The Knife and the Butterfly (12 page)

Here’s my day so far. I woke up at the butt crack of dawn because some ho down the hall was screaming bloody murder. I tried to go back to sleep once the guards hauled her ass off. No dice. 5:00 a.m. and awake like a fuckin’ farmer.

No lights in the cells till 7:00, so I had two hours to kill. I thought about Cartoon for a while, but that made me sad because I haven’t heard a word from him.

I looked around the cell for something that I could mess with, and finally I found these bolts holding the toilet to the floor. I worked on one of them forever and got it twisted out. Then I spent the next hour using it to scratch my name into the wall right below the sink. I did it like Slots showed me one time when I went canning with him:

That’s what Slots called me. Sexi Lexi. He even canned that onto the back of the Quik Stop when he was tagging it up. Sexi Lexi. Homeboy just wanted to get into my pants. But I still liked it. Slots and Cartoon are tight with each other, but whenever Slots comes around me, Cartoon gets all edgy. That makes it more fun for me. I like them both, but Cartoon’s cuter.

It’s my fourth day in here. I finally got to go outside for exercise. Hot and sticky as a giant’s pussy out there, but at least it wasn’t the cell. My little pocket of paradise seriously stinks. Can’t even get away from my own farts.

Everything they serve at meals here is in lumps. Brown lump = meat loaf. White lump = potatoes. Green lump = spinach. Puke-colored lump = applesauce. I’m going to die if I have to keep eating powdered eggs and rubbery hamburgers. I want a Snickers bar, Lay’s potato chips, tater tots. Chicken strips and French-cut green beans with lots of salt and baked potatoes with butter and cheese and bacon. Chocolate milk with cereal and Meemaw’s bakery cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Anything that tastes.

Theo’s dead. Theo’s dead because of me.

I’ve been living with it for two days now, but I keep seeing Theo’s dopey big head, his tongue all hanging out, the floppy ears. I want to be mad at him. Why didn’t you bite them, you stupid mutt? You’ve seen pit bulls on the block before, you know how it’s done. But also I know that Theo was super old and not very smart at all. He needed protection.

I want to push my mom up against a wall and say, “Shauna, you idiot, why didn’t you check on him? Why’d you leave him out there to get cut? Why didn’t you take him for a normal goddamn walk?”

But most of all I want to kick Gray Suit in the balls for showing me the picture. So what if I said I wanted to see it? He should have known that it would mess me up.

I knew something went down when he came in calling me “Alexis.” And sure enough, he goes and tells me that even though they set bail, my defense team wants me to stay in custody for my safety. I told him right where he could put that shit idea. For my safety?! I’m not fuckin’ scared. And I told him so.

Then he dropped the bomb about “danger to my family,” which shut me up fast. I asked him about Meemaw, then Shauna. In that order. I needed to know. I even said “please,” trying not to be a bitch about it for once.

Gray Suit pulled out this photograph, held it facedown against his notepad. He looked like he was ready to shit a brick. Then he told me about Theo.

I told him to let me see the picture, that I had to see it. And I swore to myself that I was not gonna cry in front of him.

For a long time he just stared at the Kodak stamp on the back of the picture, didn’t say anything. Finally he flipped it over, but he still kept half of it covered with his notepad.

The part that I could see showed the fence behind our duplex. There was a message spray-painted on it in dripping black letters: 187 DIE BITCH 187. I knew that Gray Suit was hiding the part of the picture that had my dog in it because I could see the tip of Theo’s tail.

I told him I wanted to see the whole picture.

He asked if I was sure and looked right at me for the first time I can remember.

When he uncovered the whole picture, there was Theo. If I only looked at his face, it was easy to pretend he was just lying in the backyard taking a nap. But then I saw the dark red mess spilling out of him and mixing with dirt. It looked like somebody unzipped his belly. There was a big knife still stuck in him, and I thought I was going to be sick.

Gray Suit’s voice seemed far away, and it faded in and out like a radio in a car whose antenna got jacked. Saying shit about the safest thing, about my protection, about a police watch for Meemaw, about the time before the trial.

But none of that matters, because Theo’s dead. I know that no matter how I spin it, this one’s all on me. I might’ve done other bad shit that I can’t write about here, but Theo didn’t do nothing. He was just a dumbass dog with a sweet heart. This one’s all on me, and it sucks.

I didn’t know that I was crying until just now when I messed up the ink in here with my stupid tears.

If this is how she gets over her dog getting cut up, what would she do if one of the punks in her kiddie gang got offed? Would it be enough to make her lie? To make her pin it on one of us, no matter who did it? She might get a break from her own charges for revealing information, and until I remember something, I can’t prove she’s lying. But all this takes me back to the question of why she’s locked up in the first place. What have they got on her? She’s been sticking her fingers in somebody’s business if she’s getting threats like that thing with her dog.

I need to keep reading, but my eyes are already tired. I take a few turns around my cell, probably looking like a dog in a cage. Then I dive back into the notebook.

Gray Suit just brought me my new schedule. Like he’s some kind of school counselor. He’s been fighting with the boss of the place over whether I should be eating in the cafeteria with what he calls the youth offenders. The people in charge don’t want to give me special treatment. Gray Suit said he made them because I’m being kept here for my protection. He said it isn’t safe for me to be around everybody else. They’re a threat to me, he said. No way to know until it’s too late who’s representing who.

I told him I could take care of my own damn self, don’t care what gang a bitch is in; she won’t mess with me. He looked like he was going to cough up a hairball and said no, the worst thing possible would be for me to get into an altercation with someone here.

So here’s the deal:

ALEXIS ALLEN SCHEDULE

All programming subject to change and cancellation.

7:00 a.m. – breakfast in unit

9:00 a.m. – supervised group therapy

12:00 p.m. – lunch in unit

1:00 p.m. – supervised recreational time in TV room

2:00 p.m. – one-on-one therapy

4:00 p.m. – supervised recreational time in gym/courtyard

6:00 p.m. – dinner in unit

There ought to be a Xanax and cookie happy hour where Cartoon comes to visit me. I want him to tell me what him and the boys have been up to. I want to know what they’re going to do about Theo.

Gray Suit must have said that I needed someone tough for therapy because they stuck me with some dyke. Janet. She started out all, “this is going to be different, I’m here to help,” but as soon as I pushed her buttons a little, you could tell that she didn’t want to be there any more than I did.

A lot of things about Shauna piss me off. There’s one thing that’s worse than the rest, though. My friends think she’s hot. How embarrassing is that? One time one of Cartoon’s friends wrapped his arm around my shoulder and said, would I mind if he did my mom just once to see what it was like? Pissed me off for a whole day.

Shauna runs around in leggings and little shorts and a shitload of makeup. She even has a stupid sweatshirt with PINK printed across the front just like the skinny girls at my school. Who does she think she is? She chooses not to accept that you can’t dress like that when you’re forty.