Habouring no illusions
Characters: Meg and Adam Setting: The Library, Early Afternoon
It hadn’t been easy with her right wrist in plaster but Meg had managed to change out of her prison outfit and into some of the clothes that had been in the wardrobe. She hadn’t given up on the orange jumpsuit entirely though, tearing free the top half then removing the arms so it vaguely resembled a sleeveless jacket, albeit it one with ragged edges and the words ‘Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women’ printed on the back. Unlike some of the people living in this new place, she had no illusions about the fact that they were in fact still in prison and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
That said she wasn’t above taking some small consolations from the relative freedom that came with her relocation like the way the orange of the jumpsuit clashed with the pale green stripes of her new tank top or that she had been able to walk into a kitchen and just grab a couple of candy bars before heading to check out the library. The thing she liked the most though was arguably the smallest; the cheap mood ring hugging the ring finger of her left hand which she was idly twisting with her thumb as she walked along next to the shelves seeing what books the library held.
Adam had left Kyle and drifted towards the library, looking through books wondering if he could find something better than the two books he'd read in prison. He was starting to think he should have had Kyle suggest something since he seemed to be more of a book guy than Adam was. It wasn't like Adam was an idiot, he just didn't care about that sort of thing as much.
He'd found one book that was more of an encyclopedia and was flipping through the pages, feeling almost normal, like he was back in high school, right up until he heard footsteps. That had him looking up, eyes scanning the aisle next to the stack he was in, waiting for who was making the noise.
Meg really hadn't expected to find anyone else in the library on the first day, it was one of the reasons why she'd picked it as a place to check out, so when she rounded a corner and came face to face to someone, she frowned a little. "Damn," she muttered, kicking at the carpet with her bare feet.
"Kinda hoping it'd be dead in here."
That was definitely a person, though thankfully not someone bigger than he was. "I can leave if you want," Adam suggested, closing the book in his hand and waiting. "Though if you really wanted to be alone I would have suggested the room with the door the dropped you off in."
She shook her head. "Nah, you're fine," she said, waving her hand. "And it's not so much wanting to be alone as it is not really wanting to talk to people yet." She scratched at the top of her cast and glanced back in the direction she'd came from. "Spent enough time in a small room for it to hold much appeal, even if it a new one."
"I hear that much, the small room bit. New set of walls and all that." Adam shrugged then looked at her again. "We don't have to talk. Honestly, I'm mostly terrible at it so it wouldn't be the end of the world if we didn't."
"Quiet type huh?" she said, raising an eyebrow in faint amusement before turning to look at the shelves again. "Gotta say, I prefer that to someone who'll chew your ear off non-stop. 'sides, you're the first person I've met and I'm going to have to talk to people eventually, might as well be someone unlikely to piss me off."
"More the socially awkward type," Adam corrected, still holding the book in front of him like it might be protection. Of course it had been before, so it serving the same purpose again was reasonable. "Eventually probably yeah. Or you could be the girl that doesn't talk to anyone, but you don't seem the type for that." Not with the way she was dressed. She was making a statement still wearing some version of the prison uniform he supposed, though which statement he wasn't quite sure. Adam was good at noticing what others did, but the why wasn't always as easy to spot.
Meg didn't miss the way he was holding the book and smirked a little. "Yeah, ya do kinda give off the vibe," she said, turning around and leaning back against the shelves to get a proper look at him. "So what type do I seem to be if it ain't the 'not talking to anyone' kind?"
“Thanks,” Adam said, obviously sarcastic about the comment. What he didn’t want to answer was what kind of person she seemed to be. That was always dangerous territory. “You’re the type that’s fine with making a statement and probably enjoys being noticed. Those type of people are rarely quiet.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied utterly unfazed by the sarcasm. Her head dropped a little to one side at his assessment of her, that same smirk still hovering about her lips and tilted her hand from side to side a couple of times. “Yes and no, depends on the mood I’m in. I’m Meg by the way.” She didn’t bother holding out a hand for him to shake; he seemed twitchy enough already and even if the facility was as different as it claimed, they had both come out of prison where social niceties didn’t get you overly far.
Adam made a face but wound up nodding nonetheless. “Adam,” he told her gesturing towards himself with the book in his hand. It was hard not to notice the arm in the cast, especially when she waved it around as such. “Which mood were you in when you got that?” he asked with a nod towards her arm.
