The car came to a halt, throwing Aria, Spencer, and Hanna forward roughly against their seat belts. The worker glared at them, got out, and yanked open the sliding back door to the van. “End of the line,” he ordered, then chuckled. “Welcome to your new home, bitches.”
Aria shuffled out of the van as best she could with the shackles around her ankles. Hanna and Spencer followed, neither of them saying a word. They hadn’t spoken since the verdict had been passed down, actually. Cried into one another’s shoulders, yes. Stared at one another in horror, definitely. But what was there really to say?
Guilty. It was still too horrible to believe. Anything Rubens had said, any logic about what might have happened, any assurance that they’d appeal as soon as they could, went in one of Aria’s ears and out the other. A panel of people had found them guilty. It made her feel lower than low. People actually thought she was a murderer. They’d listened to that ridiculous case and took Ali’s side. She couldn’t believe it.
The worker shoved them toward an open metal door. Another guard, a portly woman with short brown hair and a jowly face, waited for them, a metal basket in her outstretched hands. Aria glanced at the name on her badge. BURROUGHS. She’d read somewhere that people went only by last names in prison—first names were too personal. Or maybe they gave you too much of an identity. So in here, Aria would no longer be Aria, but simply Montgomery. No longer an individual, but a number. No longer an artist, but a killer.
“Turn over all your belongings,” Burroughs ordered Spencer, who was first in line. “Any jewelry, anything you got in your pockets, give it here.”
Spencer took off a pair of earrings and dropped them into the basket. Aria had nothing to fork over—she’d removed the Cartier bracelet Noel had given her earlier and handed it to Ella for safekeeping. She’d told her to give it back to the Kahn family, though even saying that had choked her up. She wished now that she hadn’t chickened out of talking to him at Hanna and Mike’s wedding. He’d just looked so . . . pissed. And he hadn’t come to her trial. Then again, his own trial was probably soon. She wondered what he thought when he heard she’d been found guilty. Maybe he didn’t care at all.
Suddenly Burroughs had pushed her up against the wall, Aria’s chin banging against the cinder blocks. She felt Burroughs’s hands move roughly up and down her body, prodding her armpits, cupping the space beneath her boobs, and doing a full sweep between her legs. Burroughs stood back and looked at the three of them with narrowed eyes. “Before we go inside, I don’t want any funny business,” she growled. “No talking. No looking at the other inmates. No complaining. You’ll do what you’re told, and you won’t make waves.”
Aria raised her hand. “When can I make a phone call?”
Burroughs snorted indignantly. “Honey, phone privileges are earned. And you certainly haven’t done anything to deserve that yet.” She glared at the others. “And so are bathroom privileges, sleeping privileges, even eating privileges.”
“Eating privileges?” Spencer repeated, her voice cracking. “That doesn’t seem humane.”
Whap. The woman’s hand flew out and struck Spencer’s jaw so fast Aria almost didn’t catch it. Spencer pitched to the right and made a tortured sound. Aria turned to her, wanting to comfort her, but feared the woman might hit her, too.
“I said no complaining,” Burroughs hissed. Then she pushed them down a long, dirty corridor that smelled like feet, sweat, and the grimiest Porta-Potti ever, until they came to an entrance to what looked like a bathroom, though it didn’t have a door. “Time to shower,” she instructed, pushing them into the room.
Aria stared at the dingy tiles, the dripping faucets, the open toilet stalls. The place was teeming with other women—terrifying looking women with tattoos and vicious sneers and hunched, masculine postures, all strolling around totally naked and unashamed. A couple of them were shouting at each other as though on the verge of a brawl. A thin Asian girl was huddling in the corner, muttering something in a language Aria had never heard. One woman, who was plucking her eyebrows at the sink, had a scar running the length of her face. When she saw Aria staring, she broke into a wide, weird smile, tweezers held aloft. “Hi, there,” she teased.
Aria shrank into herself. Her feet wouldn’t move. She couldn’t shower here. She couldn’t even stand here. How was she going to do this? How was she going to stay strong? She thought of what Rubens had told them after the verdict had been passed down: “It’s going to be okay. We’ll appeal. We still might be able to beat this.”
“And if we don’t?” Hanna had sobbed.
Rubens had pulled his bottom lip into his mouth. “Well, then, you might be looking at twenty-five years. Twenty maybe, if you have good behavior. I’ve even seen some prisoners get out in fifteen.”