“The only appropriate response to this shitty sitch!” I wanted to spit blood out but it would have just hit the hood.
A hard, pointed shoe kicked me then, right in my gut, and I almost screamed. Acid rose in my throat as a heavy, burning pain filled my insides. I quickly coiled up as best as I could with my hands tied behind me and my ankles lashed together. What in holy hell was going on? For about a minute this morning, I’d thought it was a prank, at best, and at worst, a warning from Big Ted, who I owed a measly thirty-two bucks. But after the first punch that had knocked my lights out, it became clear that this was some other shit altogether.
Rough hands scrabbled at my neck and I promised myself to bite the hell out of the next asshole who got too close. They untied the hood and yanked it off, making my head snap against the concrete again.
My eyes blinked painfully against the sudden, too-bright light. I wanted to throw up, then get my hands on the strongest painkillers I could find. A shadow blotted out the light, and I glanced up warily. A woman frowned down at me, but all I could do was gape at her. I’d never seen anything like her. Her brown hair was coiled on top of her head, like braided Easter bread. Her eyes had thin dark lines drawn around them, reminding me of those Egypt people who had failed because their system was bad. Her mouth was painted with barn-red paint, and I wondered how she could stand it. Wouldn’t the paint dry and crack? Didn’t it taste terrible?
Shifting a bit more onto my shoulders, I simply looked her up and down, not even caring if this got me kicked again. She was wearing a navy-blue suit, like a man’s suit, but with a skirt. Her shoes were… thin, totally useless for walking in fields. Her shirt was white and almost shiny—not cotton, not linen, not wool. I wanted to touch it.
“My name,” she said in a voice like an icicle, “is Helen Strepp. You may call me Ms. Strepp.”
My mouth has gotten me in trouble my whole life, and it didn’t stop now. “As long as I don’t call you late for dinner!” I said, remembering when my pa had laughed at that.
Ms. Strepp nodded at someone behind me; there was a slight sound, and then a rocklike boot kicked me in the back.
I couldn’t help sucking in breath with almost a whimper. My eyes squeezed shut against the pain and I realized that every part of me felt bruised and broken. If I’d been home by myself with no one to see, I would have cried. But I hadn’t cried in front of Careful Cassie in years, and I sure wasn’t going to give these assholes a show.
“Now,” said the woman, “what is my name?”
“Ms. Strepp,” I mumbled, not opening my eyes.
“Good,” she said, and I hated the satisfaction in her voice. Well, I hated everything about this, no doubt about that.
“Now you know my name, the fact that swearing is forbidden here, and you’ve gotten just a slight taste of what happens when you disobey the rules,” Ms. Strepp said. “The last thing you need to know right now is that you’re in prison. A maximum security prison for enemies of our system.”
That made my eyes pop open again, and I stared at her in disbelief.
“Are you shittin’ me?” I blurted, and was rewarded by a kick so hard I passed out.
6
A POEM by Rebecca Greenfield
Yellow is the color of the sun
Yellow is the color of ripening wheat
Yellow is the color of the hawkweed flowers in summer
Yellow is the color of corn (certain varieties—not Silver Queen)
Yellow is the color of this goddamn freaking goddamn son of a bitch goddamn freaking jumpsuit that they make me wear in goddamn freaking prison
The end.
They took my pa’s watch, which almost killed me. They took my clothes. They were my third-best jeans, the one T-shirt I had with no holes in it, and the soft plaid shirt with the shiny pearl snaps that I’d stolen from Careful Cassie last night. Looked like she wasn’t ever going to find out. Silver lining.
My loose yellow jumpsuit closed with a plastic zipper. There were no shoes of any kind. The one good thing was the Band-Aids they’d put on my wrists where the zip ties had gouged channels into my skin.
And, son of a bitch, this really was a freaking prison. Which meant we weren’t in our cell anymore. I knew every building, every house, every shed, every barn in our entire cell. Everyone did. None of those buildings had high concrete walls topped with cattle wire. None of them had windows with bars.
I was out of my cell for the first time in seventeen years. It was not an improvement. Which meant that the Provost was right again.
“Move!” A man in a gray uniform pointed his wooden billy club at me and motioned me through a barred gate. I walked through, shuffling because I still had ankle irons connected by a chain. The gate slammed shut behind us.
In addition to the huge, swelling bruises all over from being punched and kicked, my head hurt so much that I felt sick. When they’d moved me from the first room I was in to this big building, it had been dark outside. I hadn’t eaten all day and was hollow with hunger, dizzy with fatigue, and nauseated. So far, being out of my cell sucked.
“You will obey all the rules,” Ms. Strepp was saying, spitting out her words like gunfire. “You will try to fit in. You will do what is asked of you. You will speak only when spoken to. Is this clear?”
Pretty much a yes or no question, but my reply flew right out of my head as we moved down the hallway. There were small rooms on either side, like the ones we’d seen in history books about pre-system times. Jail rooms with people in them.
And all the people lining up to look at me, holding on to their bars, were kids.
7
KIDS. TEENAGERS, LIKE ME. WERE they all enemies of the system? I still didn’t understand what I had done to get myself thrown in prison. I mean, what thing in particular.
“Is this clear?” Ms. Strepp repeated more loudly, smacking me on the arm.
But I had stopped dead, because not only were the prisoners all kids, but they were… different from people in our cell. Some of them.
When I saw a slender girl with dark-brown skin and soft-looking, puffy brown hair I couldn’t help staring.
My skin is colored like vanilla ice cream. Ms. Strepp’s skin was chalky white, like cow bones left in the sun. The guard had a red face and neck, like a lot of men in our cell. Every single person that I’d ever seen was some shade of those basic three colors. My skin got tanner in the summer—most people’s did. But nobody in our cell had that smooth dark skin. Nobody had puffy brown hair like lamb’s wool.
The guard thunked me in the back with his club, and I kept shuffling forward.
“You will obey the rules,” Ms. Strepp said again. “You will try to fit in. You will do what is asked of you. You will—”