Meg looked down at her arm, giving the plaster cast an inscrutable look. “A ‘I want to get into the infirmary so let’s pick a fight with someone bigger’ mood,” she replied, a twinge of discomfort passing through her wrist as she remembered how it had felt when it had been broken; really it was kind of impressive how easily the other inmate had done it.
“Oh,” Adam said tilting his head a little at that. “I was at the infirmary every day so I’m not at all sure what the appeal was. Other than it seemed cleaner than the rest of the prison.” He tapped his fingers along the book then made another face. “Kind of a drastic sort of choice.”
“I was after a scalpel or some pills,” she elaborated. “Not a change in scenery.” The fact he’d been a frequent visitor to his own prison’s infirmary was marginally interesting though and she seized on that. “What’s wrong with you then? Ya sick?”
“Right well yeah of course, extra bonus of winding up where they keep that sort of stuff,” he said holding the book just a touch tighter. Good to know she was one of those inmates and they weren’t too selective with who got to stay in his new, not-as-safe-as-he-thought home. “Yes. Technically. Diabetes. No one wanted the killer to have a set of syringes in his cell so daily I got to go visit the infirmary multiple times a day.”
Meg shrugged. “Well I was on suicide watch so my options were pretty limited.” There was no trace of emotion in her voice as she said it, merely stating a fact like she was commenting on the weather and not about wanting to end her own life. “But wow, kinda sucks to be you doesn’t it?” she said, a faint note of sympathy colouring her tone. The fact he’d referred to himself as a killer she didn’t comment on but filed it away for future reference.
Well that was just weird. Like wanting to be dead wasn’t a big deal. Adam had been through a lot, but wanting to be dead never crossed his mind and he was sure that if it had he’d have an easier time of doing it than most. “Well it’s not that bad. I got to visit the infirmary every day.”
“Cute nurses there or you just like being somewhere cleaner?” she asked, calling back to what he’d said before.
“Just not my cell,” Adam corrected. The nurses hadn’t been cute and the clean part didn’t matter. Not being near his cell that was the nice part, not being as scared or anxious as he was when he was in the mix of everything.
“Fair enough,” she replied. Being in her cell hadn’t bothered her that much, really it was about the same size as her old bedroom had been, not that she cared to think about that overly much, and it sure as hell beat solitary confinement where she’d wound up a number of times. But that was just her perspective on matters and she certainly didn’t have enough of an ego to think everyone felt the way she did. “So what ya reading?” she asked, gesturing to the book Adam had an apparent death grip on.
Adam didn’t quite know what she was asking about at first then looked down at the book. “It’s an encyclopedia. I’m trying to determine if it’s accurate because I’m pretty sure it’s no one uses these anymore.” He hefted it up a little but didn’t quite hand it over.
Meg looked at him, her expression inscrutable. “And you’re reading it why?” she asked, confusion ebbing into her voice.
Adam rolled his shoulders a little then looked at the book for a moment. “Because it was on the shelf? And I like kangaroos.” He tilted it so she could see the spine which had a letter K on it.
That made made her laugh, something she hadn’t done in weeks, at least no genuinely anyway. “Kangaroos are good,” she said, nodding her head. “Only animal smart enough to have a bag built in so credit there.”
The laugh put him slightly more at ease and Adam shrugged. “Why else do you think the cargo pocket was invented? Make up for a lack of natural adaptation.”
“Well that’s what humans are good at isn’t it?” Meg pointed out. “Seeing a good idea somewhere and copying it for themselves. Hell, I doubt we’d have planes if someone hadn’t been looking up at a bird flying and thought ‘I fancy me a piece of that action’.”
“Can you blame them?” Adam said. He had enjoyed looking at birds when he was a kid, flying always seemed like fun. Another perk of the drugs, he’d been able to feel like he was flying from time to time. He ran his tongue across his bottom lip then looked over at Meg. “Were you thinking of a book or were you just going to hide out here?”
“Guess not,” she replied with a shrug. “I mean, never fancied it myself but I ain’t holding it against no-one else if they want to.” His question had her looking back at the shelves, her uninjured hand coming up to run across the spines of the books sat there. “And I was planning on both, dunno what I fancy reading though.”
“I don’t recommend Moby Dick,” Adam offered, something close to a smirk on his features. “Though this is mostly non-fiction. I was going to give it a try versus fiction.”
