Elsa’s eyes widen. She looks like she wants to crawl out of her own skin.
“Just shut up!” I say to Jimmy.
I simply can’t keep quiet. It’s a problem I have. People have always told me to keep my mouth shut, back down—you don’t have to share every opinion or thought. Lack of impulse control, the psychologists call it. On one test I got, like, the worst possible score. I’m the kind of kid who would swallow the marshmallow in one gulp if I had the chance.
“Who said you could talk?”
Jimmy runs his hand over his goatee and pants right in my face.
“Just let it go,” Elsa says behind him.
But Jimmy’s not about to let it go.
He’s, like, half a meter away from me now, and his eyes are glowing with hatred.
“You dirty murdering cunt. You better think twice before you say a word.”
He doesn’t know I have zero impulse control. If he did, he wouldn’t do this.
“That’s enough,” Elsa says in an authoritative voice. I think she even tugs at his arm. “That’s over the line.”
I like her.
“Over the line?” Jimmy whirls around and Elsa is startled. “What fucking line?”
“You aren’t allowed to treat—”
“What the hell are you talking about? Are you defending this killer whore?”
His arm flings out toward her.
“Calm down,” says Elsa.
“Calm down? You’d better think about whether this place is right for you.”
I feel for her. It’s so clear that she doesn’t belong here. She should go back to her life in the white-bread fairy-tale land she comes from, where all the stories have happy endings.
“There are only two sides here,” says Jimmy. “Either you’re on our side, or you’re on theirs.”
Then he slowly turns back around to face me.
He ought to know better. He ought to have a much better overview of the situation. He’s no rookie, and I’m hardly the only person in here who lacks impulse control.
I size him up thoroughly and aim for a bull’s-eye. And in the same instant he turns around, I land a kick right in his crotch.
He groans and doubles over.
Elsa and I look at each other as Jimmy writhes in pain between our feet. Although I make it clear to her that I’m not going to put up any resistance, she takes me down with some sort of judo throw. My cheek is pressed to the filthy floor and her knee is in my back.
So much for that sisterhood. But then again, a good girl never compromises her do-goodiness.
Elsa soon receives help from two colleagues, and after a few seconds of conferring they decide to take me to an observation cell.
They drag me out of the room, and on the way to the elevator I give in and stop resisting. There’s no point.
The observation cell is really meant to protect inmates from themselves. It’s small and dark, with only a mattress on the floor, and everything you do is observed through a window in the door.
I have to spend the whole night there. It doesn’t help when I bang on the wall or scream myself hoarse or threaten to report them.
By morning, when they open the door and bring me back to my room, I haven’t slept a wink.
“Welcome home,” says the guard who unlocks my room.
The smell invades my brain.
I fall straight into bed and sleep until lunch.
49
I still haven’t forgiven myself for hitting Amina. Four years later, the memory tortures me several times each week. What kind of person are you, if you hit your best friend?
An instant after it happened, I cracked. I ran around like a madwoman on a high, shrieking and flailing my arms. I had trouble accepting what I had done. I just wanted to erase the last few minutes and do them over the way a normal person would.
Worst of all: I had enjoyed it. That wonderful, liberating feeling when my knuckles struck her cheek.
Amina sat on the bench next to me with her face in her hands. I pried her arms loose and inspected the screwed-up eye and the reddish-purple lump that was swelling up over her cheek.
“I’m sorry, sweetie! I’m sorry!”
There was no way I could ever fix this, nothing could go back to normal after this. I had ruined it. The only constant in my life, the only thing that was unconditional and truly meant anything—I had destroyed it.
I knelt down and held her hands tight. Passersby stared. A few stopped to ask if everything was okay.
It wasn’t. It was fucking far from okay.
I had hit her. I had hurt Amina.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I deserved it.”