“I’m not sure. We—”
“We’re talking, okay?” A young male voice, kind of jerky. “Why don’t you just wait your turn?”
Shocked, I said, “Who’s this?”
“None of your business. Get your sister off the phone, Nic.”
Now the guy was pissing me off. Why was he calling her Nic? And not telling me his name? What was up with that?
“Listen, you little shit—”
Nicole said, “I’ll call you back,” and hung up.
I ran up to her room and pushed open the door. “What’s the matter with you? Who’s that guy?”
“You had no right to talk to him like that.” She was really upset, near tears. “Now he’s going to be mad at me.”
“Calm down. What’s the big deal? He was being rude to me. I just have to call Ryan and then you can call this dude back.” She still looked upset. “Who is this guy anyway? He sounds like an asshole.”
She screamed, “Get out of my room!”
I screamed back, “No problem!” and slammed the door behind me. But I was surprised and shocked at my sister’s behavior. What the hell was going on?
* * *
Ryan and I waited until it was dark. Nicole was still in her room. I knocked and said, “I’m going out,” but she didn’t respond. I grabbed the keys and the alarm code, then walked down through the backyard to where Ryan was waiting. He’d parked his truck in the shadows down the street. The neighbors’ house was on an acre and set far back from the road—perfect. No one from the nearby houses could see what was going on, but just in case, we still used flashlights, laughing in the dark as we crept up on the house. I turned off the alarm.
Inside the house, we snuck around, breaking out in hysterical giggles as we bumped into each other. We lit some candles Ryan had brought and found the liquor cabinet, pulling out vodka, Southern Comfort, whiskey. Ryan found a suit jacket in the closet and put it on. I found some high heels and rolled up my jeans, strutting around while he whistled.
“We should put them back,” I said. “I don’t want to wreck anything.”
He laughed but agreed. We were careful to smoke near the windows, balancing our drinks on our laps as we sat on the windowsill. Cold now, we found a blanket and turned on the gas fireplace. We cuddled, my head on his chest, the warmth from the fireplace making us sleepy. It was nice, pretending to be a real couple in a real house.
“Maybe we’ll have a big house like this one day,” I said.
“Yeah, that would show my dad—he’s always telling me I’m a loser.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re super-smart and amazing with mechanics—and the best fisherman I know.”
I hated that his dad made him feel bad. I’d see how much he wanted his dad’s approval, trying to get him to come watch his motocross races. But his dad would get drunk that day and never show. It made me even more disappointed that my parents weren’t more accepting of Ryan—I could tell that he liked my dad. Sometimes, his voice all proud, Ryan would tell me how his mechanics teacher had said he’d done a good job on something, and I’d be happy for him but also sad, knowing his dad never said anything nice like that.
“You always make me feel better,” Ryan said.
“It’s not like I have some huge future prospects myself, you know. I’ll probably be a waitress for the rest of my life.”
“Now, that’s bullshit. You’re smart and can do lots of stuff too. You’re a really great cook.”
I smiled at him, flushing a little. I’d only made him a few things, like cupcakes or brownies, but he always loved them. My grandma had given me all kinds of recipes. Sometimes when it was just me and Dad, I’d cook us stuff and I really enjoyed it, especially when he’d say, “This is really good, honey,” and ask for seconds. I didn’t cook when Mom was home because she always had suggestions for how I could make it better.
I said, “Maybe I’ll be a chef.”
He rolled over, dragged a finger down my belly button.
“Oh, yeah? You gonna cook for me when we get our own place?”
“Sure, if you do the dishes.”
We talked for a while longer, about how great it was going to be, how his uncle had an old couch for us, how we could stay up late and do whatever we wanted. We’d work for a year, then travel Europe for a year, maybe get jobs there. Ryan wanted to rent a motorbike so we could ride through Italy. We drank some more, giggling when some vodka sloshed onto the floor and our bodies.
