“Hahaha dude don’t worry about it. Bones has been hustlin’ niggas on the block since he could shuffle a deck of cards,” JJ says. That knowing smile has been painted too high on his face ever since he heard I lost my next three days of milk and two desserts.

“I get that, but I swear to God that Straggle Tooth idiot lost multiple hands on purpose. There’s no way he can be that bad.”

“I know he owed Trigger a milk, and that’s Bones’ celly. He probably doesn’t owe it anymore. Hey, you’re learnin’ though. I’ll be your partner tomorrow and we’ll get your milks back.” He says it like it’s a sure thing.

“K, let’s do it. But you gotta tell me what this 6-4 strategy is. Somehow we lost the game because we bid four but got eight? So we lost?” The rule seemed made up on the spot, but I couldn’t challenge it. I’m just too new.

“Oh yeah, six-four hands can be rough. You can’t get double the score you bid or that’s literally game over. Not just the round either, the whole game. And you can’t get all 13 books either, or that’s game over too. Here, let’s go over some strategies. Get the cards out of my box. Yeah, right there in the front.”

It’s one in the morning. We’ve been going over strategy, playing two-person spades, and choppin’ it up (chatting) for hours. Time as I know it is starting to bend and warp. Every day is the same color, every hour is just a different shade of grey. I feel my cell phone vibrate on my leg from a text coming in, and when I instinctively reach down to grab it, I just feel my scratchy dark blue uniform with no pockets. Oh, that’s right, I don’t have a cell phone.

Another strange sensation comes at night when we’re racked in our cells for the evening and the main lights are off, leaving a dimly lit empty space. In each cell, the lights remain permanently on, illuminating the interior and leaving almost no action unseen. As I peer out into the section, I can partially glimpse into several cells. In a few of them, someone is standing at their door looking out, just like me. How’s that one song go again? All in all, we’re all just bricks in the wall? I can hear the tune in my head, reminding me of how much I miss music.

From my cell door, I watch the guard walk their rounds, making sure sleeping inmates aren’t too comfortable. Some follow the strict rule of no blankets over our heads at night, even though it’s freezing. They bang on the window and flash a light as bright as the sun on us until we acknowledge them and uncover our heads.

My bedroom is my living room, is my office, is my kitchen, is my bathroom. My house is the standard 8x10 cell, with a metal table and stool in one corner and a toilet-sink in the other. A metal bunk bed holding a flimsy half-inch mattress is built into the wall, running from the front of the cell to about a foot away from the toilet. That leaves a six-foot walking space to pace back and forth from the metal stool to the cell door.

It’s day and night, back and forth, pacing the same space. Foot after foot, minute after minute, mile after mile, day after day after day after MOTHER FUCKING GOD DAMN DAY.

I’ve started experimenting with different postures to adopt while I pace, and I’ve found my favorite. Hands clasped behind my back, spine straight, taking slow, deliberate steps, like I’m a gentleman out for a leisurely stroll. The character I imagine myself to be comes naturally now. I’ll interject a British accent into conversation out of nowhere and say something like, “Ah, I see, good sir,” in a pretentious, gaudy tone.

I’m surrounded by a bunch of characters you’d read about in books or see on the news, and that’s when it dawns on me…I’m just like everyone else here.

I’m just another character in a story I don’t understand.

End of Chapter 2