The smirk suited him and Meg found herself smiling back. “Noted,” she said, nodding firmly. “Never gone in for non-fiction myself, get enough of the real world as is. I prefer getting away from reality for a bit.” Unexpectedly, a memory of her and Dominic reading together in bed rose up and swamped her and for a brief unguarded moment she looked utterly lost.
Brief as the moment was, Adam caught it. He was good at catching those sort of things. “What did I say?” he asked, tilting his head to one side to catch her eyes.
His voice brought her back to herself and she frowned at having let her guard down in front of a stranger. “Wasn’t you,” she said, taking a step backwards. “Just memories.”
Adam was quiet for a moment then wound up nodding. “I get that. Happens to me to.” He had a good collection of them that left him unsettled, especially the ones that were fuzzy or blacked out and replaced by his imagination.
It wasn’t the reply Meg had expected and she found herself feeling oddly grateful for it and nodding in turn. “Past’s a bitch like that isn’t it?” she said with a touch of ruefulness. Not that she wanted to forget anything that had happened between her and Dominic, she just missed him some much that even thinking about him felt like a punch in the gut, something she was all too well familiar with.
“Actually, yeah, yeah it is.” Jeffrey, the O’Conners, all of that. That was all a bitch to remember. “Guess there’s nowhere to go but forward right? At least that’s what they keep saying.”
“So they say,” she replied. “Of course ‘they’ have a real talent for talking out of their ass so I don’t think I’m buying the sales pitch.”
“Yeah that’s probably right on the money. Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna try. I’m not really expecting anything from then to be waiting for me when I get out of here.” It wasn’t like Jeffrey was going to be standing there waiting on him. The bad part though was that Adam wasn’t sure if he wanted him there or not. He shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help it.
She shot him a curious look, wondering what, or more likely who from the way he was talking, that it was that Adam was trying to move forward from. “Me neither,” she said, unconsciously twisting her ring as she thought of Dominic and the last letter she’d got from him, the one from death row.
He saw the look but ignored it, holding out the book to her. “Start with kangaroo. See if it gives you ideas for something new and enlightening.” Wasn’t quite the reaction he was sure she was used to, but he was trying.
Meg laughed again and shook her head a little. "Sure, why not," she replied with a shrug, stepping forward to take the book. "And hey, if I don't get any ideas, I can always use it as a step if I can't reach something."
He was giving up his weapon but at least she was laughing. “Of course. Or just yell. I can reach most things.” There was a slight smirk on his features, and without the book to hold he was back to that tick, the one where he rubbed at his head, looking for something to do with his hands.
"You do have that whole being tall thing going for ya," she said, smirking slightly. "Normally if something's outta reach I just climb up for it but as I'm down a hand right now, I keep the offer in mind." As much as she didn't care about the people around her, she was on her own here so it couldn't hurt to be on good terms with someone and Adam seemed decent enough.
“At least you’ll find me useful until the arm gets healed,” Adam said with a shrug. “Though climbing on these might not be a bright move. I sort of see one of those movies where they all topple down on you? Not cool.” He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this, but maybe being useful was a good thing.
“Probably not but I’ve never been much of one for making the smart move,” Meg pointed out, raising her arm for emphasis. “As you may have noticed. That and I really like climbing, figure it’s only a matter of time before I try and scale something here.”
“Can I request you stick to something that’s like anchored properly?” Accidental deaths would likely put a damper on the ‘progress’ or whatever they were supposed to be making and Adam wanted to get out of this, hopefully with it working.
She shrugged. “I suppose so,” she replied. The fact of the matter was that she had only recently been taken off suicide watch and the thought of prematurely ending her life through an accident didn’t exactly faze her.
“I get the feeling I’m making a request you’re not going to take into too much consideration,” Adam said running his tongue along the inside of his cheek while he thought. “I don’t know what to say to talk to you into it more.”
“Did I say I wasn’t gonna consider it?” Meg pointed out, folding her arms across her chest. “If I weren’t plannin’ on listening to you, I woulda told you to blow your request out your ass. May do a lot of stuff but bullshit people ain’t one of them. Life’s too short for that.”
“No, but the ‘I suppose’ and shrug didn’t really instill faith. And I don’t know you enough to know that you would have just told me to blow it out my ass,” Adam said. “Good to know though, that you aren’t going to bullshit me. I’m not a big fan of that.”
She dipped her head, sending curls tumbling forward in the process. “Fair point,” she conceded. “And don’t worry, I’ll always give it to you straight.” So might say too straight given that the closest she ever came to tact was when she read the word but that was how she rolled. “Nice to know I’m not the only one who feels that way though, the way people are talking on the journals you’d think this was a freaking holiday camp or something.”