Finally we made love, slow, not feeling rushed for a change, not worried about who might come home. We experimented, tried some new stuff we’d read about. I loved how brave I felt with Ryan, how comfortable, but mostly how beautiful he made me feel. When I straddled him, he caught his breath, reached up with his hand, and cupped my cheek. The glow from the fireplace made his skin turn to a dark tan. I moved slowly, gently, our gazes locked the whole time, then leaned down, pressed my mouth to his. We kissed hard and soft, until our bodies were sticky with sweat, until we both gasped, “I love you, I love you.”
We fell asleep, my head on his shoulder, his hand playing in my hair, his chest rising and falling under my cheek. When we woke a few hours later, we cleaned the place, making sure we put the booze back in the right spot and hadn’t tracked in any leaves or dirt. Ryan said he was okay to drive now, he’d lost his buzz, so he took off in his truck and I walked back to my house.
It was about four in the morning when I snuck in the front door, carefully putting the keys back in place, trying to be quiet. Upstairs, I startled Nicole in the hallway as she was coming out of the bathroom. She gave a little squeak, then, when she realized it was me, she said, “Are you just coming home?”
“Yeah.”
She didn’t say anything else, just kept her head down and walked to her room. Later, when I was climbing into my bed, I realized her face had been shiny, like she’d just washed it, and she’d smelled of soap. Her hair had also been brushed smooth, not messy like it was when she’d been sleeping. Had she just gotten home too? When I’d knocked earlier, before I left for the night, she hadn’t answered. Had she even been here, or had she snuck out? And if so, who had she met up with? That boy on the phone? I wondered if I should talk to her and find out what was going on, but she’d been so defensive earlier I had a feeling she wouldn’t tell me anything more now, and what was the point of another fight? She was home safe.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROCKLAND PENITENTIARY, VANCOUVER
JUNE 1998
I got a letter from Ryan a couple of days after my dad visited. His lawyer had also given him the news about the verdict, but his letter was still full of hope. His parents were out of money so his mom was trying to find a legal aid lawyer to take our case to the Supreme Court. The private detective hadn’t turned up any new leads, but Ryan still thought something might break. The detective had told him about witnesses who came forward years later, cases where someone got arrested for a different crime and evidence linked them back to an unsolved murder, and Ryan was convinced the same thing would happen with our case. I’d speculated a lot about what had happened that night, whether it had been a drifter passing through, a random stranger, or someone we knew—someone she knew.
Those girls.
Shauna and her friends had lied at the trial, that I knew for sure, but I still didn’t know why, didn’t know if they’d really been there that night, or if it was all a lie. I’d also thought about the boy Nicole had been seeing, how she’d been acting that last while, like she was scared, and I wondered if he’d done it, if there was a link between them all. But the private investigator could never confirm Nicole had any boyfriends, secret or otherwise, and he couldn’t find any holes in the girls’ story. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling they were involved.
I’d also told the police about the boy after Nicole was murdered, and how Shauna and the girls had been harassing me all year, how they were lying about what they’d seen that night. I’d hoped for days that
they would find the real killer. But then I realized that they weren’t even looking, and they sure weren’t looking now.
This time I didn’t cry after reading Ryan’s letter. I stared at the words. Don’t give up. It’s just a matter of time. I felt cold and hard. His hope made me angry. I was done falling apart each time something didn’t come through for us, done being reminded over and over of how much I’d lost. Couldn’t he see where we were now? That there was nothing left to hope for? No one was going to come forward with new evidence. The murderer wasn’t going to be found.
I thought about what Janet had said, that you had to let go of the past, of anyone on the outside. I was in prison now and I was going to be there for a long, long time. Ryan and I would never be allowed to be together again. Even if we were freed one day, we weren’t going to be the same people after years inside. I’d changed, and no doubt he was going to change. Too much had happened already. We didn’t even have anything to write about anymore. All we had were memories, and those were going to fade. Eventually, so would our love. The idea that anything good between us might die, might turn dark and bitter, killed me more than anything.
