“Can you open it for me?”
“Already did,” she says. She turns the envelope over, and I see a finger’s been run beneath the seal. I take it between my stumps and walk back to my bed. I tug the paper out with my teeth and spread it on my lap.
Dear Miss Bly,
We are pleased to inform you that you are a finalist for admission to the Bridge Program. Over one thousand young women from juvenile detention centers across Montana applied, and only five spots will be granted this year. Several representatives from the program will be present at your parole meeting at which time a decision will be made regarding your acceptance into the program. Earning parole is one of the requirements of the program, so your admission will be contingent on your satisfactory exit from detention.
I scan the letter again, uncertain whether I’ve really learned to read after all. The black-printed words on the page don’t add up. I notice Angel has stopped humming.
“How?” I ask aloud.
Angel steps down from her bunk and scans the letter.
“I didn’t apply,” I say. “I never completed an application.”
She shrugs, her pale eyes not meeting mine. I remember, then, the application that I found on the floor in her handwriting. “So that’s why I’m deserving. Not because I need your help. But because I am going to make it with or without anybody’s help.”
My mouth drops open. “You did this,” I breathe.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“You did this,” I repeat. “You applied for me.”
She crosses her arms, her eyebrows thrust together.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why?” She shrugs. “Why not? Because I was bored. Because you weren’t going to. Because there’s nothing good in this place except the possibility of you getting out and making it.”
She sits heavily on the floor, her back to the cinder-block wall. Her hand covers her forehead.
“Why won’t you tell me how long you’re in for?” I ask.
“It’s too depressing.”
“I can handle depressing.”
“You’ll just cry.”
“I won’t,” I say. “Or, I’ll try not to.”
She sighs. “You know, after I did my uncle in, I got sent to a holding cell at the police station. The pastor from my uncle’s church came to visit. Did you know they can give you religious counsel whether you want it or not? He started lecturing me about how I needed to repent, how I’d done a sin only Jesus was capable of forgiving. He was so specific. What hell smells like and what it feels like to have all your skin burned off, and how you never breathe the same when God leaves your body for good. All I could say was, ‘You’re about ten years too late.’”
She scoffs. “He acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about so I explained to him what my uncle did to me. I used details, too. Anatomical details. I made him squirm, watched his face fill up with heat and his temples go all slick with sweat. He stood up to leave and I told him I had the right to religious counsel, didn’t I? I said ‘Listen. I have a confession,’ real quiet so he had to come back into the room. I told him how I’d crouched in the dark, and when my uncle opened the bedroom door, I held the gun to his Adam’s apple and pulled the trigger. The blood came spurting out of his throat and covered me, head to toe. And it felt good, because I knew it was the last time my uncle would ever touch me again.
“Well, the pastor’s face gets all disgusted at this, but I could tell it wasn’t disgust at what my uncle did, no. He was disgusted by me.”
She’s quiet for a long time. She squints like she’s thinking hard.
“You wanna know how long my sentence is? It’s forty years,” she says. “Forty years. And assholes like my uncle never get caught. The entire system is so fucked.”
Her brow folds and a tear slides beside her nose. I’ve never seen her cry. She covers her face with her hands. “Fuck!” she shouts.
The word reverberates around the cinder-block walls. For no reason, I shout it, too. “Fuck!”
She looks up, surprised.
“Fuck!” she shouts again, staring at me.
“Fuck!” I shout.
She lets her head fall back and closes her eyes. “FUUUUCK!” she screams.
“A MILLION TIMES FUCK!” I scream with her.
“What on God’s sacred green Earth is going on?” Benny calls from the skyway. She approaches the bars, her arms crossed.
“Nothing,” Angel and I say in unison.
“Didn’t sound like nothing. Sounded like I should give you both solitary for a week.”
“We were doing group therapy,” I say.
“Yeah, it’s on doctor’s orders,” Angel agrees. “You can’t punish us for that. It’s against the law.”
“We could sue,” I say, nodding.
“I better just let you off with a warning, then,” Benny says. “But if I hear another piece of profanity leave either of your mouths, I’ll get up in your molars with a bar of Irish Spring, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” we chant back.
Benny recedes back to her post.
I smile at Angel.