CHAPTER 4 SHAWN—THE CART
The library cart rattles down the tier just after breakfast trays get collected, pushed by a trustee old enough to have stopped caring what's on it.
Shawn's up at the bars before it fully stops. Mostly paperback westerns gone soft at the spine, a couple of thrillers with the covers torn half off, something religious nobody's touched in a year. Nothing worth the ten minutes it'd take to read the back cover.
Then he sees it, wedged sideways between a Bible and a legal pamphlet.
Car magazine. Old issue, cover gone, but the inside's intact.
"No way." He's got it out before the trustee rolls past. Flips it open right there at the bars.
"What," Jorge says, not looking up.
"Magazine." Shawn's already walking it back to the bunk, eyes down on the pages. "Somebody's Caprice. Full spread, lift kit and everything."
That gets Jorge's head up. Actual attention, book set down without a mark on the page. "Let me see that."
Shawn hands it over without thinking twice about it, which surprises him a little. Doesn't usually hand anything over without knowing what he's getting back.
Jorge flips through slow. Real slow, like he's reading something more than pictures. "Two-pump setup." Not a question. "Whoever built this knew what they were doing."
"You can tell that just looking?"
"Can tell a lot of things just looking."
Shawn sits on the edge of the bottom bunk, closer than he's gotten since the transfer, angling to see the page from Jorge's side. "You know cars for real, huh."
Jorge doesn't answer right away. When he does, it's flat, like he's deciding how much to hand over. "Run a shop. Hydraulics, custom work."
"No shit." Real interest in it now, first Jorge's heard out of him. "Like actual builds? Not just installs?"
"Ground up, some of them."
"That's your whole thing, or you just work there?"
"Mine. Family shop." Jorge's jaw does something small. "Was, anyway. Sitting empty right now."
Shawn doesn't push on that. Reads the shift in Jorge's voice for what it is, a door cracked and closing again fast, and steers around it instead of through it.
"You ever build a Regal?" Shawn asks, careful, testing if that's safer ground.
Something flickers across Jorge's face, there and gone. "One. A long time ago."
Shawn catches it anyway. Doesn't ask what it means. Files it next to everything else this cell's already taught him not to touch.
"What's better bones, then," Shawn asks instead, "if not a Regal?"
"Impala. Everybody sleeps on it till they've actually worked one."
"That your professional opinion?"
"That's the only kind I give."
Shawn laughs, short and real, first time he's done it since the transfer. Jorge's mouth almost follows, catches itself before it commits.
They stay like that a while, heads bent over four pages of somebody else's build, Jorge pointing out things Shawn wouldn't catch on his own, Shawn asking questions that aren't stupid even when he doesn't know the words for them yet.
First time since the transfer the cell's felt like less than eight feet by ten.
Shawn doesn't examine why that matters to him. Doesn't want to yet.
"Trade you," Jorge says finally, handing the magazine back. "Keep it on your side. I get it when I want it."
"That a real offer, or you just don't want to ask twice?"
"Take it or leave it."
Shawn takes it, tucks it under his mattress like it's worth more than it is.
Jorge's already turned back to his book. But his eyes drift to the top bunk twice more before lights out, and both times, Shawn's looking right back at him.
Neither one says anything about it.