Fractured Freedom(13)

“Why the hell are you smiling?”

“Well, I ain’t got shit to do here for a while. My brother’s holed up with his wife, and I need some fun in my life. You look like you’re in literal pain, which means this is going to be fun.”

“You shouldn’t be enjoying this. You’re supposed to enjoy the damn internet, not my demise.”

Cade didn’t interfere much with us in reality. He got lost in virtual worlds, codes, and algorithms most of the time. He was one of the best hackers in the world but, even so, kept a level head.

That alone proved to me that there was something completely off about him. Most people who spent that much time isolating themselves from the real world ended up in a mental fog or got depressed.

I’d seen men back in the military struggle with it. Their unhappiness with deployments, PTSD, and physical and mental illness led to them disappearing into a space that wasn’t real. And we lost them, time and time again.

I’d been lost once too. That’s what stopped me from backing away from Cade when others had.

“My fun can be telling Izzy she fucked up,” he said.

“You won’t be telling her anything, because she’s staying in until someone else bails her out. We don’t want to blow her cover.”

He sighed like I was personally deflating his balloon. The dumbass had a hard-on for pissing that girl off.

“She was flying with her sister, and when they got separated and questioned, fucking Delilah took all the blame.”

“‘Fucking Delilah’?” he asked with an eyebrow raised. “Do you happen to know this Delilah?”

“I know Izzy’s whole family. They grew up down the street.” I remembered their family could be heard barreling up the block, screaming like a pack of banshees in the night, there were so many of them.

“But you know Delilah better than the rest, huh?”

I didn’t answer his stupid question. But he was damn right I did.





5





Survive Jail





Delilah





It’d been two days. And in that time, I found that most everyone left me alone. Mothers, sisters, daughters, and people in pain. There wasn’t a difference between any of us at the end of the day.

Except the one girl who stabbed another with a whittled down piece of metal from someone’s ceiling pipe. In her defense, the other girl had called her a terrible name.

Izzy caught me looking at her with pity. “Don’t even think about walking over to console her, Delilah. The guards are coming, and you’ll put a target on your back.”

“She looked like they backed her into a corner.”

“Yeah, well, we’re all in corners, and we all have to deal with the consequences of what we do in them.”

I sighed and walked away with her that day. Later, my sister swore at a woman who came near me asking to use my shampoo. Before I could give it to her, my sister snatched it away.

“Do we look like your fucking charity, Crenshaw? Get out of here.”

“Izzy!” I hissed as the girl turned away, giving us the finger.

“Don’t appear weak in here, Delilah, or they’ll make you weak.”

“Sharing isn’t weakness,” I huffed. We were standing under lukewarm water, and it was a communal shower, a huge white tiled space with only a few shower heads. I really was in no position to argue when I felt completely exposed and outside of my element.

While I wanted to shake in fear and crumble in defeat, Izzy stood tall. “In here, it is. You need to be smart.”

“Smart? Smart?” My voice was shrill as I turned off the shower and grabbed my tiny towel to dry off. I rubbed aggressively at my legs, leaving red marks on every inch. “How in the hell did we get in here, Izzy? Smart would have been never carrying drugs into an airport in the first place.”

She rolled her eyes. She’d done the same thing when I told her she needed to call Mom and Dad. When I had, they’d both cried and said they would make calls. My mother was beside herself, and I almost cried with her.

Almost.

I couldn’t, though. I didn’t need her worrying, especially if I was going to be in here a while. I explained that it was comfortable enough and went into detail about how Izzy and I got to share bunks.

My mother didn’t say much about Izzy. I knew she blamed her, and I couldn’t stop myself from blaming her too.

Back in our cell that night, I lay in my bunk and stared up at hers. “How could we have been born from the same womb at the same time and have such different lives?”

“Well, technically, I was born three minutes after you. So, that’s probably why.”

I kicked her mattress as I chuckled. “I mean it. Where did it go wrong for you?”

“Wrong?” she asked like I’d insulted her again. “I don’t know that anything is wrong with how I turned out.”

“Izzy.” My tone was condescending, and I hated that I couldn’t stop the word vomit, but my anger had it spewing out of me faster than I could control. “Your friends are pieces of shit. You don’t come to family stuff. You went to juvenile hall when you were only seventeen, and your grades were shit. You told me you were going to school, but we never went to your college graduation, so I’m guessing that’s a lie. You’ve been smuggling drugs for money, haven’t you?”