Day 17 - The Prison Girl

Hey guys! Grace Nask here with Day 17 of the April Challenge. Today we have The Prison Girl, a short story for middle grade and above. It's a mystery about a teen stuck in prison. So let's get to it!

The Prison Girl

By: Grace Nask

“What’s your name?” the Correctional Officer, Courtney, inquired, even though she held the case file of the girl in front of her and could have answered most of the questions herself.

The girl, eyes downcast on the concrete floor, said nothing. She sat on the edge of a thin cot nailed to the floor on the far edge of the room. Besides that and a small toilet, only solid bricks claimed company there. Juvie at its finest.

Metal bars thicker than the width of Courtney’s hands separated the girl from the outside world. It was there that Courtney sat in a folding chair, complete with a clipboard, the girl’s court case, and a key to the girl’s cell that wasn't likely to be used. At least, not if the conversation kept up like this.

“Ooookay then,” Courtney continued, shifting in her seat, “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.” A gravelly voice belonging to a forty-year-old rasped out of the girl’s lips. Both women seemed surprised by it. Still, progress! Courtney looked to her with a big smile on her face, but the girl kept her gaze on the floor. She hadn't made eye contact once.

A palpable silence squeezed the room into a ball. “Great,” Courtney encouraged after the wall of tension morphed into more than she could bare. “Could you please tell me the crime you were charged with?”

“Robbery.”

“And can you tell me what you stole?”

The girl hesitated, then answered in a whisper, “Medicine.”

“Prescription medicine,” Courtney corrected, “The type you can only get if a doctor specifically lets you have it. Five bottles of promethazine-codeine oral went missing the day you were caught, but only one of them was found on you. Could you tell me where the other four are hidden?”

Tension filled the room like toxic gas, threatening to engulf everything in it. The girl continued to stare at the floor, and Courtney continued to try to catch the girl's eyes.

“The blood test revealed you didn’t have any opiates in your blood stream that day, and you don’t have the symptoms of someone addicted to codeine. Why’d you steal it?” The wearied tone that refused to be masked in fake cheerfulness.

No answer.

Courtney let out a long breath. “Alright. Fine. You did a good job at erasing the security system’s footage and audio track the hour before the police found you. Could you at least tell us what happened that night?”

A long period of silence. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. A half hour of pointless staring on both ends. Courtney gave a heavy frown and waited, but eventually began to pack up her things. “I’ll see you next Friday, then. Maybe you’ll be more willing to talk next time.” She made her move to leave.

“A small voice pleading, ‘Please?’”

Courtney spun on her heel and looked at the girl. She took an instinctual step back upon realizing that the girl’s hazel eyes stared through hers, like a laser to the skull. “What did you say?” she asked, a bit dazed.

Her eyes focused back into Courtney’s. The moment was gone, and they drifted to the floor. “That’s what I remember,” she mumbled.

Courtney’s frown morphed into a small smile. “See you Friday, dear.” Then she walked away.

Nine meals later, with measly breakfast-lunch-and-dinners as the only way to tell the time, a voice other than the usual Correctional Officers loomed into the distance. The girl raced to the bars of her cell and practically squeezed through them, until the Correctional Officer closest to her shot a warning look. “Grandma?” she called out.

“Good gracious child!” Grandma boomed, jogging to the cell and clasping the girl’s hands in her own. The girl noticed the Correctional Officer slink into the shadows to watch their exchange. Her grandmother, however, saw nothing but her granddaughter. “How are you?” she asked.

“Been better, been worse,” the girl responded, with a faulty smile.

Grandma gave a grim grin. “I lose you in the store for half an hour and look at the trouble you’ve managed to get yourself into!” she exclaimed, not unkindly.

“Where’s Mom and Dad?” the girl asked, her voice still tinged with hope even after everything they’d done, or rather, hadn’t done, for her. She searched the limited area she could see, to no avail.

The smile fought to the end, but a frown overtook it. Grandma pulled her into a hug. The metal bars bit into her chest and stomach, but the girl didn’t pull away. “Mules,” Grandma muttered in the back of her throat. “Won’t even go see their own daughter. But my Mia’s always been so stubborn, and Tom follows her around like a lapdog. They’ll never come out. ‘Don’t want to be associated with a drug addict,’ she says. ‘Leave her alone Mom.’ Like I’d leave my only granddaughter to rot in a prison cell!”

“Grandma?” the girl interrupted, squirming under the tightened grasp.

Her grandmother jumped back and swore. The girl flinched, and Grandma’s hard face melted. “I’m so sorry dearie. They wouldn’t come no matter what I did. I tried and tried.”

“It’s-it’s ok,” the girl replied, her face saying anything but.

