Chapter 56
Chapter Fifty-Six
County holds me until they transfer me to state, where I have more medical examinations and more questions I don’t answer. They document every scar, every mark that tells the story of how I ended up here. The intake guard whistles when he sees the damage to my ribs.
“Christ, kid. How long have you been walking around like this?”
I don’t tell him. In fact, I don’t speak at all unless I have to.
Processing takes forever. Paperwork, photographs, fingerprints and a strip search.
They give me prison issue clothes that smell like industrial cleaner, along with basic supplies—toothbrush, soap, sheets, blanket.
Things I haven’t had in longer than I remember.
My cell is six by eight feet of concrete and steel, with a narrow bed bolted to the wall.
The mattress is thin, but it’s still softer than the factory floor.
The pillow feels strange underneath my head.
It’s too soft after months of sleeping with my arm tucked under my cheek. The blanket is rough and warm.
The first night, I can’t sleep. The cell never gets truly dark—low lights from the main area outside seep through the window.
It’s not the light that keeps me awake, though.
It’s the heat. Actual heat, pumping through vents in the ceiling.
My body doesn’t know how to process being warm, and I lie there sweating.
Meals come on a strict schedule. Breakfast at six.
Lunch at noon. Dinner at five. To everyone else, it’s prison slop—tasteless oatmeal, watery stews, bread you have to chew.
But after so long living off dumpster diving and stolen scraps, and the few things Lily brought me, it’s a feast for my stomach and my senses.
My hands shake the first time they pass me a tray. Steam rises from the food, and my stomach cramps at the smell. I eat slowly, carefully. My body has forgotten how to handle regular meals.
The other inmates notice. Reese, three cells down from mine, watches me during meals. I recognize the look. I saw it in Dan Hartman’s eyes often enough. He’s looking for any sign of weakness he can exploit.
“Boy acts like he’s dining at the Ritz,” he tells his crew, and they laugh.
Two days later, a muscle-bound lifer called Jackson sits across from me at breakfast. “You’re in Reese’s spot.”
I keep eating like I haven’t heard him.
“You deaf?” His hand slams down beside my tray, making everything rattle.
I lift my eyes to his, and let him see whatever is left in me after nearly dying in that factory. Whatever they show makes him pause.
“Leave him alone.” The quiet voice comes from behind me. Riley, my cellmate’s friend. An old-timer with prison-yard muscle and a reputation for staying out of politics. “The kid isn’t looking for trouble.”
Jackson hesitates, then stands. “Reese won’t like it.”
“Don’t give a fuck.” Riley’s voice doesn’t change. “If he has a problem, he can take it up with me. Kid isn’t going to be his bitch. He’s been through enough.”
Riley explains the hierarchy while we’re in the yard after breakfast. Who runs what. Which guards can be bought. Which inmates to avoid.
“Reese tries to own every new fish that comes in. Especially the young and pretty ones.” He leans against the fence. “But you’ve got something different about you, kid. Something that says you’ve already survived worse than anything he can do to you.”
He’s not wrong.
The medical unit keeps me under observation while I finish the antibiotics they started in the hospital. The doctor who examines me doesn’t comment on the fading bruises, or the scars. She just documents everything in my file and gives me vitamins to help with malnutrition.
“You’re young,” she says while checking my ribs.
“And according to your records, you hadn’t quite reached the point where it was a full addiction.
” I understand what she means. Yes, I did go through withdrawal while waiting for the trial, but I have absolutely zero interest in searching out a fix of any kind.
“You’ll heal. But you need to eat and rest. Let your body recover. ”
That’s what I do. For the first time in years, I rest, and allow the warmth to seep into my bones, and let regular meals fill out the hollow spaces hunger carved inside me.
The only thing I struggle with is sleep.
I still have to check my surroundings. I still wake at every sound.
But I do sleep better than I did in the factory.
The irony doesn’t escape me. I had to nearly die. I had to break into a store and deliberately set off alarms, and wait to be arrested, to finally get the basic things I needed to survive.
A bed. Regular meals. Warmth.
Time becomes measured in small victories. The day I can take a deep breath without pain. The morning I wake up and my hands don’t shake when I lift my breakfast tray. The first time I catch my reflection and don’t see a ghost staring back.
Riley shows me how to survive without becoming part of the violence that rules most inmates’ lives.
Which work details to volunteer for. How to avoid Reese’s crew without looking weak.
I learn how to fix things—starting with the broken fan in the guard station, then the wiring in the library. Being useful means being left alone.
The prison library becomes my sanctuary between counts. It’s small, nothing like the school library where I used to hide, but it has books. Real books. And I spend every free hour I have there.
Three months after I arrive, a guard stops at my cell when other prisoners are on their way to the visitors room.
“Oliver, you too. Visitor.”
My stomach drops. Only one person might try to find me here, and I don’t want to face her. I don’t want to see her in this place. But when the guard leads me into the visitation room—all hard plastic chairs and metal tables bolted to the floor—it’s my old history teacher sitting there.
Mr. Edwards.
“Hello, Ronan.”
I frown, and glance over at the guard, who nods. I sit down, but I don’t acknowledge him. Instead, I keep my eyes fixed on the scratched surface of the table between us.
He sets something down. A book. An engineering manual. It’s new. Clean. The spine unbroken.
“I thought you might find this interesting.” His voice carries the same steady tone from his classroom. “The section on electrical systems is particularly detailed.”
