Prison Nation Read Online Free Page A

hadn’t been in the cell.
    Typically a silent shadow that followed my mother around wherever she went, I rarely even noticed him. He would mumble to me sometimes, asking how my day was and if I had any plans for tomorrow. I tried to answer and start a conversation, but it always failed and left us sitting in silence. What is there to talk about, when every day is the same?
    To me, my father was only one thing: a silent reflection of my mother. I wanted to feel a connection to him, but it was impossible to feel connected to someone who barely seemed connected to life.
    Looking down the walkway, I strained my eyes to see if I could spot his familiar stooped figure. A few other inmates leaned against the railing or sat on the ground outside their cell. I saw one man reading a tattered book, another man carelessly bouncing a ball over and over again on the ground. A girl walked past me, carrying a handful of papers. As she passed a pencil rolled off the stack and fell with a clatter to the ground.
    It rolled and bumped into my foot. I reached out and picked it up, my fingers wrapping around its thin wooden surface. Before I even thought about it, I lifted my eyes to the girl and held the pencil out.
    “ Th-Thanks,” she stuttered.
    Squinting my eyes, I looked harder at her. She looked like she was just a year or two younger than me. I knew this girl. Fighting against the persistent fog in my mind, I tried to place her face and stutter. It slowly came to me. She had sat next to me in my classes, before I had opted out into independent study. She had always been mumbling to herself, her stutter causing her to slightly twitch when it got too intense. Her name was… I couldn’t remember it.
    “ 942B?” she asked.
    “ Uh, yeah. How are you?” The words felt thick in my mouth, obviously forced.
    “ G-Good.” She forced a smile, one side of her mouth drooping slightly under a healing bruise. “H-How about you?”
    I nodded, pulling my eyes away from the bruise. “Doing alright.”
    “ Sh-shouldn’t you have b-been let out b-b-by now?” the fellow Jail Baby asked.
    “ Next week. I turn eighteen next week.”
    “ Oh. Well. G-Good luck th-then. I hope t-t-to never see you again.”
    I let a tiny smile spread on my face as I watched her shuffle away down the walk, her shoulder slightly twitching as she mumbled to herself. Her parting words weren’t meant to be harsh. Everyone in Spokane hoped to never see each other again. It wasn’t a hostile wish. It was the wish that you might never again be locked up inside these walls.
    I banged my head softly against the wall, trying hard to remember the girl’s name, but it never came to me. I could only remember the bruise on her drooping lip and the twitch of her thin shoulder.
    My back started to ache. I must have been sitting for at least an hour. Losing track of time was too easy in a place where every day, every minute, everything was the same. Standing up, I rubbed my back, stretching my other arm up over my head.
    The groan that escaped my lips came to a quick halt as I heard something echo down the walk. Footsteps. Heavy footsteps. They weren’t the usual padding of worn out sneakers. These echoes were sharp, precise. Timed.
    They were the echo of boots.

3
     
     
    P ushing my back against the wall, I looked up to see two guards making their way slowly down the walk. They glanced into each cell as they passed, occasionally pausing a moment longer to stare inside before moving on.
    Inspections.
    I silently thanked myself that I had lined up my mother’s shoes. Glancing inside, I saw she had fallen asleep on the bed, one hand hanging over the edge, her fingers occasionally twitching as she dreamed. I let myself relax a bit, my back leaning once more against the cool wall.
    I had known the older of the two guards for most of my life. Saying that I knew him might have been an overstatement. He had patrolled this walk for as long as I could remember, yet I could never