We were at a bistro just on the outskirts of the city. Normally I wouldn't be seen at one of these places. Okayish food, guys with only a few tattoos, but for some reason toughing out a small tattoo made them so badass, and some of the worst music in the world playing.

Oh sorry, that's the latest hit from some asshole and a shit ton of other songwriters who aren't credited.

This new shit was making me want to chop off my ear like Van Gough.

Maybe it was the music of his time that made him do it.

Who am I kidding, dude was insane, not sick of music.

Ms. Sunshine was smiling, "Isn't this great? It's my favorite place to go."

"Yeah, sure," I said unenthusiastically.

She gave me a once over, "You looked happy when you left, why?"

I didn't want to tell her anything about what was going on. She wouldn't understand, actually, the only person who would understand was the one person I would be talking about, so, that sucked dick.

"I just was happy to see Rex."

She nodded, "You guys have this strange thing going on."

"What do you mean weird thing?"

"You guys seem to be close and everything, but for some reason, you both have a hard time expressing it."

"You got that from seeing us say goodbye?"

She pursed her lips, pink lipstick being distributed against them, it was an annoying shade.

"I may or may not have watched you guys talking today."

I tensed, "Did you hear anything?"

"No. Why? You were planning his escape so you two could run off into the sunset together?" She said jokingly.

I choked on the coffee I was drinking, "Uh, no, it's not like that. We're not like that."

She shrugged, "Whatever. You guys looked like you were one of those couples that I see in juvie all the time, He looked worried that you weren't okay without him, and you looked worried that he was missing you."

I scoffed, "Ms. Sunshine, you don't know the first thing about me and Rex, so stop trying to pretend like you do."

"Then enlighten me."

"I'm not falling for it."

"For what?"

"You're attempting to bond with me, get to know me so we become besties. I know how this works, okay, I've talked to enough people who pretended like they cared what was going on in my life. And you know what, those people just ended up disappointing me. So, no, I'm not going to enlighten you on the only relationship in my life that hasn't ended in disappointment."

She raised her eyebrow, "Even Jonah?"

I slammed my fist down, "Don't bring him into this, Eliza, okay. You don't know me, don't try to."

Her gaze that had once been playful softened into sympathy.

"I read your file, Carmen, I know what happened. The case and everything, what I don't know is why you did it."

I glared, "And I ain't telling you."

"Well, then tell me about you and Rex. Why has he not disappointed you yet?"

I threw my hands up in surrender, "Fine, fine, I'll fucking tell you."

"Great."

"Okay, the only reason he hasn't disappointed me yet, is because I haven't disappointed him."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning, I haven't ditched him, so he won't ditch me. It's a trust thing."

"But how do you know that you can trust him?"

I smiled a little, "My first week in Juvie, I got picked on a lot. I had a big mouth, but I was all bark no bite. So I got beat up. Rex was one of the only kids who didn't do shit to me. He kinda just sat back for that first week."

"How old were you guys?"

"About seven or eight."

"And they beat you up at that age?"

"If you insulted one of them, you were fair game. Didn't matter your age. If I wasn't a new kid, I would have been beaten to death."

"So when did Rex come in?"

"Ms. Sunshine, would you please shut the hell up, I'm trying to tell a story, and you ain't helping."

"Sorry." She said with a smile on her face.

"Well anyway, Rex was about ten. Which wasn't that young considering the ones that thought I was worth beating up were our same age. One day, I had already gotten beat up for calling one of them an ugly prison bitch, and I ran my mouth to a guard. The dude got pissed off and took his baton, swung at me a few times. Landed a few hits. Then Rex came and stopped him from doing any more damage. Saying that if he didn't stop, Rex was gonna tell the whole place that the guard was getting in bed with one of the inmates."

Eliza's eyes widened, "Wait, was it true?"

I smirked, "Hard to tell, but it sure did make that guard shit himself. The next thing I knew, Rex had made a proclamation that no one was gonna go near me or he was gonna beat them up. Then, he started teaching me how to actually defend myself. After that, we started actually talking. Worked our way to the top together, always kept the other kids from taking each other's shit if we were out for a day. I guess you could say, we really didn't have anyone else to trust other than each other, so, we put all of that trust into each other. And I guess that made us form some sort of friendship. And now we're here. We've always had each other's backs, so that's how it's always gonna be."

Eliza nodded, "Wow, that's a story."

"Yeah, well, you're welcome for telling you that. Just don't psychoanalyst, please."

"I won't...Outloud." She said with a smile playing at her lips.

I couldn't help but laugh a little, "To tell you the truth, Ms. Sunshine, I think you might have been assigned to me because I also needed a psychologist or some shit."

She laughed a little, "Maybe."

I sipped the last of my coffee and looked at the muffin in front of me, double chocolate. Yeah, I'd save that for later when I was actually hungry.

Eliza started to get up, "Let's get you home."

"Why?"

"It's been a few hours, Carmen, schools out."

"Sweet, so, if I just keep this up, I'll get to skip more and more school?"

"No, Carmen, if you keep this up, you and I are gonna be spending a lot more time together than you want, and I'll have to ask you about your life."

I smirked, "Bring it, Ms. Sunshine."

But on the inside, I was a sailor who just got shit on by a seagull.

I was cussing my eyes out.

