EPILOGUE. Ethan
Here's something nobody tells you about being inside a correctional facility: Christmas still comes.
The fluorescent lights don't change color, the razor wire doesn't sprout tinsel, and the guards don't suddenly start smiling like they've found Jesus. But it comes. It’s so cold out, it’s snowing. But inside, it's perfect.
I'm not the kind of person who gets sentimental about holidays.
My parents ruined that a long time ago. Turns out it's hard to feel the magic of the season when the people who were supposed to love you unconditionally are the same ones who locked you away and never looked back.
For three years at Aspire, Christmas was just another Thursday with slightly better food and a movie nobody voted for.
I endured it the way I endured everything: jaw tight, posture straight, eyes forward.
But this year. God, this year.
Everything is different, and I can pinpoint the exact reason with embarrassing precision. He's five-foot-eight with black hair and blue eyes and a mouth that doesn't know when to quit, and he sleeps a bunk away from me, and I'm so in love with him it physically aches.
And the weeks before Christmas become something I didn't expect: good. Genuinely good.
Liam's father shows up on a Thursday, the first week of December.
I'm not supposed to know the details. Visitation is private, supervised by staff, and my clearance doesn't extend to other students' family meetings. But I know because Liam tells me afterward, sitting on the floor of my office with his knees pulled to his chest.
"He's sober," Liam says. "Like, actually sober.
Not 'sober for three days because the court said so' sober.
He's in therapy. He has a sponsor. He looks.
.." He pauses, picks at his cuticle, that nervous habit that leaves his fingers perpetually raw.
"He looks like my dad. Like, my actual dad, from when I was a kid. Before everything went to shit."
I don't say anything. I've learned that sometimes the best thing I can give Liam is silence. But I sit beside him and pull him closer.
He tells me his dad remembered his birthday this year, December 2nd.
I gave him a basil plant in a pot that I stole from the vegetable garden.
We put it by the window and Jack named it Happy, which was ridiculous, but we all love Happy.
It's our new mascot. His dad brought a card.
A generic Hallmark thing with a cartoon dog on it, completely wrong for a nineteen-year-old with neck tattoos and a criminal record, and Liam says he almost lost it right there in the visitation room. He didn't, though.
Then the tears come. He wipes them fast, and I kiss his temple.
The Miles news comes a few days later. Griff calls him into his office, and Miles goes with that rigid walk of his. We're all in our room when he comes back. I'm pretending to read. Liam is lying by my side, curled into me. Jack is doing push-ups. Harry is shuffling cards.
Miles opens the door.
And he's smiling. Not the almost-smile, not the quarter-twitch. A full, real, ridiculous smile that transforms his entire face.
"I got break permission," he says. Four words. For Miles, practically a monologue.
Jack hollers. Actually hollers, like we're at a football game, jumping up from his push-ups and grabbing Miles by the shoulders.
Miles tolerates it for approximately four seconds before stepping back, but he's still smiling.
Liam sits up and says, "No shit, really?
" and Miles nods, and there's this moment where we're all just looking at each other with stupid grins on our faces because we understand what this means.
Three years of permanent detention. Three years of never leaving these walls, of being told he's too dangerous, too unpredictable, too broken to be trusted with even a supervised weekend.
And now someone looked at him and saw something else.
My chest almost explodes.
The Christmas transformation at Aspire starts, as it always does, in the kitchen.
Lu, Margarete, and Dora, the three women who feed sixty delinquent boys three meals a day plus two snacks without losing their minds or their humor, start planning weeks in advance, together with the rest of the kitchen staff.
Liam tells me everything, since he still volunteers there.
He says he wants to be a cook after he leaves Aspire, and that makes me so happy, because it means he wants something in the first place.
Christmas week, you walk down the hall and catch it, warm sugar, butter, something with cinnamon and cloves, and for half a second you forget where you are.
Dora makes brigadeiro, a Brazilian chocolate candy rolled in little balls that tastes divine.
I don't know how she gets the ingredients past the budget committee, and I don't ask, because some miracles you just accept.
She sets them out on the serving line with this look on her face, proud and defiant, like she's daring any of us not to feel something.
Nobody dares. I watch boys who've stabbed people sit down and eat brigadeiro with their eyes closed, and I think: this is what rehabilitation actually looks like.
Just a woman who gives enough of a shit to make candy for kids nobody else wanted.
The meals get better all week. Roasted chicken instead of the usual gray mystery meat. Pizza. Burgers. Pecan pie. Liam eats. That's the part that matters most to me, though I pretend not to watch.
The staff organizes a Christmas movie marathon in the recreation room with pillows and blankets scattered everywhere.
I half expect someone to ruin it and we all get punished, but nobody does.
Someone's draped colored lights along the windowsill, and the effect is surprisingly not terrible. Soft pools of red and green and gold.
They start with Home Alone, which is a questionable choice for a facility full of kids whose home situations range from bad to catastrophic, but everyone loves it anyway. Something about watching a kid outsmart adults resonates deeply with this particular audience.
I lie in the back with Liam, whose head is on my chest, and no one says anything.
A couple of the newer kids throw popcorn at each other in the front row, and a guard half-heartedly tells them to stop without actually caring.
Miles is sitting alone near the wall, legs stretched out, arms crossed, watching with the same intense focus he gives everything.
I catch him almost laughing at something.
Now, Jack. Jack is a menace, and I say this because I love him.
