CHAPTER 31: NOW

When Gabe brings breakfast, I hand him last night’s empty dinner tray with the notebook underneath it. He takes it without saying anything about the little bulge from the necklace.

I lie on the cot and stare at the ceiling until it’s time for rec. Out in the courtyard, I’m too out of it to do pushups, so I just stare into the abandoned land past the fence. I wonder if maybe I’ll see Lexi’s kitten. But I don’t. Probably it got eaten by something. As a kind of experiment, I try feeling sorry for the cat.

It doesn’t work. I end up thinking about lunch.

Back in my cell. I think for sure I’m going to find out something from Lexi when Pakmin comes to get me for observation, but he never does.

I make sure I’m awake when Gabe comes with the dinner tray.

“Hey, Gabe, how come I ain’t had observation? Pakmin quit on me or what?”

Gabe scratches his cottony white hair and shifts some cartons of apple juice around in his cart. “Hard to say, son,” he says finally, “but it’s chicken-fried steak tonight.” He hands me the tray with a piece of breaded grayish meat and some green beans before he shuffles on down the hall.

Looking at the drawings in my black book is what I do to calm myself down and make the time pass. It’s like my rosary. But it’s a rosary missing the last bead. One blank page left in the notebook, and I can’t decide what to put there. When I think about what comes out every time I try to draw, I get a sick feeling in my gut.

I leave my pencil under the mattress.