RE: Detention Facility Incident Report

The first case I took established my name in the black market of gossip. You know the type: tacit probe followed by the inevitable-yet-revealing “I know a guy.” I owed Ariel for launching me into the spotlight even though it turned me into a marked man.

Nobody knew if she called herself Ariel because of the pearls, or if the pearls came afterward. She brought them from outside the gate, flaunting her apparent status with a clatter of beads on her wrist. Opinions split on whether they were real or not. One day we agreed she was a con artist, another we erred towards a wealthy plutocrat gaming the system. She wheedled favours from supervisors and snatched the freedoms of extra responsibilities, like stocking the decaying book cart and delivering our loans, bracelet swinging each time. Don’t touch, she’d say, coy as ever, I see you.

By the end of the day, the cart was empty and the bracelet was gone. Ariel threatened to snap our wrists and Old Hayward hurried over to sedate her with sugar, then ordered a strip down search. We grovelled at ground level, sweeping the floor at her command. We pushed around the rattling cart and shuffled sagging books and turned up nothing. Ariel returned the rattling cart next to the shelves in Old Hayward’s waiting room. We had no budget for a librarian and Old Hayward tried to stop inventory from disappearing.

The next day, the tears were gone and the bracelet was back. Moreover, she had a limitless supply of raspberry sours staining her tongue pink. Inmate resentment rumbled and grew. I started digging.

Jaws dropped when Ariel delivered a raspberry sour to me out by the fence, retreated, and glowered from across the yard. She owed me. Business boomed like when you return to your hometown and find high-rise apartment buildings looming alongside great glass office towers. The streets are the same, but you still get lost coming home.

Most of my meetings were covert—casual exchanges screened by the fence’s long-distorted links. Wires snaked up and down like an art form—abstract impressionism, I’ve heard it called. More like aggressive impressionism. Place yourself beside its chain-link scrutiny and everybody thinks you’re an idiot. Hold a clandestine business deal, and nobody expects you—they’re looking for runaways darting around the corner and known assailants murdering each other with state-sanctioned weapons on the gravel-crusted softball pitch.

I was there when TJ slugged Mad Mason Dixon upside the head, knocking his tooth out. We got down on our hands and knees, plowing through the mire to find the pearl. I promised TJ a cut of the money—we still all got cash compensation for injury and hardship—and he routed around with us. I skimmed my share and everything was fine as sunshine the next day.

There was the time Grand Alice sidled up beside the fence to talk. She scuffed her snap-on shoes—no shoelaces here—against clods of earth. Guillame hadn’t given it up, she said, he was still forging papers and extorting hers. Nothing stopped that man, but she’d stab him with a fork next time if I wouldn’t do anything. She promised me the first three answers on our standardized evals, knowing I needed them. I caught him writing his own permission slip and promised not to rat. We’d exchange favours, I said. I told him to go on copying from Grand Alice—she was the only one who knew what to say—but to switch it up. Change the words to be less particular, potatoes to spuds, workers to comrades in arms, that sort of thing. Shift a few sentences and be creative. My test scores shot way up. Ariel raised her thin eyebrows into disbelieving peaks.

Winona gave me half her dessert ration for clearing out Sanjay before she needed a restraining order. Giselle signed up for cleaning duty with him on a well-timed tip in exchange for her spot in the canteen line. Yes indeed, the dirt-scuffed courtyard was prime real estate. I bartered and traded, giving us a tight-knit community that Old Hayward couldn’t crack.

They called me hold ‘em Holden, the number one broker, dealer, banker, stealer, and all-round intel in the cage.

Then came the rat.

***

I marched down white cinder block corridors flanked by Old Hayward’s henches. Garish, neon uniforms flapped open with their stride, the outfits a decision of smug confidence for her elite force. I dug my hands deeper into my pockets and balled my fists around the crinkle of old wrappers, the hem of my father’s navy jacket—passed on to me as his legacy—swishing against my knees. 

I scanned the hallway for an escape. Expired posters, high above eye-level, papered over mesh-lined glass and blocked the windows. We’re all in this together! One screamed from the sidelines. Another sported a crisp silhouette, cranium spilling forward. Always keep it open. Oh the irony, on the face of the shuttered door.

