Trouble

I couldn’t figure out what to do.

My mind raced with all the different possibilities of things I could do in retaliation, but none of them were practical. I didn’t have any laxatives, I didn’t have scissors to cut her hair, if I hit her, she’d just hit me back. Nothing was valid.

So instead, I just stared at the ceiling, forcing myself to stay awake in case she tried anything. Even though I could hear her obnoxious, throaty snoring, signifying that there was no way she was even partially awake, I couldn’t help the fact that I was in a near-constant fight-or-flight mode.

Feather’s breath hitched as she turned over, the bed shaking and squeaking under her weight, as little weight as it was. It was shocking that someone like her could pack such a punch, but ever since my fight with her, I’d been hearing nothing but buzz about the various awful things she’s done.

I heard that she’s in here because she snapped her sister’s neck after she took one of her sweaters.

The first day she was here, she sat down at a table of a rival gang and took all their food. When someone tried to get it back, she dumped a bowl of soup down her shirt and gave her first-degree burns.

She broke her hand herself just to get out of doing lawn work.

The stories about the girl were almost endless. But when I looked at her, especially when she was sleeping, I saw no one who was worth a speck of fear. I saw an innocent young woman, probably in her early-twenties, who was severely misunderstood. She probably had a rough life, as most gang members did, and she didn’t know how to cope with the feelings she had, so she put up a tough exterior to keep any unwanted attention away from her.

I could relate to it. And maybe that was why she didn’t scare me when we were both awake.



The alarms went off while we were all outside, and chaos erupted everywhere. Grown women were smashing into one another, desperate to get back into the building, not knowing what the grave emergency was.

Unfamiliar with the protocol, I just kind of walked around in circles until someone I ate meals with told me that I had to go back to my cell.

Which just made me super excited, really. I loved the prospect of sitting in my cell with Feather for an indeterminate amount of time. I couldn’t think of anything I’d want to do more with my time.

My feet made scraping noises against the concrete floor as I made my way back to my cell. A guard behind me was shouting at the group to move faster, but I wasn’t feeling it. I would take my own sweet time before the torture began.

Unsurprisingly, Feather was already waiting in the cell when I got there, lounging on her top bunk. She had her scrawny arms crossed in front of her small chest, her hateful dark eyes staring at a crack in the ceiling.

I could tell she wanted me to ignore her. But that wasn’t really my style. I didn’t want to deal with drama or anything. I was out of the gang as I knew it, since I had no idea what happened with the leadership after Cristobal bit the dust, and I wasn’t in high school anymore. It was time to step up, act like an adult, be the bigger person.

“Look,” I voiced, “this is fucking ridiculous. I’m not going to fight and argue with you. In here, we’re all just prisoners. I’m not a Monstruo, and you’re not a Rascal. Okay?”

She turned over loudly in her bed to stare down at me with confusion. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I’m saying that you’re not going to jump me outside anymore, and I’m not going to sit there and imagine all these different ways I could kill you. We’re gonna be civil, whether you like it or not.”

“That don’t sound very civil to me.”

She had a point. Not that I cared. “You know what I mean.”

She sighed loudly and shook her head, her braids hitting against her neck. “Whatever.”

Ugh. I hated that word. It was so dismissive and disrespectful, and it did absolutely nothing to help another person’s claim. “If we’re going to be mature here, you could at least nod and understand where I’m coming from. We don’t have to fall in love, but we can at least get along. Our tattoos don’t define us.”

That struck some sort of nerve, judging from how quickly Feather sat up in her bed with eyes blazing with fury. “How dare you say that! Of course we’re defined by our tattoos. Before our gangs, we were nothing. The gangs made us part of a family, part of a community, made us matter.”

“Don’t speak for me,” I spat at her. “You don’t know my story.”

“And you don’t know mine. But every member’s got some kind of baggage. Some reason they don’t mind losing what they got, whether it’s because you’re doing it for more important things or you just fucking hate yourself. But everyone’s got a reason.”

I swallowed, hating how I was finding some truth in what this bitch was saying. “We’re veering off subject,” I muttered. “So does this mean we can get along?”

“If it’ll help you sleep at night,” she grumbled. “But I don’t like you. I don’t like the fact that you’re Mexican, and I don’t like your language.”

“Am I speaking Spanish right now?”

“Not right now, but I heard you when you were hitting me. Seems like I always hear them same Spanish words when I’m getting my face knocked in or I’m getting raped.”

My stomach dropped. “Hey, I’m sorry, but we’re not all the same.”

“Tell that to your buddies, Monstruo.”

“I bet I’ve never even spoken to those guys that did that to you,” I whispered. Finally, I understood her hatred for me. I understood it so deeply in my core that I could almost feel myself start to shake. “Because if I had, I would have made them regret it.”

“Don’t pretend that you care,” she hissed.

I wanted to tell her that I didn’t just care, that I could empathize with her, but the words refused to come. They were there, racing through my head, but it was as if my lips had been glued shut.

So I let my eyes do the talking, staring straight at her face. I knew what it was like to be taken advantage of by someone in my culture, and even though the man was Mexican, I still loved my people. Everyone was different, no matter what they claimed as their own. No people could be grouped together and stereotyped. It wasn’t right.

And she understood that. She nodded shortly and drew her eyes away from me, bringing them back up to the ceiling. “Okay,” she agreed, clearing her throat. “I guess I can try to get along with you.”

“Good.”

A silence settled between us, thick, though no longer uncomfortable or tense. It was just because neither of us knew what to say to the other.

For a long time, I just listened to the sounds of our breath mingling together, trying to search my brain for a conversation topic. And then I heard it, a tune from so long ago, something that I’d tried to block out of my head from all the times Esperanza blared it through the house.

“Oh my God,” I laughed, throwing my hand over my face. “Do you like One Direction?”

I could almost hear the blood pooling into the apples of her cheeks. “Um, yeah. But if you tell anyone, I swear I’ll gut you while you’re sleeping.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t tell a soul. But I have some great stories that I think you’d love to hear.”