Free Girls

Chapter 1

There’s a customary breakfast for “free girls” their last day on the unit.

It’s hosted in the dining room and there’s usually a lopsided farewell banner hanging above the kitchen door with a few balloons.

The girl who’s leaving gets to request a special meal, pancakes or French toast, and everyone joins her for it.

Most girls look forward to having something other than mushy oatmeal, and to getting a thirty-minute pass to ask personal questions without penalty.

It’s supposed to be a morale-boosting celebration for the girls left behind—a reminder that their freedom, too, is close at hand.

I’ve gone to three and none of them felt that motivating to me.

More like a slap in the face but with breakfast. So when it was finally my turn, I asked to skip mine.

I didn’t feel like celebrating something that should never have happened.

I just wanted to get out of the center and forget everything.

Well, maybe not everything.

The morning came faster than any other since I’d been here.

The unit was pretty quiet last night as the girls tried to find a rhythm without Tanya and her gossip.

I spent most of it in my room, though Ms. Bree let Samantha stay with me.

I think she hoped I’d be encouraging but I don’t know if our time together changed anything for Samantha.

She talked a lot about her plans for after she got out, since I wasn’t sure about mine.

Her excitement made me anxious but I let her talk.

By the time I was dressed, I could hear the girls talking and laughing in the dining room. I stood in the hallway, unprepared to do what I’d thought about almost every day since I got here.

Ms. Pat came into the rec area and smiled when she saw me.

I walked over slowly, taking in everything as I passed.

I felt more like I belonged here than I had when I’d arrived.

I stopped out of view of the dining room so I wouldn’t make accidental eye contact with any of the girls.

I had no desire to answer their burning questions.

“You ready to go home?” Ms. Pat asked, her dark eyes holding mine.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“Do you want to say something to the girls?”

I shook my head.

She called for Ms. Bree, who appeared a few moments later with a donut. “I saved one for you to eat on the way down. You like the chocolate ones,” she said, handing it to me.

I took it cautiously.

“You’ve done your time, Jasmine. You’re ready to go home. Come on.”

Ms. Pat waved and wished me luck. I thanked her before following behind Ms. Bree, the way I’d always done.

Now, I’m sitting in a dim holding room picking at a chocolate donut, watching the second hand of a loudly ticking clock make its never-ending journey. I’ve thought long and hard about what I’d do when I got some real time to myself, but I don’t actually know what to do with it.

I haven’t been alone like this in twelve months.

My mom’s face pops up in the door’s small window. A moment later, the door opens, letting in a little bit of light.

“Hi,” she says, her smile wide but tentative.

It’s been a year since we’ve been in the same room together.

The last time was at my sentencing, and she looks a lot more rested than she used to.

Her hair is silkier than I’ve ever seen it, like she’s been going to the salon more regularly.

Her nails are bright red with polish and she uses a finger to push loose strands behind her ear. I almost don’t recognize her like this.

As happy as I am to see her, I’m not sure how to act around her, either.

“Excuse me, where can she change to go home?” my mom calls out behind her to the intake desk. They tell her she can stand at the door while I change in here. She hands me a shopping bag.

When she closes the door, the room loses the sliver of light.

I don’t need it to see that these clothes—a pair of jean shorts in a size I might have worn once and a frilly white tank top—won’t fit.

I wonder what version of me she was remembering when she picked these out.

I tug the jeans to test for stretch, but the fabric doesn’t give.

I look down at my thighs in my summer uniform—oversize gray shorts and a wrinkled T-shirt—and feel self-conscious for the first time since they were handed out.

You quickly realize here that appearance is the least of your worries, and that’s been comforting.

Nope. I throw the clothes back into the bag and take a deep breath before knocking on the door. “Mom?”

She pokes her head in.

“I’m just gonna keep this on.”

If my refusal to put on the new clothes throws her, she doesn’t show it. She holds her hand out for the bag. “Let’s get out of here then.” My mom leads the way past the intake desk and waves at a woman who says goodbye and something about staying out of trouble.

I keep my eyes straight ahead. I plan to avoid trouble at all costs.

When we arrive at a set of large steel doors, I pause under the Exit sign. We never had the privilege of opening them.

“Go on,” the woman encourages from the intake desk.

I push the doors open and jump at the sound of a click, expecting an alarm to blare, but none does.

This is real. I’m finally going home.

I have to blink through the brightness to see my mom and find her next to a shiny new car. “Out of the sun, Jas, you don’t have sunscreen on!” she says, climbing in.

I’ve waited 365 days to be able to stand in the sun outside of this place; I’m not about to run from it.

I throw my head and arms back, and the heat wastes no time sending droplets of sweat running down my skin.

The sweat is soon followed by tears. I promised myself I’d make it out in one piece and here I am: not whole, barely together …

but in one piece. Once you’ve been somewhere like this, you know that’s saying a lot.

Goodbye, Guiding Hearts Home for Troubled Girls.

My mom watches quietly from the driver’s seat as I savor the first moments of my second chance.

A year ago, the judge had slammed his gavel and smiled proudly at my mom as he remanded me to detention for a minimum of one year. She burst into tears. The judge and I both stared at her, saying nothing. After all, she had set everything into motion.

I remember just feeling numb.