The Correctional Officer awkwardly approached the two. “I’m sorry ma’am, but your visiting time is over.”

“I love you,” Grandma whispered in adamant.

“I love you too Grandma,” the girl answered, with just as much vigor.

The Correctional Officer cleared his throat. Grandma gave one last smile, her eyes shimmering. The girl bravely returned it. And then she was gone. The girl counted to twenty before letting the tears stream down her face.

It was a full twenty-one meals and another session with Courtney later that the girl got her next visitor. She didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t look old enough to be a shadow from school, so she assumed he had been placed at the wrong cell. It was only when he cleared his throat with the certainty of a middle schooler on their first day that she realized he had been waiting for her to speak.

“Not that I’m complaining, but do I know you?” she asked with a slight smile that couldn’t reach her eyes.

The boy opened his mouth as if to respond, then doubled over as a deep cough overtook him. He grabbed onto a cell bar, but the girl quickly took the hand instead. No one deserved to be supported by a prison. Once the fit calmed down, he shook his head in response. “I’m Rick,” he rasped, his voice sounding as though he smoked all his life. “We’ve never met,” he explained, “but you know my sister.”

“I do?” she replied, trying to recall a friend who mentioned a mysterious younger brother. She came up blank.

Rick nodded. Glancing back to the Correctional Officer, he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Mags.”

The girl nodded carefully. This would have to be a vague conversation. “Is she alright?”

“She’s fine,” he answered, a bright smile contrasting his sallow face. “Actually, she doesn’t know I’m here. But I had to say thank you.” Another cough beat him up from the inside out.

“For what?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

Rick glanced behind his shoulder, then mouthed, “Are we being watched?” The girl released a small nod. Most definitely. “I’m… the reason they were searching so hard.” Of course. The girl had been found with prescription cough medicine on her.

“Don’t mention it.” The double-edged words found their mark.

“Of course,” Rick whispered, “It’s just…I don’t understand why you did it. If you were part of the group, maybe, but to be by yourself and help them…. It should have been Mags! Mags should be in juvie wondering whether I’m alive or not, but you took her place. You, a stranger who we’ve never met in our lives. I guess I’m saying thank you, from the bottom of my heart, and why?”

The girl puffed a short breath. It was only after a short silence that she spoke. “My parents don’t understand half of the decisions I make. They’ve never appreciated who I was. They’re controlling and narrow minded and scary. When they find choices they don’t approve of, they shun me. So I kind of know what it’s like.”

She gripped the prison bar in front of her absentmindedly. Rick grabbed her hand without thinking, a small fury lighting up his eyes. “If you ever need a break,” he hissed, “call us. We owe you.” He gave a light smile, one the girl had to return. He placed a small square in her hand. She didn’t need to look down to know it was a number she could reach them. She also knew, in her heart of hearts, that she could never risk their lives by calling them. But it was a nice thought.

Then, before the Correctional Officer could comment, Rick slid his hands out from between the bars and walked away.

That night, the girl had a dream. She was at the grocery store with Grandma flipping through a newspaper near the pharmacy. A headline caught her eye. Five kids in the children home’s system had run away a week ago, and since then several pharmacies had been broken into one after the other. The author was speculating if these events were related.

The girl looked up and realized Grandma was gone. Before she could find where she went, the store’s lights blacked out. A person screamed. The girl froze. In the distance, near the pharmacy window, glowsticks had been cracked. On an impulse foreign to her, she moved towards them.

Without warning, the lights came on again. The people holding glowsticks swore. The girl looked towards them and realized she recognized these people. She had just been staring at their school photos in the newspaper.

Four of them leaped to a back-entrance pharmacy door and held it ajar. In each of their hands was a bottle of some sort. The girl looked back to the pharmacy and saw most of the prescription medicine bags had been ripped open and scavenged through. Were these kids drug addicts?

The fifth kid, an older girl, hesitated. Her eyes locked with the girl’s, and she walked towards her.

“Mags, what are you doing? We have to go!” one of the boys hissed. The others nodded agreement, but Mags flashed a smile. She met the girl halfway there.

Her eyes--clear, coherent eyes--betrayed her thoughts; Mags knew her friends and she were about to get caught. She pulled a bottle of prescription cough medicine out from her sleeve and pressed it into the girl’s palm.

“Please?” Every note of desperation known to the vocal cord was expressed in the one word.

The girl hesitated. She looked back into the girl’s eyes and knew: whoever these people were, taking drugs wasn’t in the profile. Her fingers closed around the bottle with the warmth of a thousand suns. She nodded.

Without hesitation Mags ran to her friends, and before anyone else could notice the five of them were gone.

And the girl’s name? Katrina.