“Jester ain't the only one,” I said. I tried to sound casual as I stalled them, but my eyes darted between theirs as I tried to sense who would make the first move. “I just spent the past seven years eating fucking prison food and now you're gonna tell me there's no cake. I mean, holy shit, they even fucked up the goddamn instant mashed potatoes. How do you do that, huh? Tell me. There's flakes, there's water...”
“You're gonna be a fuckin' funny-boy 'til the end, is that it?” Burger asked, shaking his head.
It's you, motherfucker, I thought, looking at Burger's eyes as they flickered between my face and his shiv. You're the one who's gonna give me my going-away present first. Good.
Now that I knew Burger would be the first one to attack, I faked him out by pretending to focus on Roach, giving Burger the confidence to act. Sure enough, Burger lunged at me with his blade.
I snatched my towel from the nearby shelf and used it to deflect the shiv. The small blade sliced through two layers of cheap cotton, but didn't go any further. I slammed my knee into Burger's balls and he let out a pained groan, his body sagging against mine.
As Roach sliced at me with his shiv, I pivoted Burger's weight, using him as a shield. Roach's blade went into Burger's side and he howled with pain. I could hear an alarm sounding outside, and I knew I only had a few seconds to finish this before the guards showed up or else I'd have to deal with an assault investigation and I wouldn't be leaving that day—or for quite a few days to come.
I grabbed Roach's head and smashed it against the wall, knocking him out. He fell to the floor next to Burger, who was squealing in agony and clutching the wound in his side. I put my foot on the side of Burger's head.
“Next time, remember the cake,” I said. I kicked down once with my foot, smacking Burger's skull against the tiles until he flopped over, unconscious.
I heard the guards' boots thundering toward the shower room and I backed up into a corner, as far from the limp bodies as I could get. I checked my hands to make sure there were no defensive wounds, then looked over at Carp and widened my eyes.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Carp! What the hell did you do to them?” I asked, trying to sound astonished.
Carp stared down at Roach and Burger, then peered up at me, confused. “But...I didn't...”
The guards burst in, led by Clyde. “What the fuck happened in here?” he barked.
“It was Carp!” I blurted out before Carp could say anything. “Burger and Roach came in and tried to fuck with him, and he took both of them apart with his bare hands! I've never seen anything like it before outside of a goddamn Chuck Norris movie. You'd better make sure everyone knows to watch out for this dude. He's fucked up!”
Clyde glared at Carp. “You did this? Really?”
Carp stared at me for a long moment. Then he spat on Roach's face, looked up at Clyde, and nodded. “You're damn right I did. And if he ever tries it again, I'll do a whole lot worse.”
Clyde squinted at Carp as though he'd discovered some strange new species of bug. Finally, he shrugged and grabbed Carp, marching him out of the room. “Well, I guess you'd better do a day or two in seg until you cool off. Let's go.”
As Clyde led Carp away, Carp turned to look over his shoulder, winking at me. I knew there was a better-than-even chance that I hadn't really done Carp any favors—once they woke up, Roach and Burger might get a whole lot of their buddies together and fuck him up for real next time—but that wasn't my problem to worry about.
No, all I had to worry about was getting out of Potawatomi alive so I could give Jester the punishment he so righteously deserved.
Chapter 2
Jewel
“Oh, honey, it's beautiful!” My mother looked around at my new apartment wide-eyed and spoke in a comically hushed tone, as though she were touring a palace in Europe.
The place wasn't actually beautiful. It was a studio apartment near Loyola and the moving boxes stacked around my bed and dresser made it feel like a cramped maze. The kitchen was the size of a small closet. The bathroom was so tiny there wasn't even room for a tub—just a coffin-like shower with cheap frosted glass that looked perpetually soap-scummed even when it was clean. When the faucets were turned on, they spewed reddish-brown water that took two minutes to come out clean and about twenty minutes to come out warm.
But none of that mattered because it was mine. After the embarrassment of living at home during an unsuccessful two-year search for employment, I finally had a job, and I could afford to rent my own place for the first time in my life.