Adam wasn’t sure how she went from one to the other but he wound up shrugging. “I don’t think it’s all that bad. If it’s true that we could get out, out, that’d be nice.” Though he probably deserved to live out his sentence, he wasn’t looking forward to it. “And it’s not prison.” Which was the last place he wanted to be.
Meg shrugged again. “Not much point getting out if there’s nothing out there you want,” she told him, consciously touching her ring this time. “And it might be dressed up all nice but it’s still a prison.” People were kidding themselves if they thought otherwise.
That was a thought that Adam hadn’t had before, because getting out seemed so far away. He’d made some deal on parole too, one that was going to have him serving more of his sentence than not. “It’s still better to be out than in I’d think. You find something new you want. As for this place? I don’t feel like I have to watch my back as much as I did in the last place. That’s a step up for me.”
“I really won’t,” she replied, making no attempt to hide the raw pain that rushed to the surface. “Don’t blame you feeling safer here though, no-one likes feeling like they might catch a knife in the back.”
“Or something worse.” A knife in the back might have been easier to look out for. The pain she was feeling though, that was impossible to miss and Adam found himself drifting closer. Girls were bad news for him, especially since the last one had landed him in jail, but he was a guy with few friends. Watching someone hurting was hard for a guy like him who just wanted to be liked. “What happened?”
“They took him away from me.” It was a simple sentence but loaded with emotion and in that moment, Meg looked even smaller than usual and younger than her eighteen years. “We were meant to be together till the end but instead they separated us.”
Adam’s mouth opened, but he didn’t actually have anything to say. He wound up going back to running his tongue along his lower lip and ran his fingers across the top of his head again. “Maybe you can find him again, after this...”
She let out a short bark of what would have been hysterical laughter if it weren’t for the fact she sounded like she was a hair’s breadth away from bursting into tears. “No I won’t,” she said plaintively. “He’s on death row.”
“Oh,” Adam said leaning against the rack near her trying not to be put off by the almost creepy laughter. “So why do this anyway?”
“Do what?” she asked, face etched with confusion.
“This program, this place. Why not just demand they not even bother with you?” Adam asked. He had a guess that everyone else here wanted out, but Meg didn’t seem to want that or much of anything.
Even with the explanation, Meg still looked confusion. “I didn’t choose to be here,” she told him, a frantic quality still edging her voice. “Are you telling me you did?”
He thought about it for a moment then shook his head. “No. But if someone came with the offer I’d still say yes,” he said with a shrug. “But doesn’t mean you have to stay though right?”
“Maybe I won’t,” she said, looking down at the floor. “But it’s better than Tutwiler so I don’t know.” At least here at the facility she had more options, even if it was to kill herself; at least here there were no guards to try and stop her from doing it like there had been in Alabama.
“Yet you’re holding on to it,” Adam said, nodding towards her homemade vest. “Maybe you should find something else that would make getting out of here worthwhile.”
Meg shook her head. “You don’t understand; without Dom, there isn’t anything else worthwhile,” she said, frustration evident in her voice.
“You’re worthwhile,” Adam pointed out, not even sure where that came from but thinking it sounded pretty good when he heard it. “So that’s a start of sorts.” He bit at his lip and shrugged. “Look I don’t get it, I don’t know people like that but I bet there’s something. There’s kangaroos.”
“That’s what Dom said.” Her eyes were bright now and she was starting to feel the need to get away from the conversation and the tidal wave of memories and emotions that were threatening to drag her under. She took a couple of steps back, looking around for somewhere she could run to.
Adam wasn’t sure what to say, not with her moving back, looking for somewhere to run. He was fine with letting her go, letting her run off if she needed to. “Smart guy,” he said softly, holding his hands up to prove he wasn’t stopping her.
Meg nodded, a tear slipping down her cheek. “He really is,” she said quietly, still stepping backwards. “Look, I’m gonna go...” She was already twisting away as she said it, itching to get somewhere private.
While he was sure it wasn’t him so much that made her cry, Adam felt bad about it. “See you around Meg,” he called after her, not moving to follow or force her to stay. It wasn’t like the place was that big, she couldn’t get too far.
Already on her way out of the library, she didn’t reply, not trusting herself to speak even if she’d wanted to, her vision starting to blur. She was going back to her room and no intention of leaving it again for the rest of the day.