He comes back from a weekend visit with his sister, the visit he's been talking about for three weeks straight, giving everyone the minute-by-minute itinerary whether they asked or not.
His sister, who has a kid and a husband and a tattoo shop down in Georgia.
And Jack's got that look on his face. The look that says he's smuggling something and is terrible at hiding it.
His brown eyes are practically vibrating with mischief.
"Alright, gather round," he announces during recreation time, pulling folded sheets from inside his jacket. "Merry Christmas, you degenerates."
Temporary tattoos. Sheets and sheets of them.
Not the cheap kind from grocery store vending machines, but detailed, intricate designs in full color.
His sister is apparently a great artist, because these are custom-printed, beautiful things: constellations, florals, geometric patterns, animals, flames, skulls.
Jack spreads them across the courtyard picnic table.
"I'm basically a tattoo artist now," he declares, carefully cutting out a design with the small scissors from the first aid kit he somehow also acquired. "Y'all can call me Ink Master Jack."
"Nobody's calling you that," I tell him.
"Miles is calling me that. Right, Miles?"
Miles, who has been examining the constellation sheet, says nothing.
But he pushes the sheet toward Jack, taps a specific constellation, Orion, I think, and extends his forearm.
The forearm covered in real tattoos, professional and amateur, scars and ink layered over years of survival.
The fact that he's offering it to Jack, letting Jack touch him, press a wet cloth against his skin, is something.
Jack applies the constellation with the care and precision of an actual artist, smoothing the transfer paper, holding the damp cloth steady. When he peels back the paper, Orion stretches across Miles' inner forearm, in a tiny space that wasn't already tattooed.
"Sick," Jack announces. Miles looks at it. Nods. Doesn't smile, but his eyes are happy.
Liam picks flames. Of course he does. A spiral of red and orange that wraps around his left wrist, curling toward his palm.
Jack applies it with exaggerated care, narrating the process in a fake British accent for reasons known only to himself, and Liam laughs like a kid on Christmas morning, which is almost literally true.
"Your turn, boss," Jack says, turning to me with a sheet of geometric patterns.
I should say no. I'm a student leader. Instead, I look at the designs, find one that echoes the angular patterns on Liam's neck, and hold out my forearm.
"This one."
Liam sees which design I've chosen. Our eyes meet, and he smiles so broadly it's ridiculous. "Matching tattoos? How cliché, Daddy."
"Shut up and hold the cloth."
He does. His fingers press against my forearm, and the temporary ink transfers in dark blue lines that mirror the permanent ones on his neck.
Then Griff shows up.
Everyone tenses. Recreation time contraband is a write-up for sure. Jack's hand moves instinctively to cover the tattoo sheets. I'm already formulating the explanation.
Griff stops at the edge of our group. His green eyes take in the scene: the sheets, the scissors, the damp cloth, the fresh designs on our arms. His jaw tightens.
His expression is exactly the stern, military-precise mask I've studied for three years.
I'm calculating the fallout when he does something I've never seen him do.
He rolls up his sleeve.
"Scorpion," he says. Points to the back of his hand. "Right there."
The silence lasts approximately two seconds before Jack loses his mind. "Sir, yes sir!" he practically shouts, already scrambling through the sheets for a scorpion. "Oh man, oh man, Ink Master Jack doesn't disappoint, Mr. Griff, I promise you that."
"Don't push it, Perry."
But Griff sits down. Actually sits on the picnic bench, among us, forearms resting on the table while Jack applies the scorpion to his hand with shaking fingers and a grin so wide it’s ridiculous.
And Griff, stern, immovable, military-grade Chris Griff, looks at the finished product, this cheap temporary scorpion on the back of his calloused hand beside his faded military tattoos, and he laughs.
Short. Gruff. But real. I don't show my reaction, but Liam does, his legs are bouncing up and down frantically.
"Merry Christmas," Griff says. He stands, rolls his sleeve back down, and walks away with the scorpion still on his hand. Doesn't confiscate anything. Doesn't write anyone up. Just leaves. And I think: that's the closest thing to a blessing we're ever going to get.
I look at this. All of it. Miles with his constellation and his almost-laughter.
Jack with his temporary tattoos and his stories that never end.
Liam, leaning into me like I'm the only solid thing in his world, flames around his wrist. Griff across the courtyard, talking to Mason and Reed and other kids.
Even Harry, who's playing cards with Seth, who looks lighter these days, like some weight's been lifted, and Cedric and others.
This is my family. Not the one I was born into, not the one that failed me.
This one. The one we built from scratch in a place that smells like bleach and cafeteria food, behind razor wire and security checkpoints, in a room with five bunks, a single window that doesn't open, and a basil plant called Happy.
Liam tilts his head up to look at me. "What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing," I say, which is the most ridiculous lie I've ever told, because I'm thinking about everything. Every single thing that brought me to this bench, this moment, this boy whose hand fits in mine like it was designed for it.
All is well.
I know it won't last forever. Nothing does, especially not in a place like this, where the system grinds forward regardless.
Liam will have bad days. He'll probably fight the urge to vomit again.
I'll have bad days. Miles will retreat behind his walls, and Jack will get scared about the future, and Griff will be stern again tomorrow when the scorpion has washed off his hand.
Harry will annoy me, Reed will punch me again, and other things will happen.
The cell doors will keep locking at ten PM sharp.
But right now, with the people I love most in the world gathered around a picnic table with temporary tattoos, all is well.