Then
“Jasmine, phone call,” Ms. Kim calls from the office.
I get up from my seat in the rec room, where we’re allowed thirty minutes of “social time” each night. She gives me the receiver, along with a warning to keep my voice down. Leaving the office, she closes the door behind her.
“Hey, honey, what are you up to?” my mom asks.
I hear a shower running and soft music playing in the background. “Our schedule doesn’t change, Mom. Same thing at eight p.m. every day: rec room.”
“Right, right. Is this something that you can try to enjoy, at least?” she asks.
“Enjoy is a very strong word for thirty minutes in a locked room,” I say, but I make my voice light, teasing.
The shower stops and a voice that must be Travis’s yells for a time check. “One sec, honey,” my mom says to me, muting the line.
My annoyance turns to curiosity as soon as the call goes quiet. A moment later, she comes back and I can hear a smile in her hello. It’s the way she used to sound, and instantly, I want to go back to that—to a time when her voice held a smile just for me.
“Eww, Mom, what are you up to?” I ask playfully. “It doesn’t sound like you’re at home.”
I hear Travis in the background saying “uh-oh” and they laugh.
“Okay, Sherlock Holmes, we’re at a beautiful hotel. Travis booked it,” she explains. “We’re doing a date night.”
“At a hotel?! Mom! Aren’t you too old for that kind of stuff?!” This time, I don’t have to force the lightness into my tone. It feels good to be laughing with her, talking about something other than our issues.
“Old? I’m in my prime, I’ll have you know! I wish I could show you my outfit for dinner, you’d—” She stops speaking and clears her throat. I know she didn’t mean to remind me of the circumstances, but it’s too late.
“Well, I gotta go. Have fun.” I hang up before she gets a chance to respond. I don’t want to ruin her night.
By the time Ms. Kim comes in to kick me out, I’ve cried just enough to avoid bursting into tears in front of the girls.
“A good call, good job,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say quietly, joining the others in the rec room for however much time we have left.
“Ten minutes!” Ms. Pat calls out.
The girls groan and mumble but don’t stop what they’re doing.
Tanya’s on one of the couches talking loudly about someone on the South Unit who got caught with a phone.
I walk to the only open seat, which happens to be next to Amari and Lisa.
Amari’s reading a magazine and chuckling to herself when I sit down.
Lisa shifts her body dramatically like I sat on her.
“Sorry,” I say to Lisa. She rolls her eyes.
Amari laughs loudly as she closes the magazine.
“You can’t even read,” Tanya says. She doesn’t look at Amari but we all know she’s talking to her.
“Your mother can’t either,” Amari says.
A hush falls over the rec room the way it always does when the two of them get into something.
“The one who actually gives a crap about me?” Tanya shoots back.
“Enough,” Ms. Kim cuts in.
“Go to hell,” Amari snaps, flipping Tanya off.
“All right, line up, it’s bedtime,” Ms. Kim says, exasperated. “Amari and Tanya, you just lost points.”
Tanya and Amari stare each other down. We start the day with sixteen points each, for every hour we’re awake to potentially lose them. With the way they’ve been going at it, they’re probably both at zero and a level lower than they were yesterday.
I feel bad about what Tanya said to Amari, even though I don’t know what she’s talking about. Did Amari’s mom send her here? What does Tanya know? Or did she just get lucky and hit a nerve?
I get in line and stand behind Amari so we can speak quietly. “Are you okay?” I ask.
She turns to face me. The crease in her brow smooths, and she smiles. “I am now,” she says.
Ms. Kim looks at us and I try to hide the fact that I’m blushing. “To your rooms, ladies, and quietly, thank you,” she says.
The line moves and the girls start to disappear into their rooms. Amari’s is one of the first and she walks in and slams the door behind her. I walk faster down the hall. I’m looking forward to some quiet time.
My door is partially open and I hear sniffles coming from inside.
I slowly push the door open wider. It’s dark, but a small amount of light from the hallway spills in and I see Samantha sitting on her bed clutching her knees to her chest. I close the door quickly behind me.
The spotlights outside are bright enough to see that her face is red and wet.
“Sorry, do you want to be alone?” I say.
“It’s fine,” she says, wiping her tears with her sheet. Samantha hasn’t said more than a couple of words to me since I got here. She skips rec time most nights and is usually asleep when I come in. “I’ll go in the bathroom,” she continues.
