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“You’re free.”
I hate those words. Despise them. The revolting sound rings through my ears as I step out of the large, well-secured prison. The prison that I’ve called my home for the last six years. Six long, grueling years. I spent a few of those years in juvie and the rest of the time in an adult prison. I’ll never forget the day I had to grow up. The day I had to enter the real prison. It was horrible.
Guards are assholes. You learn that really fast when you’re locked away.
Involuntary manslaughter.
Involuntary. Doesn’t manslaughter itself mean it was an accident? So if it was voluntary, wouldn’t it be considered murder? I hate that stupid word. Involuntary. Like, as if you mean to accidentally kill someone.
I’ve had a long time to think these things over. Six years is quite a stretch, really. Mostly her. Especially her. I’ve relived that moment every single time I close my eyes. Over and over, I see her face, the way she looked at me, the way her eyes held mine. That tiny smile she gave. Her own apology, I’ve decided. Her own way of saying she was sorry for the fact that she was about to royally fuck my life up forever.
Involuntary. Of course it was involuntary.
I didn’t mean to kill her.
But she’s gone.
Gone because of me.
Jessika is missing a leg because of me.
Sophie never spoke to me again.
Joanne—she’s the only one I have left. The only one who has been by my side for the last six years, pushing me, keeping me strong, reminding me that one day, one day, we’ll get justice.
Whatever the fuck that means.
I don’t trust the system. No. Not even a little. They didn’t even give me a chance.
Nobody listened when I said she stepped out in front of the car. Nobody heard my pleas. Nobody cared.
“How does it feel?”
I turn at the sound of my best friend’s voice, and my smile is huge. I haven’t hugged her freely in a long time, there have always been eyes watching. Now it’s just us. Freedom.
I scream and throw myself into her arms. The guard standing beside me, who so enthusiastically told me I was ‘free,’ as if I was going to thank him for all his hard work, grunts. He can start doing cartwheels for all I care.
My best friend is here. She’s here. She’s with me.
“I can’t believe you’re out, Callie,” she cries, sobbing into my shoulder as she hugs me tighter.
I squeeze her just as hard, but I don’t cry.
I stopped crying four years, two months, and three days ago. Not that anyone is counting. Hell, I try never to remember the moment when I swore I’d never shed a tear again. The moment I very nearly gave up and considered the many ways I could end my life in a prison, but decided I was strong, stronger than all of it, and I’d get answers. One way or another. I’d get answers.
“I missed you,” I say to her, leaning back and grabbing her face in my hands, feeling the way her skin is soft and warm against my palms.
Her eyes are so bright. She’s happy. So happy.
That must feel amazing.
I wish I remembered how that felt. To laugh. To smile without pain. To feel pure joy. I was an innocent sixteen-year-old girl who thought it just couldn’t happen to me. Isn’t that what we all think? That it’ll never happen to us? That we’re invincible? I thought that. Hell, I was sure of it. All I wanted to do was take my mom’s car for a ride with my friends. In my mind, nothing could go wrong.
How very wrong I’d been.
“I rented an apartment for us, and I’m going to help you find a job,” Joanne says as we walk towards her car. “You don’t have to worry about anything.”
“I’m going to have trouble finding a job,” I tell her. “People aren’t fond of ex-crims.”
She waves a hand. “Nonsense. It’ll be fine. Perfectly fine.”
I give her a fake smile, because I think she’s wrong. I know how hard it’ll be for me out here. I always wondered about the day I got released, how it would feel, but eventually, I stopped thinking about it. Being in there, it became life. It’s funny how you get used to things you’re certain you could never adjust to.
That world—it’s all I know. For now, at least.
I remember what it was like on the outside, don’t get me wrong, but the little things fade away. Having your own space, your own bed, eating when you want, doing what you want—those things, they are a distant memory. But I’m looking forward to getting used to them again.
