Pulled Back Again

by Danielle Bannister

  Slowly, I bend over and grab the base of it, ready to take down whoever’s in my daughter’s room. As I set my jaw, my muscles tense in anticipation. I bring my foot to the door and kick it open, ready for anything—except for what I see.

  “Tobias Daniel Garret!” Ma shouts. She’s sitting in the rocking chair and holding Janelle. Janelle, who is, of course, now crying. “What are you trying to do? Scare us both to death?”

  My heart hammers in my chest as I lower the tree.

  “Ma! What are you doing?” I rub my hand over my face, trying to wipe away the scene I created in my mind.

  Ma frowns at me. “I was trying to get your daughter to finish her nap, but now that is out of the question.” Janelle shrinks away when I try to hold her, clinging instead to the person who didn’t just burst in acting like a maniac. “What has gotten into you, breaking down the door like that?”

  “I thought—” I can’t actually admit what I thought. She’d tell me I was being paranoid. And maybe I am. I can’t seem to stop thinking about Hawk trying to hurt my family, even when he’s still in prison.

  “I thought Jada was putting her down?”

  Ma’s eyes drop to the ground. The chills I had in the basement return.

  “Ma, where is Jada?”

  She frowns at me and shifts Janelle to her other shoulder. “Tobias, I need you to calm down. You’re upsetting your daughter.” Ma plants a series of gentle kisses in her granddaughter’s sea of curls. “Jada is a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

  “Ma,” I say, my paranoia returning. “Where is she?” My feet plant themselves into the beige carpet, conveying with every pore that I’m not budging until she fesses up.

  Ma stands up, glaring at me down her stubby nose. She rubs Janelle’s back and rocks slowly from side to side. “She went to visit a friend.”

  A friend.

  Bullshit.

  The nausea bubbling up in the pit of my stomach tells me the truth. She’s gone to see Hawk.

  Jada

  Peddling Tobias’s bike toward the jail, I can’t help but feel guilty about not telling him what I’m up to. But I know he’d just try to stop me and I wanted this silliness to be done with.

  Convincing his mother to take care of Janelle while I went was a snap. She’s been urging me to see Hawk for almost two years now. Even she agrees with me; Hawk is essentially harmless. He’s just lonely and misunderstood. I know what that’s like more than anyone.

  By taking his bike, I’ve bought myself a nice window of time. It’s currently the only transportation at the Garret house, so when Tobias finds out I left, it will take some finagling on his part to catch up with me.

  I’m cordial with the mass of other bikers I pass. Cyclists far outnumber cars these days. The fuel crisis doesn’t seem to be getting any better, forcing more and more people to take alternate transportation. I find it ironic how we’ve been forced by Mother Nature and her dried-up oil supplies into becoming greener.

  I’m drenched in my own sweat by the time I make it into town. The summer sun showed me no mercy and the uphill journey didn’t exactly help. Locking the bike up in one of the racks outside the viewing station, I take a few shaky steps toward the building. Now that I’m here, I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do. Or say for that matter. I haven’t seen him in so long—how will he react to seeing me? Will he be angry? Happy? Indifferent?

  As I push open the door, the large cement walls swallow me up from the burning daylight. I notice almost at once that the air inside is damp and thick—stale. It’s like trying to breathe underwater. It’s amazingly depressing. The bright-white overhead lights don’t make matters any better. They are harsh against my eyes and yet flick just enough to drive even a sane person crazy.

  “Can I help you?” A large man in dark brown uniform speaks to me from behind what I assume is a bulletproof glass window. In front of him is a series of flat screens that he seems to be monitoring. A camera from above his head captures my every move.

  Clearing my throat, I step up to the small series of holes that have been carved out of the glass.

  “I’m here to video chat with Hawk Sanders.” I’m surprised by how tiny my voice sounds. The words are almost gobbled up in the dark corners of the room.

  The guard looks down at the screens for a moment, clicking buttons, then back up at me.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Um, I don’t have an appointment or anything.”