This time I didn’t write back. And when my father wrote a week later, I didn’t answer that letter either. I took down all the photos taped on my wall, even the ones of Nicole, and put them in my storage box. I couldn’t look at her face knowing that her killer, or killers, were still out there, couldn’t stop thinking about what kind of life she might’ve had, a husband, career, children, how she could’ve done great things, but now she’d never even have justice. She’d be forgotten by everyone. And I had to forget everything and everyone on the outside or I’d go crazy, but that didn’t mean I was going to accept my new life on the inside either.
* * *
Two weeks after I spoke to my lawyer, I was walking through the activity area when Janet looked up from a card game with some of the other women.
“Hey, kid, come join us.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t like cards.”
I felt them all staring at my back as I walked away. They were pissed—I hadn’t seen anyone refuse Janet anything—but I wasn’t scared. Instead I felt a shiver of excitement, a sense of pushing something to a head. I felt alive.
An hour later, when I was leaving the laundry room, I heard a noise to my left. Mouse and Yoda were standing in a dark corner of the hall, where there was no camera. Mouse had on her mean smile and was smacking her hands together. Yoda’s face was blank, her ghostly blue eyes staring at me. They both rushed me at the same time. Yoda’s hands ripped at my hair, grabbed at my face and skin, punching me in the head, as Mouse beat my body with a sock full of batteries.
I pushed back, hit any part of them I could reach, bit their shoulders, pulled their shirts over their heads. It felt good to be fighting, our grunts and curses filling the air. The pain of the batteries hitting against my flesh only enraged me more. But then Mouse got a couple of good blows across my head, and I felt blood trickling down my face. The world turned dark, my head ringing as I hung on to one of them, trying not to fall. Then a loud yell from another female voice: “Guard!”
The blows stopped. I slumped to the floor, spitting out blood. Before they ran off, Mouse said, “If Janet tells you to do something, you do it.”
I was taken to the infirmary, patched up, then sent back to my cell, where I pulled my aching body up onto my bed and made a plan. The correctional officers had questioned me, but I said nothing. I hadn’t needed Pinky to warn me that you never rat anyone out, not if you wanted to live. I didn’t care about living at that point, but the last thing I wanted was for them to get locked up in the hole or moved to maximum. For one thing, I wouldn’t be able to get revenge.
When I passed Janet in the activity room the next day, she told me again to join them. Again I refused.
Yoda and Mouse found me in the kitchen later, when I was washing some pots. The other inmates cleared out. But this time I fought back with my own homemade weapon—I’d learned how to extract one of the blades from my safety razor, then melt it onto a toothbrush handle, making a “slasher.” My rage—at my family, at the system, especially at myself—boiled out. I sliced Mouse’s face and Yoda’s arm, and managed to break Mouse’s nose before a bunch of guards finally pulled me off.
As they threw me to the floor and cuffed me, I was still screaming, “I’m in for fucking murder, you bitches! Don’t ever fuck with me again!”
I spent twenty days in the hole. Twenty days staring at a wall, pacing and crying and trying not to think about Ryan. I’d stopped writing him but I couldn’t stop caring about him yet. I couldn’t believe that we were over, that I’d never be able to see him again in my life. It hurt so much, the pain welling up from deep inside my belly, making me sob in big heaving gasps of agony. I also thought about Nicole a lot, torturing myself with memories from when we were little and she used to follow me everywhere, begging me to “pway” with her.
Toward the end of my twenty days, I started getting spacey, losing track of time, and sometimes I’d imagine my sister was in there with me. I’d see shadows and try to reach out to touch her, but she always danced out of sight. I’d talk to her, and to Ryan, telling them how much I missed them. Then I’d just rock back and forth, my arms wrapped around my body, playing mental games to keep alert, like spelling things out loud or remembering lyrics to old songs, trying to hold myself together. But I feared that I was too broken now, that I was finally everything my mom always thought—a waste of a life.
Finally, I was released back into general population. I was treated different then, after that last fight. Mouse was sporting a red scar down her face and looked away when I stared at her. She was scared of me now. Even Janet gave me a wide berth from then on. It didn’t make me feel happy like I’d thought. I felt nothing, not sympathy, pain, or remorse. I’d done it, I was finally dead inside.
