“I forgot my phone call! I get a phone call!”
A female guard shoves me forward. “Keep moving.” It’s like something out of a movie.
She takes me down a narrow hallway to a small, windowless cell. I thought I would be with other inmates in the drunk tank or something like that. It seems unfair that I have to be alone.
“I get a phone call,” I tell the guard again as she locks me in. “You’re breaking the law.”
She just grins at me. I guess it takes a special person to be a prison guard. At least she enjoys her job.
I pace around the cell, looking for things to do. They really limit your options in jail. There is a slim mattress rolled up on a cot, a crumby blanket and a deflated pillow, like the ones they give out on airplanes. There is a small silver toilet in the corner of my cell. A barred door looks out onto the hall, but I can’t see or hear any other prisoners.
The guard drops by once to deliver two identical ham sandwiches. I never knew food could taste like a punishment.
Other than the ham sandwich drop, I’m alone all day. If I’m going to be in jail, I would at least like to have an experience. I have never been arrested before. Like most things, it’s a total letdown. I would give it one star. Don’t believe the hype! Jail is super boring! Try prison.
I roll out the mattress and sit on the bed. I stare at the wall instead of my window.
I wonder what happened to Demi. She probably just waited a while and then went back, slipped through the hole I made in the fence. She probably thinks I just ditched her, which is only going to make her more wary of me.
I am more worried about what Graham and Margo will think. It strikes me now that this was an idiotic plan. Even if it had worked and Demi had gone to jail instead of me, all she would have gotten is a slap on the wrist. It would hardly destroy her life. It wouldn’t make her lose everything.
I need to think bigger if I ever do get out of jail. But first I need to face the music back at home. To be honest, I’d rather stay in jail.
* * *
I SIT UNTIL I think its nighttime and then I fall asleep. I dream that I am on my own street. I see our outdoor light on the porch calling me home. When I reach the house, all the lights switch on at once. I see Graham at the dinner table. A woman dressed in black crosses in from the kitchen, carrying a serving tray. She bends over him and turns to face me. It’s Demi, and she smiles richly at me and purrs, You live downstairs. Go down.
The cracks in the street open beneath my feet, glowing like embers, spreading wide. I fall so fast, it wakes me up.
I’m still in the cell, but it’s dark. They have turned out the lights.
I am so bored, I think I will do anything to stop it.
So I detonate myself like a weapon. I cry—heaving, crazy, wild sobs. Graham hates when I do this. You can’t scream like this, Lyla. You can’t act like this.
I think someone will come, but no one does. It’s actually kind of freeing, just crying and crying with no one making me stop, asking me what I want, giving in to me.
I consider that maybe I would feel better if I didn’t always get what I want.
* * *
I AM RELEASED at three o’clock in the morning. They give me my phone, which has died, and my wedding ring. When I ask the desk where I can charge my phone, they say, “Not here.” There is a pay phone outside but I don’t have coins or a card.
I feel this uncomfortable itching beneath my skin. I feel activated, like someone has stuffed my skin with dirt.
I am in the middle of nowhere: Van Nuys. All the shops have bars on the windows. Everything is shades of gray. It smells of gasoline. Honestly, jail was better.
I walk toward a main road improbably titled Victory Boulevard. I gaze in both directions. To the east, I recognize our hills: shadowed, doomed. To the west are other hills stretching on and on. I have this sudden, wild thought: What if I didn’t go back? What if I went the other way? I gaze west and I feel it, hot on my face like a fire I could walk into. I would burn away, become someone else. Who?
But Margo wouldn’t let me go; I know too much. Without Graham to shield me, she would target me. Graham would probably join her. They would make it game. They would make it fun. They would leave me wrecked.
I have made a point of avoiding looking into the tenants after Graham and Margo are done with them. It hasn’t been hard. We don’t exactly run in the same circles. But one time, by accident, I met one of their victims on the street. They were living on the street.
“You’re that girl,” they said, finger shaking as they pointed like they couldn’t quite place me. “You saw what happened. You know what happened to me.”