8. Jasmine
eight
Jasmine
By day four, the cell was no longer just a box.
I sat with my back to the cinder block, knees to my chest, bare feet pressed to the seam where concrete floor met wall.
The air was cold and dry, and the only thing louder than the fluorescent buzz overhead was the internal click-track of my own jaw, counting down to the next opening.
Today’s project was the lock. Same every day, but different, because every day my hands hurt a little more and my mind worked a little faster.
The lock in question was a generic hunk of brass, stamped with a four-digit model number that meant nothing to anyone except the warehouse stooge who pulled it from a shelf.
Double-bolted, decent tolerance, but Chinese shit metal—if you twisted it hard enough with a pipe, the shackle would snap before the cam even noticed.
I didn’t have a pipe. I had an underwire, two bruised knuckles, and the thousand-yard stare of a woman with nothing left to lose.
The underwire I’d filched from my own bra during yesterday’s “shower”—a full-body hose-down in a cinderblock box, complete with scratchy towels and a five-minute timer.
The metal was thin but surprisingly stiff, one tip already blunted from digging into flesh the last three years.
It took half an hour of silent work, picking the seam loose with a plastic spork, then another hour twisting the wire until it broke free without slicing my palm open.
The other tool was a strip of pop can, peeled with my teeth from the rim of the juice cup after breakfast. I kept it hidden under my mattress, the only place Adam never checked himself.
He let the women do their own sheet swap; maybe he thought it was beneath him, or maybe he liked the idea of us policing our own dignity.
I set the lock between my bare feet and hunched over it, blocking the angle from the cell across.
The padlock was thick, old, the brass worn in places to a greasy sheen.
I could see my reflection in the shackle, a dark oval bracketed by frizzed-out hair and a split in my lower lip that refused to heal.
I twisted the wire in my hands, forming a crude tension wrench with one end and a pick with the other.
My right index finger had gone numb at the tip—nerve damage from an old break, or maybe just the way I’d been holding the wire for the last two days.
I pressed on, the sense-memory of how my uncle used to do it in Memphis riding up from the base of my skull.
“Don’t be gentle,” he’d said, that one Thanksgiving when my mom got stuck working late at the ER and I got pawned off on the side of the family that considered lockpicking a legitimate holiday pastime.
“People treat locks like puzzles. They’re not puzzles.
They’re lies.” He’d watched me with the proud, fucked-up smirk of a man who’d never met a rule he wouldn’t break.
“A good liar always wants to be believed. You just have to find where he slipped.”
Adam’s lock was not a good liar. The plug had a little give, a tiny scratch in the keyway that told me someone had forced it before—maybe a previous tenant, maybe Adam himself, flexing his own muscle memory.
I wedged the wire in, angled the tip, and twisted.
The wards caught, resisting. I flexed my forearm, felt the ache run all the way up to the ball of my shoulder.
I twisted harder, using the pop can strip as a lever.
The first pin gave with a metallic pop, like biting down on a bit of gravel.
The next three went easier. The last pin was the bastard.
I’d mapped it out yesterday, knew exactly where it would hang, but it still surprised me with its resistance.
I worked at it for ten minutes, sweat beading on my forehead, upper lip burning with salt and old blood.
I bit my tongue and drove the wire home, harder this time.
My finger slipped. The wire jabbed under my thumbnail, and a bright, stupid pain flashed up my arm.
I almost dropped the tool, but caught it with my left and reset.
Breathe in, breathe out. Reset the tension, realign the pick, find the sweet spot.
The lock made a noise—a tiny, defeated click, like an apology—and the shackle turned a millimeter in the hasp.
Not enough to open, but enough to let me know it could be done.
I memorized the feel of it, the way the tension changed when the last pin settled.
I did it three more times, counting the seconds, mapping the exact angle my wrist needed to get the best purchase.
I could have done it with my eyes closed, but I didn’t trust myself to let go of the visual, not when it mattered.
The cell across from mine was quiet. The girl in that one, Renata, watched me through half-lidded eyes, head cradled in the crook of her elbow.
She never spoke unless spoken to, but I could tell from the way she tracked my hands that she was clocking everything.
