Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 57099 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57099 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
After she left, Brynn picked at the edge of her blanket again, not meeting my eyes.
“So,” she said after a long moment, “guess your kidney doesn’t completely hate me.”
I laughed, a short burst of sound that surprised even me. “‘Course not. It’s part of me, isn’t it? And I definitely don’t hate you.”
“Whatever,” she mumbled, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
“Want to hear what happens next?” I asked, holding up the book. “The kid’s about to discover the secret cave behind the waterfall.”
Brynn rolled her eyes but settled back against her pillows. “Fine. But only because there’s literally nothing else to do in this place.”
The paperback worked well. Until day seven. By then, even dragons and magic couldn’t keep the restlessness at bay. Brynn got stronger every day. She needed less and less sleep and didn’t tire as easily. She should have been able to go home the day before, but Dr. Patel, out of an abundance of caution, talked us into a couple more days to give her body time to heal and the graft attaching her kidney time to… do whatever the hell grafts do to heal. Brynn’s fingers tapped an erratic rhythm against her blanket while I read, her eyes drifting more frequently to the window than to me. I’d seen that look before. In prison. On the faces of men too long confined in small spaces. I reached into my backpack and pulled out a small box I’d had Ada bring.
“What’s that?” Brynn asked, perking up at the prospect of something new to break the monotony.
I opened the box and pulled out a compact magnetic chess set, the pieces small but solid. “Thought you might be going stir-crazy. This helped me keep my head on straight inside.”
Brynn eyed the set skeptically. “You want to play chess? With me?”
“Why not?” I arranged the tray table over her bed and began setting up the pieces. “You scared I’ll beat you?”
Her eyes narrowed at the challenge. “I was captain of my school’s chess club in fourth grade.”
“No shit?” I raised my eyebrows, impressed despite myself. “Then this should be interesting.”
“Language,” she muttered automatically in a perfect impression of Lavender, but she was already helping me set up the black pieces on her side of the board.
The first round went great.
“Checkmate,” she announced, not even trying to hide her satisfaction.
I stared at the board. Little imp. “Well, fuck me sideways,” I muttered.
“Language,” she repeated, but this time with a snort of laughter. “Mom’s gonna put a swear jar at home if you keep that up. Ada and Hannah said Knuckles and Jag both keep their swear jars full. And the jars of all the kids. Figured you’d be like them with us.”
The casual way she dropped that little bomb, like we were already a family, hit me harder than I expected. I cleared my throat. “I figure it’s a great way to save for college. Now, I call rematch. I was just warming up.”
“Were you scared?” Brynn asked suddenly, hesitating as she set up her pieces. “In prison, I mean.”
The question caught me off guard. I considered bullshitting her, giving her the tough-guy answer that would make me sound invincible. But the genuine curiosity in her expression made me hesitate. As I studied her, I realized this was the moment I either gained or lost her trust.
“Every Goddamned day,” I admitted, watching her carefully. “Not the kind of scared that makes you freeze up. The kind that keeps you alert. In there, you can never let your guard down. You learn to sleep with one eye open, to watch the shadows, read people’s intentions before they even know what they’re planning.”
She nodded slowly, absorbing this. “Did you… did you really kill someone in there?”
“Yeah.” No point sugarcoating it. “He was trying to shank my cellmate over something stupid. I reacted on instinct. One punch too hard, wrong place, wrong angle.” I rubbed my knuckles unconsciously. “Wasn’t trying to kill him, but that doesn’t change what happened.”
“Do you regret it?”
Tough question. I considered it carefully. “I regret that he died. I don’t regret protecting my cellmate.” I watched her face for signs of disgust or fear, but she just looked thoughtful. “Prison isn’t like the movies, Brynn. It’s not about being the biggest badass or having some grand criminal enterprise. It’s… survival. Pure and simple. Sometimes that means hard choices.”
“Mom never told me much about why you were there. Just that you got caught doing something illegal with computers.”
“Cyber fraud and embezzlement. Got cocky, got caught. Wanted to provide for your mom, give her everything she deserved. Instead of working hard and proving myself -- which I kind of already had -- I made stupid choices and got stupid results.” I shook my head at the memory of my younger self. “Turned out what she really needed was for me to just be there. Lesson learned the hard way.”