  “I still need a name, miss.”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sorry. My name is Jada. Jada Williams. I’m a friend of his. We went to school with Hawk before...” I’m babbling now. I don’t know why I’m so nervous.

  A curious look spreads across the guard’s face. “Oh yeah. I know you. I remember reading about you two in the papers. He’s the one who killed your daddy, right?” He pushes out of his chair to look me over. Instinctively, I yank out my ponytail and hang my head a bit so my hair falls over most of the left side of my face.

  “Um, yeah.” Sometimes I forget our story was once front-page news.

  The guard stares at me for a moment longer before he goes back to his screen. “It’ll take me a few minutes to get him online. In the meantime, I can get you set up in the screening room.”

  I straighten myself up as he slides off his stool. After a moment, the guard opens the door to his left and ushers me inside where I’m sent through a series of metal detectors. Why I need to be checked for weapons since there are no actual prisoners in the building seems like overkill, but ever since the last terrorist attack, all federal buildings do it. I’m required to take off my earrings and the ring that holds Janelle’s birthstone and place them in a bin that will remain outside the screening room.

  Even the small jacket with zippers isn’t allowed inside. As I shiver against the cool air, the guard directs me to the eye scanner, which officially signs me in before he opens a second door leading to a wall of screens. Each monitor has two chairs placed in front of it with only the barest of space between each station.

  There is no privacy with these visits at all. Every word, every glance will be monitored by no less than the guard behind me and the others that may live on Hawk’s end of the screen. There’s no telling how many others watch from the cameras circling above.

  “Have a seat. I’ll go and get him online for ya.”

  Gulping down my fears, I do as he says and grab the first yellow seat I find and wait for him to come online.

  Hawk

  The nurse hands me the plastic filled with a rainbow of today’s attempt to quiet my mind.

  Fools. We can’t be silenced.

  I pinch my eyes to try and shut out the incessant shouting that buzzes around inside my head. It usually works, or at least dulls the sound of it, but lately, it’s been getting louder.

  They were just whispers at first, tiny sounds that told me Jada was the one I’d been looking for. After meeting her, though... well, let’s just say... it’s getting harder to stop listening. So far I can shut him off, that one voice that dominates the others. He calls himself Seth. I’ve never met a Seth before, but this dude is scary. He tells me to do dark things, but I’m able to ignore him for the most part. As long as I can keep him at bay, I’m not crazy and don’t need their pills to turn me into a compliant little puppet.

  “Swallow,” the nurse says, grabbing the next prisoner’s pills. It’s a dance we do twice a day. I swallow, then open my mouth and show the guard standing next to her my masked obedience.

  He nods me down the line where the others await guarded escort back to their cells. Except for my cellmate, Ricardo, the rest of us are currently regurgitating our meds. The trick is to make a shallow swallow; it’s not easy to do. Took me a couple months before I could get it right. Then, once they’re up, all you have to do is fake a cough or a sneeze, pick your nose, something to get your hands to your face where you can spit the damn things out before they dissolve too much. They’re no good on the
street if the coating is too far spent. But I’m not worried about that. I’m not selling mine. At least not yet. I got nowhere to stash them. The others all have it in with Jed. He’s a corrupt guard who takes a hell of a cut. I don’t like Jed. He reminds me of my dad. I won’t sell to him. It’s not like I need the cash now anyway. When they release me, they’ll send me home with either a stash or a script. Those I’ll sell.

  A lot of the guys don’t understand why I go through the trouble of bringing them up if I’m not going to unload them, but they’re missing the point: I won’t be turned into a zombie just to make their lives easier. They may have control of my body, but I refuse to let them have control over my brain.

  They can’t control us. A dark voice bounces around in my head.

  With the pills pressed firmly in my palm with the base of my thumb, I shuffle my way back to my cell with all the other neon-yellow suits.

