KIKI:lmaooooo
KAI:What?
KIKI:stop playing
KAI:I’m not playing.
KIKI:ooooooh he’s using punctuation, so scary
KAI:I’m being forreal
KIKI:wait seriously
KAI:Yeah
KIKI:since when do you know her
KAI:We met over the summer at grandma’s facility. She volunteers there
KAI:You’d know if you ever visited grandma
KIKI:don’t try to guilt trip me
KIKI:you know how Carla feels about Dina
KIKI:about what her dad did to her ex
KAI:She’s not her dad.
KAI:And she’s really cool and chill, I swear
KAI:I wouldn’t invite her if I didn’t think she was
KIKI:yeah, we’ll see about that
4
Saturday, the two-hour drive up to Suffolk County Prison gives me plenty of time to regret my decision. Half an hour on the road and the radio becomes nothing but garbled static, leaving us with just the sounds of the car clanging along for entertainment. Our car was banged up and rusty when we got it off the used lot ten years ago, and it’s only gone downhill from there.
With every passing road sign, I consider telling Mami the truth. About the dance, the cabin, Kai. Every time I open my mouth, a new image appears on the empty stretch of road in front of us. Mami pulling over to shout at me until her throat is hoarse. The car veering off the road from the shock of Mami processing what I just said. A lightning bolt striking the car the second the truth slips out of me. There’s no point in asking when there’s no possibility that it ends well.
Which leaves me with two options: let Kai down again or sneak out.
The idea of going out without permission feels like less and less of a possibility the longer I linger on it. I’m not the girl who slips out her window in the middle of the night. I’m the kind of girl who knows to keep her head down, smile, and follow the rules. When Mami told me I couldn’t go to the mall with the few friends I’d made in middle school, I didn’t protest. Whenshe didn’t let me go to their birthday and slumber parties, I didn’t argue. Staying home was easier—safer, she said. And why wouldn’t I believe her?
Now, me avoiding my peers truly is the safest option, not just for me but for all of us. Even if Kai can see the real me, there’s no guarantee that the others will. To them, I’m probably nothing but a ticking time bomb.
Mami has always told me I’m not like the other girls in Millcreek—not the type of girl who twirls her hair around boys or parties with her friends. But lately, I’m not sure if that’s who I really am or just who she needs me to be.
Still. Sneaking out would break Mami’s heart. And I don’t know how much more of that she can handle.
As always, the prison is bursting with noise. It’s welcome, for once. A distraction from my dangerous thoughts. The reception area is packed with misty-eyed women and crying babies. Every week there are new faces between the ones we’ve come to recognize. The sister visiting her baby brother who’s ten years into a twenty-year sentence for burglary. The single mom struggling to keep her band of toddlers in line as she writes their names on the sign-in sheet, warning them to “be good for Daddy.” Sometimes the old faces fade. Gone either because whoever they’re visiting is free now, or because they stopped caring.
We’ll never be able to stop coming. No matter how much I wish we didn’t have to, that Papi would come home with us one day. This will be our lives until the day he dies.
We’re able to get through security quickly. By now we’ve come enough times to have a routine. Baggy cotton clothing like sweatpants and sweatshirts. No underwire bras. Nothing in our pockets, not even loose change. We line up neatly in thewaiting area, claiming our usual trio of corner seats as we each wait for our turn. Mami goes first, as always—rocketing out of the room the moment Papi’s name is called out by the burly guard at the entrance. There’s a new slump in her posture by the time she returns. As if another dozen pounds have been added to her shoulders. She keeps her head down, eyes averted from the two of us as she wipes at her nose with a crumpled tissue and mutters something under her breath about us going ahead. Mikey offers the second slot to me with a subtle jut of his chin. I give him a tight smile before heading in.
The room is a stark, almost blinding white. All it does is draw attention to the cracks in the ceiling and the smudges on the wall. Years of grime that no one’s bothered to clean up. The familiar hum of whispered conversations isn’t loud enough to drown out my thoughts as I approach the booth on the far end of the room.