the guys came and went freely, asking me to proofread the resumes they’d drafted, to explain paperwork they’d received, help them write letters and so forth.
    The morning Resources session wasn’t too crazy, but I’d been told the afternoon one was far more popular. “They get restless between lunch and dinner,” Leland told me in the staff break room.
    “Lucky me.” I dumped two packets of instant oatmeal in a mug and nuked it in the microwave. I ate without tasting, standing at the window that overlooked the exercise yard. The men loitered, worked out on push-up and chin-up bars, played shirts versus skins on the cracked, one-hoop basketball court.
    Years in this place,
I thought.
Years with nothing to do but ward off the boredom by building your muscles, maybe your mind.
But even I could tell, there wasn’t much equipment on hand at Cousins promoting the latter.
    After lunch came Book Discussion—the only session I was actually looking forward to.
    I’d been encouraged to pick a story that would speak to the inmates’ struggles, but not enflame them. Something roughly suited to men with grossly adult problems but teenagers’ reading comprehension, and which also met the standards of both the ALA and Cousins. I’d read the prison’s guidelines, and they were fairly liberal. They discouraged “excessive violent and sexual content,” but happily posed no real censorship threat.
    Librarians love challenges—we’re all matchmakers, deep down—and I’d obsessed over my selection for days. I’d picked a book aimed at teens, thinking a story about a young man might hearken these guys back to the days before their lives had taken such awful turns.
    Book Discussion was held in a different room than the morning classes—big enough to seat fifty or sixty in plastic chairs, with me facing them, also sitting.
    The men filed in at one, and I was given two guards—mustache-of-steel Leland in the front corner and another man by the exit. There was much talking and joking, the guys still in social mode from their own lunch break.
    Pretend it’s a school group.
As the chairs filled up I said, firmly as I could, “Quiet please. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I’m Ms. Goodhouse, the new librarian. Welcome to a new session of Book Discussion. I hope you’ll enjoy the story I’ve picked—”
    From the second row, “Here we go! To Kill a motherfucking Mockingbird!” Wallace again, Mr. Conjugal Fridays.
    A couple guys laughed, a couple shushed him.
    “It’s called
Ship Breaker,
by Paolo Bacigalupi,” I said. “That’s all I’ll tell you for now.” And I began to read.
    The story was set in a dystopian future, its protagonist a teenage boy named Nailer who scavenged copper from wrecked tankers. I hoped the setting would keep it separated somewhat from their lives, but the themes were ones I thought they’d care about—making one’s way in a harsh world. Survival, oppression, struggle, triumph. Love.
    As I read, the men went quiet. Eerily quiet, apart from when something interesting happened and the room hummed with a dozen mumbled comments.
    I’d picked a winner.
    My voice lost its brittle stage-fright edges. The room stirred when the dynamics between the young indentured ship breakers and their callous overseers were center stage.
    Despite the plan to keep my head down and read, my old storytime instincts proved too strong. I began glancing up, stealing a taste of eye contact every couple of sentences. I kept it brief—a second’s glimpse at a random face, just enough to engage, then back to the page.
    I was doing fine until fifteen minutes in, when another stolen glance brought my eyes to those of 802267.
    My heart froze. My lips stumbled, and I snapped my attention back to the book, resyncing my brain and the