The bailiff came over and whispered some advice about keeping my head down, advice I’m sure he gave to everyone.

When I was escorted from the courtroom to a holding space with other girls, I still hadn’t cried or spoken.

I don’t know how long I was there, but I was sure my mom had taken her tears elsewhere.

She hadn’t. She stood crying and waving as the transport van pulled out of the parking lot. I didn’t wave back. The other girls would probably have eaten me alive if I did.

Now, I mouth thank you to the sky, hoping that whoever up there was responsible for getting me out is listening. My mom honks her horn lightly. Dripping with sweat and tears, I slide into the passenger’s seat and we drive off.

“This is a nice car.” I rub my hand across the dashboard. “When did you get it?”

My mom pulls up to a red light. “It was a wedding gift from Travis.”

They had a destination wedding in Aruba that she had been so excited about. She’d scheduled it for the weekend after my release so it could be a “double celebration.” But after everything happened, I wasn’t able to go. I missed one of the most important days of her life.

“There’s a water in your door,” she tells me.

I reach for the bottle, grateful to give my hands something to do.

Even though I talked to my mom regularly while I was inside the center, I couldn’t have prepared for how it would feel to be physically beside her, inhabiting the same space after all this time.

From the outside, we probably look like strangers to each other.

As I take a long sip of water, I rack my brain for everything my mom has told me about her new husband on our monthly phone calls. I know Travis works in real estate and is “the best at it,” at least according to her. Given how expensive this car looks, I can’t disagree.

Travis has a daughter my age: Kayla. My mom was excited that I’d finally have “the sister I’d always begged for.

” It’s true that I’d grown up wishing for someone to roll my eyes with when my mom was being weird, but I hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

She’s a great kid, she had told me. I could hear the smile in her voice and had hung up wondering if she ever said that about me.

Someone honks loudly behind us. The light is green. Mom jumps a little and presses the gas too hard, lurching us forward.

I can feel the tension radiating off her. There’s so much I want to talk to her about, but I don’t even know where to begin. “How about some music?” I suggest.

She smiles, no doubt remembering all the time we spent in her old beat-up Camry, back when even the silences felt easy. “Sure, anything you want.”

I turn the dial to her favorite old-school reggae station and lean back as a familiar song pours through the speakers. I expect her to sing along like she used to. Instead, she flashes another smile in my direction.

I try not to focus on wanting things to go back to the way they were. The most important thing is that I’m on my way home.

I’m startled out of sleep by the wailing of an ambulance just as we’re passing exit 6.

I didn’t realize I’d dozed off, lulled by the motion of the car and thoughts of being in my bed again.

We pass the cemetery my grandma calls home and I smile softly as I think of her, knowing she’s proud of me for making it out.

Our upstate New York town is a small one called Lorial, off exit 8. Almost there.

Exit 7.

The radio is silent now, and my mom is mouthing something to herself with real concentration. I’m glad she’s the only one who came to get me today. I’m nervous about meeting her new family, and it’s been a long time since I made a good first impression.

Exit 8.

We don’t get off.

“Mom, the exit?” I ask, motioning behind me.

“You sleep yourself into amnesia?”

I laugh nervously when I realize what she means. “Right, we’re Tinsley people now.” I wipe my sweating palms on my shorts.

Tinsley is only about fifteen minutes from Lorial, yet it feels like it’s in a different part of the country.

The few times I’ve been, I couldn’t help but notice the manicured lawns and graffiti-free bus stops.

When my mom first told me she planned to move to Tinsley after the wedding, I couldn’t picture her living there—and I definitely couldn’t see myself there either.

Clearly, I’ve been trying to block it out ever since.

Exit 9A. 9B. 9C.

We pull off the highway, and she points to a Welcome sign. “We sure are,” she says.

The first street we turn on is lined with restaurants and shops, but there aren’t any people around, which seems strange for a Saturday morning. In Lorial, people would be outside running to catch something—their kids, their laundry carts, their buses. But it’s a ghost town here.

My mom is turning on and off side streets with strange names and big lawns.

I look into people’s windows, since no one has curtains.

I’m about to ask her if we do when she pulls up to a white house, her car blending right into a line of other shiny ones.

The front lawn is neat, like it was just freshly mowed, and there’s a gray stone pathway leading to the front door.

The window boxes even have fresh flowers in them. It all looks flawless.

I take a deep breath as she beams and whispers, “This is us, Jas.”

The other houses look similar to ours, just in different colors. There is a woman gardening in a front yard across the street and a kid skateboarding at the end of the block. Not exactly the signs of life I’m used to, but I’m happy to see some.

I feel Mom staring at me and I turn to face her.

“We have a chance here, Jas, a chance to do things over … do things right. Let’s put the past behind us, okay? Make this our fresh start?” Her brown eyes search mine. “That’s what you want, too, isn’t it?”

The question scares me like my silence scares her.

I spent so many of those early nights at the center sleepless: rewinding, replaying, going back in time.

I imagined myself doing things differently, saying yes to a fresh start that might have changed my path.

But I didn’t know if it would have. Soon, forward was the only direction I could tolerate thinking about. I needed to move on.

I nod and say what she’s probably wanted to hear for a long time. “A fresh start sounds good.”