I stare at the wall behind him. Edwards waits, patient, behaving like he has all the time in the world.
“Lily talks about you,” he says quietly. “I didn’t realize you two were so close.”
My fingers curl into fists, and I shake my head, once.
He studies my face for a long moment, then nods. “All right. Well, the book is yours. The guards have already said it’s allowed. I’ll bring you another one next month.”
He does.
The pattern repeats with each visit. He brings me books—sometimes they’re manuals, sometimes they’re fiction.
He tries to mention her name a couple more times, and I shut it down every time.
I don’t need to say a word. I simply stand up and walk out.
Eventually he learns. I’ll sit and listen to him talk, but some topics aren’t up for discussion. Some wounds I won’t let him touch.
Riley notices the books, and the way I study them between work details, during rest times, at meals.
“Smart,” he says one day in the yard. “Learning shit that’ll keep you out when you get out. Better than ending up like Jackson. All he knows how to do is break things.”
By my second year, I’ve developed a reputation. I’m the guy who can fix anything. Guards and prisoners bring me broken radios, fans that won’t spin, electrical outlets that spark. Each repair is currency—protection, extra library time, sometimes even extra food.
Reese tries once more to exert control. He sends two of his crew to corner me in the shower block.
But prison has fed me, regular meals and exercise have ensured all the sharp edges of starvation have been replaced with muscle.
Riley has taught me how to protect myself.
The fight ends quickly with me still standing.
After that, they leave me alone.
I learn more than how to fix things. I learn patience and strategy. With Riley’s help, I figure out when it’s best to speak up and when I should stay silent.
“You’re not like the rest of them,” he tells me one afternoon. We’re working a detail in the machine shop, and he’s showing me how to operate the equipment. “You’ve got a spark inside you kid. Once you’re out, you won’t be coming back in here.”
Edwards never misses a month. Rain or shine, he’s always there.
In my third year, during a particularly brutal winter, I finally speak to him.
“Why do you keep coming?”
He doesn’t act surprised or celebrate the breakthrough. He just takes out a new book and sets it on the table between us.
“Because someone should.”
I think about Lily, and how she used to say those exact words.
“I’m not worth saving.”
“Everyone is worth saving, Ronan.” He opens the book. “Especially the people who don’t believe it themselves. Besides, I’m not trying to save you. I’m just making sure you have options when you get out.”
After that, things shift. I start talking to him. He brings more books, giving me more ways to keep my mind busy, while my body serves its time.
During yard time, I trade skills for ink. Riley is talented with a makeshift gun, and the guards look away as long as we’re careful. I get small pieces at first. Words that mean something only to me.
The thorns that wrap around my ribs mark the months inside, growing denser with each passing season. Beneath them, words about a girl with golden hair, and a ghost who wouldn’t let her see him cry. Lines of poetry I wrote in the factory given permanence on my skin.
Riley works on them during recreation time, and he’s sharp enough to see the pattern emerge.
“You really loved her, didn’t you?” he says one afternoon, adding more details to the thorns.
“Doesn’t matter now.”
“Always matters. That kind of love doesn’t disappear because you want it to.”
I can’t argue with that. Instead, I ask him to add a line under my heart.
Memory bleeds in darkness.
“Cheerful,” he mutters, but does it anyway.
Ghosts Don’t Cry is visible on my forearm every time I look down. It’s a reminder, a warning to myself of what I became.
The last time Edwards visits, it’s two weeks before my release. He doesn’t bring books with him, but a stack of papers.
“Job applications.” He spreads them out. “Construction companies. Contractors. People who need someone who understands how buildings work, and are known for employing people who have spent time in prison.”
I stare at them. At the future they represent.
“Why are you doing this?”
I’ve asked him the same question during every visit. Before he’d always just smile and deflect. This time he looks at me, then nods. “Because five years ago, I watched a kid with too much potential slip through the cracks. I did nothing then. I’m doing something now.”
“I made my own choices.”
“You made the only choices you had.” He pushes the papers toward me. “Now I’m giving you different ones.”
On the day I’m freed, I’m not the same person who went in. Five years changed me in ways I’m still learning. My body is stronger. My mind is sharper. But the biggest change is harder to define.
I know how to do more than just exist now. I still don’t have a home, or a place to stay, but I have way more confidence in my ability to survive.
Edwards is waiting outside for me. He drives me to a motel, supplies me with a cell phone, and some clothes, and refuses to leave until he’s certain I have a job, money, and a place to stay.
“You have my number and my address,” he says the day he drops me off for my first day at work. “Use them. I want to hear from you. Regularly, Ronan. Don’t make me have to track you down.”
I move between jobs. Between cities. The skills I learned inside make it easy to find work, but something inside me won’t let me settle. I can’t stay in one place, and constantly move around. Each new city, each new job site becomes temporary, another place I pass through.
True to his word, Edwards keeps in touch. If he hasn’t heard from me in a couple of days, he’ll text. Sometimes sends letters and books if I’m staying in one place for more than a week. He never mentions Lily, but he always ends our conversations the same way.
“There’s a place waiting for you here when you’re ready to come home.”
I’m not ready. Not for staying or for belonging somewhere. And I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to go back there. It wasn’t ever my home.
But I keep his letters, and his books, and I carry them between cities because they’re proof that someone gives a damn if I survive.
Two years pass like that.
Moving. Working. Surviving.
Then his lawyer calls … and everything changes again.