Even with a Bachelor's degree in business administration, the job market in Chicago was scarce, especially for people without any experience. Other than academic achievements, my resume was very thin. I'd spent countless days scrolling through listings on job-seeking websites and met with over a dozen recruiters at staffing agencies, all of whom had smiled with the empty encouragement of a preschool teacher and promised to call as soon as something became available.
But day after day, my phone remained silent, and I spent every night sleeping in the bed I'd had since I was eight. Being surrounded by all of the posters and stuffed animals from my childhood made me feel like I'd never really grow up, especially since I couldn't bring dates home.
There were several nights when I felt like giving up on looking for anything related to business and just applying for part-time positions serving fast food or working a cash register. Each time I talked about it at the dinner table, my parents would exchange a look of concern, then turn to me and encourage me to keep at it.
“You're worth a heck of a lot more than a name tag, Jewel,” Dad used to say, “so you should hold out for more. Someday, someone will see how valuable you are and snatch you right up. Until then, your room will always be here for you.”
As though he could read my mind, Dad stepped around a stack of boxes and put his arm around my shoulders, smiling. “See? I knew you could do it. I'm so proud of you.”
The job I eventually found was a lot like the apartment. It was shabby and low-rent, but at least it was mine. I was offered a position as a general receptionist and administrative assistant to a CPA. His office was at the southern end of LaSalle Street in a plain gray cement building with narrow windows. There were retail spaces at the street level, but they were boarded up and covered with graffiti.
I'd taken the slow, creaky old elevator up to the fifth floor, gripping my resume as I nervously prepared for my interview. The walls of the outer office were painted an ugly putty color, and the desks, chairs, and electronics all looked like beige relics from the 1980s. There was no one sitting at the front desk and I had to knock on it loudly before Bertrand Heeney, the owner, came out of his office. He was a short, egg-shaped man in his fifties with a bad wig of mousy brown hair. He wore an ill-fitting green suit and a loud yellow tie, and the lenses of his glasses were so thick that his watery brown eyes seemed to bulge like a frog's.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Bertrand droned all the way from his office to the front desk like some kind of mantra. He kept his head down and slowly shuffled the entire distance with his hand out for me to shake, as though he couldn't actually determine how close I was until I took it. When he'd made it two-thirds of the way, I couldn't resist closing the distance and shaking the hand.
“Sorry, no receptionist, quit last week, sorry, sorry,” Bertrand continued as he pumped my hand. His lips were always parted to expose his yellowed teeth, and all of his sentences seemed to run together in a single tired groan.
I opened my mouth to sympathize with him, but he continued. “Okay, sorry, so can you answer phones, type, do basic math, greet clients, make coffee, water the plants...”
I expected his inflection to rise at the end, implying a finished question. Instead, he trailed off, blinking at me as though he expected a response. I waited a moment to make sure he was finished, then answered. “Well, yes, I can do all of those things. I can actually type over 80 words per minute, but if you want me to take some kind of test to prove...”
“Don't need to,” Bertrand replied. “Hired, start tomorrow. Twenty-four grand a year, hour for lunch each day, five sick days a year. No benefits.”
I wanted to be delighted by my good luck, but I mostly felt confused. As Bertrand turned to shuffle back to his office, I cleared my throat. He turned to stare at me blankly.
“Um, thank you very much,” I said. “I certainly appreciate this opportunity and I won't let you down. But out of curiosity, I have to ask...”
“Why you?” Bertrand replied, raising his bushy eyebrows. For the first time, I saw a twinkle of humor in his eyes.
I nodded.
“Simple,” he said. “Anyone can do the job, no one else wants to, see you at nine.”
My first two months working for Bertrand Heeney went well. It turned out that Bertrand did most of the typing and math himself, and even preferred to water his own plants. Answering the phone was easy since there weren't that many clients, and even though I'd never made coffee for anyone except my parents before, Bertrand loved how I made it and refused to drink anyone else's from that point forward. He even insisted that I make extra and put it in a thermos for him to drink during the weekends.