Not a narc, just a realist. The others farther down the row were sleeping, or pretending to.
The only sound was the buzz of the lights and, every so often, a distant thud that could have been plumbing or just the building shifting in the sun.
My scalp throbbed where the skin had split two nights ago—a gift from when Adam decided to demonstrate that “violence is always a choice.” He’d gotten close, close enough that I could smell the mint on his breath and the aftershave on his jaw, and when I tried to headbutt him, he’d just sidestepped and driven me down, hard.
Not with anger, but with the cold efficiency of someone who’d rehearsed the move a hundred times.
He’d left me in a puddle of my own spit, and when I looked up, he was smiling, not like he enjoyed it, but like he was just glad to see the world in order.
My uncle would have laughed his ass off.
I put the lock and tools away, folding them into the hem of my pants, and leaned back against the wall.
The ache in my hands was sharp, but clean.
I let it ride, feeling every pulse. Above me, the light flickered once, then steadied.
My eyes followed the seam in the ceiling, tracing the cracks and faded spray paint.
Somewhere above, the world was still spinning, and I wondered—not for the first time—how many people missed me, or if they’d written me off as collateral damage.
I pictured Sniper, sitting on the edge of our bed with his head in his hands, running through every possible play.
He was the only man I’d ever met who treated grief like a job—something you could outwork, if you were methodical enough.
He’d be lining up every variable, cataloging every call, every favor, every rumor.
The certainty of that thought warmed me in a way nothing else could.
I wanted him to see me now—hair wild, lip split, hands bloody but steady.
I wanted him to know I was doing the same work, counting down the hours, making the math add up.
Across the corridor, Renata sat up, eyes flicking to the lock, then back to me. She didn’t say a word, but the look was clear enough: She knew, and she wouldn’t rat. I nodded, small, and for a second, the space between us felt like something other than a grave.
***
Lights-out was a myth. The fluorescents never really died, just dropped into half-power mode, so every bunk in the hall got bathed in a sickly, blue-white halo.
I lay on my cot, feet dangling off the end, and let my mind inventory the noises: the shuffle of slippered feet, a cough that sounded wet and not new, the muffled drag of someone crying into a pillow.
Four days in, most of the women had stopped making noise at all.
There was a defeat to it that you could feel in the air, like a room left too long after the funeral.
Renata waited until after midnight to talk. She had a way of making her voice sound like it was coming from inside my own head, not across the gap between us. I respected the stealth.
“You have people out there?” she asked, not so much a question as a probe. Testing the perimeter.
“Yeah,” I said, voice flat. “Husband. Club. The kind that don’t take loss personally, but do take it as a reason to start a war.”
She didn’t reply right away, but I saw the faint line of her jaw, the way it moved when she was thinking too hard. “What’s he like?” she asked, and this time it was genuine, not an angle.
I pictured Sniper at the wedding, standing three inches off the mark the preacher wanted, hands folded at the base of his spine, eyes never leaving the exits.
He’d mapped every egress before I’d even zipped the dress.
The only thing he’d ever been late for was his own parole hearing, and even then, he’d planned the statement for maximum effect.
“He’s the reason I’m still alive,” I said, and left it at that.
Renata gave a noise—half laugh, half cough. “Most men here don’t even remember why they come home.”
I rolled onto my side, elbows braced, face turned just enough to see her in the cell’s crossbeam shadow. “Most men aren’t worth remembering.”
She didn’t argue. Instead, she shifted her posture, back pressing to the bars, knees up, arms folded around them like a brace. “You got kids?”
The question knifed me in the ribs, but I didn’t let it show. “No. Tried once. Didn’t stick.”
That got a silence, heavy as gravel. I waited for her to fill it.
“My daughter’s name is Maya,” she said finally. “Six years. She likes frogs and dancing and making up her own jokes. Last thing I said to her was, ‘Don’t let them take your shoes.’” The smile she gave then was sharp, all teeth and heartbreak. “Stupid, right?”
I shook my head. “Not stupid. Shoes are important.”
Renata closed her eyes, and for a second the whole corridor went still. The silence stretched, then snapped.
“What if your guy can’t find you?” she whispered.