Old Hayward still ruled the coop—wayward Hayward, I sometimes called her, savoring the satisfying lilt of the words. Nobody knew if she had a first name. Love, Integrity, Fairness, Equality—these were the principles she claimed to uphold while pounding down on us from her dictatorial throne. It was a game: she attempted to harass us into a “L.I.F.E.” sentence, we gagged at the saccharine. Why bother?

The henches hustled me over glossy tiles designed for quick cleanup from mud, blood, and spills. Metallic flakes speckled the surface and my smudged sneakers squeaked underfoot. Old Hayward’s room straddled the end of the hall. I popped my lips and straightened my shoulders, ready to face her trite accusations.

“Holden, please come in.” Old Hayward beckoned from the wings of an unnervingly casual armchair and waved her henches away. I darted a glance at the half-filled jar of raspberry sours in the corner. “Take a seat beside Ariel.”

I settled into another wingback chair, while Ariel perched on the edge of a third. My coat crinkled as I fidgeted. Ariel straightened, smug as a cat and mute as a fish. 

“So, Holden, I see you’ve spotted my candy jar.” A nod to the half-hollow jar beside her desk.

“And your desk, and the cart, and the bookshelves, and the other whatchamacallits. I try to be observant, ma’am.”

Old Hayward was unfazed. “Speaking of observations, young Ariel noticed that you’re taking Winona’s desserts again. How many times do I have to tell you that you cannot run a for-profit operation on the premises?”

“Argumentum ad nauseam,” I said, “One more time, apparently.” 

She turned a penetrating eye on me. I stilled, but not before another rustle escaped from my pockets. “Please leave Winona’s lunches to herself. On another matter, I’ve observed an unusual decrease in my raspberry sours.

“Sneaking in when Ariel’s attending the book cart is unacceptable, and less so is stealing from me. I would like you to apologize to Ariel, and to me.”

Ariel preened on her seat.

“She’s a liar.” I crossed my arms.

It was Ariel’s turn to still.

“I have proof,” she said, pearl beads clattering against each other. They stretched wide as her toothy smile when she gestured to my jacket. “Look in his pockets.”

My stomach dropped.

“Holden?”

“Only if you check her too.” I emptied a cellophane ball from my pockets, thirteen days worth of sours.

“Silly, everybody knows girls don’t have pockets.” Ariel stuck out a pale pink tongue—no sign of candy. Sure enough, no sign of bulging candies anywhere. Where was she keeping them?

“Thank you, Ariel, that’s enough. Holden and I will continue our chat, but you can return to your responsibilities.”

Ariel hopped off her chair and bounced over to the cart. It creaked as she pulled it towards the bookcase and her beads rattled against the aging metal. Old Hayward shut the door to the library, and Ariel peeked back through the window until the task reabsorbed her. Old Hayward droned about responsibility and examples and integrity or something like that. I watched Ariel.

She pulled the cart back and forth, collecting books and carefully checking them off a typed list. With each book, the handle pulled further away from the cart’s frame and exposed a thin hollow between the sheets of metal. Twenty books in, and Ariel bent down, peered at the gap, then stopped using the handle.

“Do you see—” I interrupted.

“Holden, settle down. You need to accept responsibility—”

“But you’re missing it.” I jumped up from my seat and ran to the library. “Give it.”

Ariel shoved me away. “Principal Hayward said this is my special responsibility. Hear that? Mine, not yours.”

“I don’t care, you’re lying!”

“You’re not allowed!”

I grabbed the decrepit handle and yanked. The cart caught on her ankle and split with a definitive snap, throwing me backwards amidst a muffled clatter. Beads bounced to the floor. 

Old Hayward’s heels tapped against the tile and a rock settled somewhere between my lungs and my stomach, stopping my breath. I clutched the disfigured metal in now-sweaty palms and forced myself to look.

“That’s one for the destruction of property, young man.” She turned her eye to Ariel, standing in a puddle of cellophane sours and scattered beads, empty string dangling from the cart’s sharp edge. “But I believe I owe you an apology. Ariel, I think we need to have a discussion about your privileges.”

“After all,” I said, “Only one person is allowed to touch the cart.”

Ariel glared at me, and I smiled sweetly.

“I’ll be closing your defaulted account with Holden’s Holdings. Thank you for your continued interest.”

I grabbed a handful of raspberry sours and waved at Old Hayward. The school bell chimed half past noon. Plenty of time for lunch—I heard Winona brought cookies.