Once we’re in Joanne’s very cool car, I turn to her and say, “How’s things with you and Patrick?”
She exhales. “Okay, I guess. Living apart is helping, I think living together wasn’t making the situation any easier.”
Joanne married Patrick when she was nineteen. She made sure to send me all the photos. He was the love of her life—at least, she thought he was. She felt like she’d found the ‘one’ and had it all, but as the years went by, and she matured, she realized that maybe Patrick wasn’t what she truly wanted. He got comfortable, they started fighting, and now she’s married to a man she can’t even live with, but she’s determined to give it her best shot. I admire her for that.
“How was he with the idea of you living with me for a while?”
She shrugs. “He didn’t like it, but he didn’t really have much choice, either. I mean, it was that or I leave for good. He wasn’t going to accept me leaving, so he accepted me moving out for a while. He promises to start dating me again, really put the effort in.”
“Is that what you want?”
She smiles; it’s weak, but there. She’s so incredibly beautiful—I wish she knew how much. The way her honey-brown hair flows down her back, and the way her emerald-green eyes light up the room . . . she’s probably the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. She doesn’t seem to see it, though. “He’s my husband, and he’s a good man. I do love him. We’ve just lost that spark. Besides, getting out of everything now . . . I just . . . it would be so hard . . .”
“You’d be able to do it,” I tell her. “Honestly, it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“We have a house, joint accounts, cars, our families love each other . . . it’s not just as easy as walking away. I wish it were. Nobody would understand. Can you imagine my family if I told them I was leaving Patrick?”
Yes, I can imagine.
Joanne was raised in the perfect household. Perfect parents. Perfect life. Perfect car. Perfect school. Their perfect little daughter was matched with a perfect husband. I believe she thought she wanted that life too, but when she finally got it, she realized how utterly bored with it she was. When I first met her, back before we had the accident, she was still so well behaved, but slowly, slowly, she’s changing.
Last week she went and got a tattoo—shock, horror.
It’s safe to say Patrick wasn’t happy.
“You’re right. They wouldn’t like it.” I laugh. “But fuck them, honey. You’re a grown-ass lady; you can do what you want.”
“I wish it were that easy,” she exhales. “Sometimes, I honestly feel like I’m trapped. No matter how I look at it, it feels like there is no way out.”
I reach over, squeezing her arm. Outside of a couple of fights, I haven’t touched another human being in a kind way for years until today. It feels strange. The hug, it was nice, but comforting someone . . . probably not my specialty anymore. I don’t know who I am, what I’m supposed to do, and even what my purpose in this world is right now.
I’m lost—entering the world of the unknown.
“There is always a way out,” I tell her.
She smiles, and then shakes it off and says, “Anyway, what are we going to do on your first night of freedom?”
I grin at her. “Honey, we’re getting cheeseburgers, and beer, and we’re getting really, really drunk.”
“Sounds perfect to me!”
She’s right.
It really does.
~*~*~*~
“ARE YOU SERIOUS?” I laugh, throwing my head back and shaking it as I do, the laughter flowing out. My hair flicks from side to side.
One thing I refused to do when I was inside was cut my hair off. I let it grow, the long brunette locks now touching the middle of my back. I didn’t want to become a woman who looked hard. I wanted to come out and still fit in with the rest of the world. But prison has a way of hardening parts of you.
“Yep, we were right in the middle of it, and he farted. Farted. I’m not even joking. Is it so bad that I’m so turned off by my own husband? Oh, do I dream of meeting some gorgeous man, all rugged and covered in tattoos, who will take me and bend me over some nasty bike and fuck me until my eyes water.”
I laugh harder until beer snorts out my nose, and then I’m choking, trying not to splutter liquid all over the carpet in our apartment. “Oh lord, you’ve really thought that through.”
“Wouldn’t you, if you’d been farted on during sex?”
We both snort, and then giggle, and then snort again.
It feels so damned good to laugh.