  As soon as I get in the cell, I toss the pills right into the urinal where they belong. After flushing, I crash onto my bed, faking the grogginess they’re supposed to produce. Can’t risk them finding out I’m not taking my meds now, can we?

  While I “sleep,” I make a hash mark along the drywall with the edge of my nail. 608 days. That’s how long I’ve been here. Only 487 to go.

  608 days of white walls and piss-colored suits. Washing dank cement floors and scrubbing the damn urinals.

  Soon, we’ll be out. Soon, we’ll take back what was stolen from us!

  I slam my head against the thin white mattress that lines my bottom bunk, trying to get the voices to stop.

  “Shut up,” I scream into the bed.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Ricardo grunts. He scrapes a metal chair against the floor to write his precious damn letter on the dull stainless steel desk we share. Dude’s in for manslaughter. Caught his wife with a neighbor. Ran the guy over with a car. He can’t understand why his wife won’t write back to him. Ricardo is a moron.

  “Your damn chair is too loud.” I curse, trying to cover for my slip. They can’t know I hear the voices. They’ll start injecting my meds, and then I really will be in hell. The meds make me forget her, and that I can’t live with.

  “Sorry, man.” He returns to his incessant scribbling. He writes her every day. On cheep recycled paper. Not that he has a choice. It’s not like they give us any screen time here.

  “You know, maybe you should try to write to your lady,” Ricardo says. “That is if she really exists.” His last sentence is hushed, like he didn’t intend for me to hear it. But my hearing is impeccable.

  “What did you just say?” I measure the volume of my voice, masking my rage. Masking Seth’s rage.

  Ricardo turns away from his letter to look at me.

  “Come on. We both know you’re making her up, man.”

  Propping myself up on my elbows, I glare back at him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s just, you’ve been here, what, two years? If she’s real, how come she hasn’t come to see you yet?”

  In a second, I’m on my feet with my fist buried deep in the front of his shirt. His feet dangle in the air as I bring him to my eye level.

  “Take it back,” I spit at him as the voices in my head begin to stir, urging me to punish him.

  Ricardo, wide-eyed and panicked, quickly retracts his statement and begins apologizing over and over.

  “Don’t ever talk about her again, do you hear me?” The words don’t sound like mine, but they come from my lips. The voices in my head are now starting to come out of my mouth. I swallow down the anger that just overpowered me, and I lower him to the ground. It takes a great deal of effort to peel my fingers off his shirt.

  “You’re crazy, man,” Ricardo says, pushing away from me once he’s free.

  I grind my teeth, refusing to believe him. I just lost my cool, that’s all.

  As Ricardo moves away from me I try to gain control of myself. I don’t like it when I act like this, when he makes me act like this. I know it’s just this place is making me nuts. Once I’m out, everything will go back to the way it was. I just need to make it a little while longer.

  Backing away from Ricardo, I press my head against the cool bars.

  Down the hall, I hear the sound of a guard approaching. I glare at Ricardo in warning for him to keep his mouth shut, then crash back onto my bed. I wait for the guard to make his count and move on, but the footsteps stop at our cell.

  The loud clang of his electro-stick banging against the bars echoes inside our puny cell.

  “Falconer. You’ve got a visitor.”

  My head whips up. I never get visitors. Even Ricardo raises his eyebrows in shock.

  “Who is it?” I ask carefully.

  The guard frowns at me. “Your grandma... I don’t know. Some chick. Let’s go.”

  Jada! Seth’s voice throbs in my skull.

  Finally, she’s come.

  Jada

  Trembling, I fidget nervously again with the edge of my shirt. Maybe this was a bad idea? Maybe Tobias was right? Maybe I should go? I bite my lip, contemplating leaving, when the screen in front of me turns on. At first it’s just an empty seat that I see, but behind it, I see the edge of barred walls. There seems to be a guard in the room; only his lower half and his gun is visible at this angle.

  The faint sound of metal clanking against metal alerts me that a cell door is being opened. That sound is followed shortly after by one word that chills me to the core.

