A week before she was set to be released, Carrie Hart laid on the cot in her cell reading a magazine. She'd been an inmate at the Tyson Correctional Facility for three years (minus a week) and was looking forward to getting out, even though she suspected she would be back. At the age of 32, she'd spent twelve years of her life locked up in Tyson because she couldn't seem to keep herself out of trouble.
Despite her privileged upbringing, life hadn't been easy for her. She'd started getting in trouble early and when she had shown no direction and no interest in college or any kind of future that her parents had in mind, when she turned eighteen, her parents decided that their duty was done and cut her off and threw her out of the house.
She'd gone to live with her boyfriend, Max in his small studio apartment, and they spent most of their days doing drugs, drinking, fucking, or multiple combinations of those activities. She had to steal to finance the habit and had gotten busted twice for that and once stealing a car. That was her current sentence. Three years for auto theft.
So, she'd actually gotten used to life in prison. She wasn't sure if she actually preferred it, but it didn't bother her and she had accepted the fact that she would spend a good portion of her life locked up. She'd even come to find the bright orange uniforms kind of cozy.
She looked up from her magazine when she heard her cell door open and her cellmate, Anne, was ushered back in by a guard. Anne had spent the past week in solitary for fighting. The guard closed the door then reached through the bars and removed the handcuffs from Anne's wrists and he walked away.
"Welcome back," said Carrie.
Anne smiled at her and climbed up to the top bunk.
"Thanks," she said.
"So," Carrie said, "what's new?"
It was a running joke they'd had in the year they'd been cellmates. Nothing was ever new or different, so asking 'what's new' struck them as kind of a humorous way to greet each other. The question had an extra irony after Anne had just spent a week in solitary. As the joke had grown, the person of whom the question was asked would try to come up with ludicrous answers to the question.
"Oh, same old, same old," Anne replied. "I met a guy."
"Really," said Carrie, playing along.
"Oh, yeah," said Anne. "Very nice, very old school chivalrous. Today he walked me all the way to my door and made sure I was safe inside before he left."
Carrie laughed out loud. "I'm going to have to remember that one," she said.
Anne looked down over the ledge of the top bunk and smiled at Carrie. Her hair hung straight town pointed to the floor and Carrie couldn't get over how cute she looked.
"I'm going to miss you when you get out next week, girl," Anne said.
Carrie gazed at her and smiled back.
"I'll miss you, too," she said. "But you know me. I'll probably be back pretty quickly. And with my record, it will probably be for a good stretch, too."
Anne hopped down and climbed onto the bottom cot with Carrie.
"It won't be the same, though," she said. "We won't be cell mates. They'll probably stick some bitch in here with no sense of humor who doesn't look half as sexy as you."
Carrie couldn't help but smile. She brushed the hair out of Anne's eyes and leaned in and kissed her.
"You know," Carrie said softly, "I could try to keep myself out of trouble. Get a real job. Keep out of here and then I could put money onto your commissary. It's going to be a long nine years for you on this disgusting prison food."
Anne was serving a ten-year sentence for killing her abusive boyfriend.
Anne smiled back at Carrie and caressed her cheek.