I was given respect from most of the inmates, but I didn’t give it to anyone else. I lipped off the guards, I still refused to attend any programs. I got in fights often with other inmates who looked at me too long or whispered when I walked past. I spent a lot of time in solitary. After three new inmates, trying to prove they were tough, attacked me in the shower, I waited until each of them were alone and returned the favor. But I also cut them and left jagged lines down the center of their chests. One day, a woman put a pillowcase over my head while I was napping in my cell and tried to beat the crap out of me. I managed to dislocate her shoulder. I became someone inmates either feared or wanted to challenge so they could prove themselves in there.
For the next three years, nothing changed. If I wasn’t in the hole for fighting, I’d work in the kitchen, then run the track every night or work out in my cell. And if I wasn’t working or exercising, I slept. Once I stopped writing back, my dad’s letters drifted off. He came over my first Christmas in the pen, but I’d gotten thrown in the hole the day before. Now he just sent money into my account every few months and new CDs, sometimes a card with a brief note. I wondered if those would also stop one day. My grandmother was the only family member who kept writing each month, the only one I answered sometimes.
Pinky was still my roommate and we existed fine with each other, never friends but never enemies. Other inmates who were also serving long sentences tried to talk to me sometimes, telling me I needed to chill out, I was making things harder on myself, but I ignored everyone. I had lots of sessions with my institutional parole officer and the prison psychiatrist. I did my best to piss them all off, and I succeeded every time. No one liked me.
Ryan still wrote, at first every week, then every month, and then months would go by and I’d think he’d finally given up, but he’d send another letter. I didn’t read them, didn’t even open them, though sometimes the urge was so strong I’d be physically sick, retching over our small metal toilet, Pinky watching and shaking her head. Sometimes I’d wake up from a dead sleep, Ryan’s name on my lips, and know that he was t
hinking of me, calling for me. After every letter I’d retreat back into my cell to stare at the wall. I’d stop eating. They’d put me in a paper suit and back into solitary. I got thinner—and angrier. Some days I didn’t even know myself anymore.
After I’d been at Rockland for five years, I was sitting in the hole one day, after spitting on a guard, when they sent the prison shrink to talk to me. He was a younger guy with an earnest face and big glasses. I got the feeling that he really cared about his job and wanted to help, but I’d spent most of our previous meetings trying to convince him that I was a waste of time—and doing a good job of it, I thought.
This time he said, “Toni, you’ve served a third of your sentence. You can get out of here and have a life, but you just keep making it harder on yourself. It’s like you don’t want to get out. Like you’re scared of everything out there.”
After he left I thought a lot about what he’d said. When I’d first come in, my sentence had seemed so long, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel now. The idea was terrifying and exhilarating. Did I even have a life to go back to? If I kept going the way I was, fighting the system every step of the way, I’d be nothing but a deadbeat or a druggie when I got out. I’d probably be back in a week—I’d seen it happen time and time again. I thought about what Janet had told me, about doing easy time and hard time. I’d assumed cutting my family and Ryan off would make things easier, but I’d never really accepted being in prison, never tried to fit in or make any kind of life on the inside. I’d seen other inmates laugh, love, learn, achieve things, but I’d closed myself off from any chance of any happiness.
It was like I’d thought finding some pleasure in prison would be giving in, or would be unfair to Nicole, but I hadn’t proved anything to anybody except that maybe they were right about me all along—I was a bad kid. I was twenty-five and I’d done nothing to improve myself, nothing to give myself a fighting chance of succeeding in society when I did make it out. If anything, I’d made it harder to even get parole when I was eligible. And what if by some small miracle Ryan and I were proved innocent? What kind of future could we have if I kept screwing up? He’d finally stopped writing that year, but I couldn’t help wondering if he still felt the same way about me. If maybe I’d been wrong and one day, somehow, we’d find our way back to each other.