  “Jada?” Hawk’s strained voice reverberates inside my body; the sound of it is so disturbing that it makes my skin gooseflesh. The way he said my name—so filled with wonder, shock, and hope... it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

  A moment later he yells out my name again, but this time his voice becomes more frantic. A man yells at him to calm down or he’ll be brought back to his cell. The slight whimper he makes is laced with agony. I am overcome with guilt. I should have come to see him sooner. What sort of a friend am I?

  Hawk’s waist is all I see at first. A neon-yellow uniform to match the chair I sit in fills the screen. His wrists are bound with twist ties. I can see they’re cutting into his flesh, either that or he’s straining against the enclosure, because his skin bulges around the plastic. His palms are pressed together and his fingers are drumming anxiously against the others

  When he finally emerges in front of the screen, my breath stops short. I barely recognize him. His once perfectly sun-kissed hair has been shorn down to uneven peach fuzz. The color of his skin has faded and paled. The strong jaw line he used to have now looks sunken in and weak. But it’s his eyes that do me in—eyes that used to dance whenever he saw me are gone, replaced with an emotion I can’t quite place.

  “Jada!” The relief in his voice is palpable. I can’t help but feel somehow responsible for what this past year has done to him. If I had been able to stand up to my father that night instead of just letting him hit me, Hawk would never have had to protect me. Because I was weak, Hawk is in prison.

  I shake the dangerous thought away and try to focus my attention on Hawk, or rather what used to be Hawk. On the screen sits the shadow of the person who fathered my daughter.

  Two guards on either side of him secure his shoulders with their hands, holding him down like an animal about to pounce. Hawk seems oblivious to the additional restraint placed on him as he leans in closer to the camera.

  “I can’t believe you’re finally here,” he whispers. The tenderness in his voice is jarring. His tries to reach a hand up to the screen, but it’s batted down by one of the guards. Hawk hardly flinches at the abuse. I can relate. It’s strange how your body can get used to maltreatment.

  “I can’t believe I’m here either,” I say. My voice is shaking almost as much as my hands. My stomach churns with unease as his awestruck gaze rakes over me. Absently, I tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear. Of course, I realize a second too late the gesture is a mistake. His eyes shift from mine to the side of my face—my s
car. This is the first time he’s actually seen it since it happened. His face crumples and his nostrils flare as though he’s angry.

  “It’s actually healed up quite a bit,” I say, suddenly self-conscious. “I have one more reconstructive surgery to go through, but this is about as good as it’s going to get.” I bite the inside of my cheek, forcing the tears not to fall. So much for getting over my vanity.

  As though sensing that talking about my scar is making me uncomfortable, he quickly shifts whatever emotion he’d been feeling and refocuses his eyes back to mine. His stare sends a shiver down my spine. A slow, deep smile spreads across his chapped lips.

  “You’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

  My cheeks flush at his compliment. Though Tobias tells me I’m beautiful, it’s still hard to hear, even from Hawk.

  Hawk’s smile disappears, and his eyes grow serious.

  “What took you so long?” His question is so simple and honest that I don’t know how to answer it.

  “I—I wanted to come sooner, but...” But Tobias thinks you’re a lunatic. I frown, unsure how to answer him.

  “It’s Tobias, isn’t it?” He pushes himself back into his seat, shaking his head in apparent anger. “He wouldn’t let you come see me, would he?”

  “No,” I say, trying to smooth the situation over. “It’s just—it’s been hard, with a newborn and all.” As soon as I say this, I realize my slip up.

  “How’s my girl? Is she walking yet? Ms. G told me she’s almost there. God, I can’t wait to see her. Does she ask about me a lot? Did you bring any more pictures of her?”

  His bombardment of questions about Janelle floors me. Surely Tobias’s mother would have told him that I placed Tobias on Janelle’s birth certificate as her father, right? He couldn’t possibly think I was waiting for him to get out of jail so we could all live happily ever after, could he?