“Umm, no, you were here first,” I say. “Are you sure you don’t want me to leave?” I move backward toward the door. It’s weird to listen to someone cry and not ask what’s wrong, but I don’t want her to think I’m prying. Don’t ask, period, is pretty much the unwritten rule of juvenile detention.
“No, it’s cool,” she says, wiping her face. “You’d better get in your bed anyway before you lose a point,” she adds.
I agree and climb up to my bunk. I hear footsteps in the hall and let my head hit the pillow. It hits the bed frame instead, and the whole bed creaks loudly.
“Ouch,” I shriek just as our door opens and Ms. Bree pops her head in.
“You good in here, ladies?”
Samantha doesn’t respond.
“Yes,” I say, “just hit my head.”
“Be more careful,” Ms. Bree says. “Still mad at me, Samantha?”
Samantha says nothing.
“You’ll get over it, hun,” she says, closing the door.
Samantha starts to cry again, and I pull the covers up to my chin. Don’t ask, I tell myself before doing the exact opposite. “Are you okay?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “Not really,” she says finally. “I just want to go home.”
“Is your sentence almost over?” I ask, even though I know we’re not supposed to.
“It was,” she says, “but I called my boyfriend and someone told on me. So now it’s not.”
“You’re not allowed to talk to your boyfriend?” I just wrote a letter to my best friend. I’m still waiting for a response from Desiree but she’s probably so busy with community service and stuff.
The bed creaks as Samantha settles in. She sighs.
“I forget how long it takes to learn how everything works around here. You can write to friends and family members, but you can only speak on the phone to your parents,” she says.
“Even if they’re the ones that put you here. And it has to be a scheduled call.”
I’m grateful for her willingness to break this down for me in the middle of what seems like a hard night for her. I hope having me to talk to makes her feel a little better about whatever is going on, and that she might even share it with me.
“What if you don’t have parents?” I ask.
“Then it’s whoever is in charge of you, I guess,” she says.
“Oh okay, got it. That sucks.”
“It does, and Mark is on probation anyway, so that makes it worse.”
I cover my mouth to catch the loud gasp that was on its way out. I don’t know how else to ask my question so I just blurt it out. “Your boyfriend was in prison?”
Samantha chuckles. “No, just jail. Probation, not parole!” she says.
I nod, forgetting she can’t see it in the dark.
“Anyway, he’s innocent. It was a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing.”
I can’t help but think of how I ended up here. Wrong place, wrong time kind of thing. “Okay, so jail, but how old is he?” I ask. “And wait, how old are you?”
She lets out a laugh. “You’re funny. He’s nineteen and I’m almost seventeen.”
“Got it.”
“There’s something else, but you have to swear you won’t tell anyone. Someone is already in my business,” she says.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, happy that she trusts me with any information at all.
“He’s supposed to come to get me next week, but now they took my call privileges away.”
“Wait, you’re leaving? Isn’t that good?”
She doesn’t respond right away. When she does, her tone has shifted. She sounds serious. “Jasmine, I’m running. I got extended six months for some BS, so I’m out of here.”
I stare hard at the dull neon stars stuck on the ceiling and remember what Amari told me about running—or “going AWOL.” I have no idea how to respond, and I don’t want her to think I’m judging her. I’m happy to have her talking to me and hope we can talk more.
The silence doesn’t seem to bother Samantha, though, because she continues. “Mark is waiting for an update but now I can’t call him. So yeaaah,” she finishes with a deep sigh.
“I’m sorry someone did that, but you’ll figure it out,” I finally say, my voice cracking under the weight of the secret, and my new loyalty to Samantha.
“Yeah, and thanks for listening, Jasmine,” she says.
“Anytime, Samantha.”
The sliver of hallway light underneath our door goes out and we’re in complete darkness.
I feel the heaviness of my eyes as they try to adjust. I’m tired.
I hear a shuffle below me and the sound of slow breathing as Samantha falls asleep.
I wonder how long she’s been waiting to get that off her chest.
The faint noise of footsteps means that night staff is making their rounds. I close my eyes and replay the conversation in my head until the thoughts start getting jumbled. It was nice to laugh with someone before bed, and I can imagine being friends with Samantha. I’d like that.
I doze off thinking about more nights like this. I hope she doesn’t leave.