“I can’t believe he did that. Did he at least say sorry?”
She shakes her head, tears running down her cheeks. “Nope, he acted like he didn’t even know he did it. The whole room started to smell, and I was trying not to gag.”
“Oh my God!” I double over, clutching my stomach, trying to stop it cramping from laughter.
“Yep, so you can understand why I’m feeling a little lost in the world right now. My husband, he’s just . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Not turning you on anymore,” I point out.
“No, that’s exactly it. Anyway, enough about him. Let’s talk about you. What do you want to do now you’re free?”
I huff. “You make it sound like I’ve been locked away forever. It wasn’t so bad. I’m not too old; I’ve got my whole life ahead of me to fix my wrongdoings.”
Joanne looks sad for me, and I know she is, because she’s the only person who believes me. The only one who believes that Celia Yates jumped in front of my car that night, and that I didn’t hit her as she was crossing the road. Not one other person, except my brother, Max, and even he had doubts, believed that story. Not even my own parents believed it.
“You don’t owe anyone anything,” Joanne says.
“I do, though. Not only did the other girls suffer, but so did my family, and Celia’s family. I want to prove that it was an accident. I don’t want to live forever as the girl who killed someone because she wasn’t paying attention.”
Joanne frowns. “You can’t prove that. If you could, you never would have been locked up.”
I shake my head. “No, I would have been locked up, but probably not for as long. In the end, I still wasn’t paying attention, so even if she was crossing the road, I could have hit her. But she wasn’t. She stepped in front of my car. I intend to find out why.”
“How are you going to do that?” Joanne asks, leaning back in the chair, looking like she’s concerned for me.
I don’t want her to be.
I don’t want anyone to be.
I swore when I was in that damned prison that I’d clear my name. I can’t get back what I’ve lost, but I’ll be damned if I spend forever being treated like a killer. I’m not. I was an innocent girl who made a big fucking mistake that landed me living out the worst thing I could imagine.
But Celia stepped in front of my car.
There were, of course, no witnesses. All the girls in the car with me at the time were flittering around on the ground trying to look for the spilled can of alcohol. Nobody was watching. I was the only one who saw her step out. The only one. It was my word against the world’s. Her parents said she wasn’t depressed. She had a perfect life; things were great. Her friends agreed. So did her teachers.
Nobody believes me.
Except Joanne and Max.
Even then, though, I don’t know if they’re just telling me what they want me to hear, or if they do truly believe that Celia stepped out in front of me that night.
“I’m going to start talking to people she used to know, teachers, friends, whoever I can. I want to figure out what happened in her life to make her feel like she needed to end her life. I want closure.”
“How are you going to get close to her family? They’re going to know you.”
I shake my head. “No, they won’t. I’ll be careful. Use a fake name. I look different now, so different.”
Joanne scrunches her nose up. “You’re risking a lot.”
I shrug. “I have to do this. You know I have to do this.”
“Understandable,” Joanne agrees. “So, you’re going to what? Pretend you’re someone else and go in and start asking questions?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I deserve this, but you know what? So does Celia. She was obviously living through something no one knew anything about. She was alone; she was scared. Nobody kills themselves unless they truly believe there is no way out. Celia was at that point. She deserves for someone to understand her story, even if she isn’t here anymore.”
“Do you think something bad happened to her?”
I shrug, sipping my drink. “I don’t know. All I know is that the story never matched up. I was put away for something that was only partially my fault. I’ve thought about this every day for six years. I deserve answers.”
“Yes,” Jo agrees. “Yes, you do. Well, I’m going to help with whatever you need. Just let me know.”
“Thank you,” I say, reaching over and grabbing her hand. “For believing in me when so many others didn’t.”
“I’ll always believe in you.” She smiles. “I’ve got your back.”
I’m glad, because God knows, nobody else out there has my back right now.
But I’m okay with it.
I’m strong.
I have no other choice but to be.