The next day, after showers, Maggie went to talk with Cali, who was sitting in Max’s cell with him.
“Hi, guys. I wanted to tell you about that couple last night. The weirdest thing happened. After they…you know, well, the lady reaches into her purse and gives me a Nestle Crunch bar. Oh my God, it was so good! I forgot how much I love candy.”
The two teens listened with a bit of envy. The kids never got any food other than what John William provided. Cali and Max remembered how wonderful it was to eat chocolate. They rarely allowed themselves to think about the amazing things that were no longer a part of their lives, but now they clung to this opportunity to live through Maggie.
“Was it as good as I remember it being?” Max asked.
Maggie nodded and smiled mischievously.
“Oh man, did you let it melt in your mouth so that it coated your tongue? I used to love doing that,” Cali stated.
“No, I gobbled it down as fast as I could. I was afraid the woman was playing a joke on me and would take it back. Or John William would come in, and I would be in trouble for eating it,” Maggie said, feeling gluttonous.
Maggie had thought it would be a good story to share with her friends, but when she saw the nostalgia on their faces, it made her sad to have reminded them of something they’d lost. It was the small things that each had taken for granted before their captures that they missed most—a hug from a loved one, toilets that flushed, or taking a shower in private.
Max noticed the sudden change in Maggie’s demeanor. “Come here, Maggie,” he said, giving her a squeeze. “We think it’s great that you got to have a treat. You know how it works. We don’t think about these things that much. But when one of us gets any bit of pleasure, I think it’s important that we share it with each other. Fuck, there’s nothing wrong with that. It beats thinking about being a prisoner all the time, right?”
“Sure. Sorry if I made you feel bad, though. If she comes to see me again and brings more candy, I’ll try to save some and sneak it back to you guys,” Maggie offered.
“No!” Cali snapped. “You won’t sneak anything back. Maggie, if John William ever caught you doing that, there’s no telling what he’d do to you. He looks for reasons to punish us. Promise us that you’ll never try to do that.”
Frightened by Cali’s reaction and the thought of John William punishing her, Maggie agreed.
A short while later, Maggie left to talk to Shana and Seth. They were sitting in Seth’s cell, and Shana was telling him a story about when she was a little girl and her parents took her on vacation to Disney World. Seth listened intently as she described having breakfast with Mickey Mouse. They looked up at Maggie as she walked in.
“What do you want?” Shana asked, annoyed that Maggie had interrupted her moment of sweet remembrance.
Maggie wanted so much for Shana to like her. “I just wanted to see what you guys were doing. You know, I went to Disney World, too. When I was eight years old, my parents—”
“Guess what?” Shana interjected, cutting Maggie off.
“What?” Maggie asked, hoping they were making a connection.
“I don’t give a shit what you did when you were eight years old. It doesn’t change the fact that you stole Myles from me, and I still hate you. I’ll always hate you. So why don’t you take your bony little ass out of here and find someone else to bother,” Shana barked, turning back to Seth.
Maggie was stunned. She looked on for a few moments more, willing herself not to cry, and then she quietly turned and left them. Back in her own cell, she sat on the dirt floor next to her cot. She desperately wanted Shana to like her. Maggie had believed that by helping her when she had been beat up that Shana would suddenly like her. She never asked for Myles’s attention and hadn’t done anything to hurt Shana intentionally.
Maggie despised her own existence and the little whore she’d been reduced to just as much as Shana did.