This fucking bitch wanted me to keep it up so that I would have to have sessions with her or some shit. What she didn't realize was that no matter what she did, she was never gonna have a breakthrough with me. She wasn't gonna get me to tell her everything, to tell her the truth about why I got arrested this last time, to confess to everything, to break down crying, to tell her all the things that were fucked up in my life, to tell her the stuff that not even Rex knew about what I did and didn't get caught for.

But, the worst part was that the longer I went without telling anyone anything, the longer everything was circling around in my mind, and the longer I went without admitting it.

____________________________

JAY

I was in my room trying to do my homework when the door opened. I heard the sound of a bag being tossed to the floor, and then the sound of someone falling on the bed with a huff.

"Took you long enough to get home."

"This ain't home, Jay, this is hell."

Carmen hadn't been at school the rest of the day, so I had to handle Daya's constant questions about Carmen, and what she seemed like, and how edgy was she, and did she keep a gun or knife in her pocket?

It had gotten annoying, and I straight up told her to shut the fuck up after she had asked me if, one, I'd seen Carmen naked, and two, if I had a crush on her.

Guess the whole thing about teenagers being horny was a well-known fact.

Not only that, but when I got home, mom was pissed. Said that Eliza called and told her that Carmen had skipped school. Didn't say the reason, something about delinquents always thinking they can do whatever they want. But then she decided that it was my fault that she had skipped.

Supposedly according to my mom, all I had to do was put my foot down and she'd crumble. According to five-year-old me, that never stopped me. I doubt that being more of a self-righteous bitch would actually have helped the situation.

"Where were you by the way?"

I turned and she was lying down on her back, staring up at the ceiling.

"Visiting Rex."

"Like I know who that is."

"Only person on this planet that one, gives a shit about me, and two, I trust. Looked out for me in juvie when I was younger. Never an ulterior motive. We helped each other along the way. The only person I would consider a friend."

She rattled off different phrases to describe this guy, and I shrugged, "So what, doesn't mean he's ever going to change being some sort of criminal."

Carmen scoffed, "I'm a criminal, he's a criminal, everyone's a criminal these days. Doesn't matter. He's the only person in the world that I trust. How many people do you trust? Like really trust? A lot I'm guessing. Your friends, all those people, you trust all of them. Most of my life I've only trusted one person, him. The rest, I didn't trust. It's a shitty way to live, I can say that."

I tried to focus on the formula in front of me. It wasn't working.

Whoever this Rex guy was, Carmen seemed to have a real connection or some shit with this guy. In the two days, she'd talked to me, I'd never heard her sound like that about someone. Defensive, like don't mess with my sister shit. It kind of made this feeling boil up in my chest. A knot or something, and it didn't feel good.

You're Jealous.

No, I'm not.

You are, bitch.

I'm not jealous of some dumbass who got thrown in juvie and probably has fifteen tattoos.

I bet she thinks that those tattoos are hot though.

Just shut up.

I tried to focus on the algebra two homework in front of me, but the problem was fucked up, the variable wasn't right.

"Damn it," I said under my breath.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Carmen getting off the bed and walking over to me. She put her hand on the frame of the chair I was sitting in, and the other right next to the paper, caging me in. I looked up at her as her eyes looked at all my chicken scratch handwriting.

"Give me your pencil."

I didn't ask why, I just gave it to her. And I watched as she erased everything.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Just hold on a second, dumbass."

I did. I watched as she rewrote the problem, reworked it, and after twenty seconds, wrote X=4 on the paper, circling it as well. She handed the pencil back to me.

"Plug it in."

I grabbed the calculator that she had neglected to use and plugged in the variable, and sure enough, both sides were the same answer. My eyes darted up to her, then back to the paper, then back up to her.

"How the fuck did you do that?" I yelled. There was no way that this woman knew how to do algebra better than me. I had a 4.0, there was no way she knew how to do that. She must have just guessed, right?

Carmen just shrugged, yeah, she shrugged, "You just have to substitute this for the other side multiplied by two and then have them be congruent. Then you solve, that's how you have the same variable on each side, easier to work with."

She even used the correct terminology.

The world was ending.

"How the fuck did you know that?"

Carmen laughed a little, "You know, contrary to popular belief, I'm not stupid."

"Wow, you really had me fooled there."

She playfully glared at me, shoving me a little before going back to where she had been lying down on her bed. She grabbed the pad of paper she had been using in Contemporary Issues class, and a pencil and started sketching I was guessing.

It had looked older than the other stuff in her bag like she had it before she got out of juvie.

"Fuck you, Harrison."

I blinked for a second before going to my own bed and lying down.

"So, if you're so smart, why don't you do the work?" I turned my head to see her deep in concentration, working on whatever she was drawing.

Carmen snorted, "With my record? Yeah, there's no point."

"So what's the deal, like you lost hope or something?" It was meant to be a joke but she stopped drawing for a second to shift her eyes over towards me.

"Yeah, actually, I have."

"Why?"

She laughed sadly as she went back to the paper, "When you got a record, no one gives a shit if you're smart. Colleges, employers, teachers. They don't care. They know that you're just gonna pull something again, and it's only a matter of time until it happens. They think I'm a ticking time bomb, a liability, shit like that. So, doesn't matter if I'm one of the smartest people on earth. End of the day, as long as I got a record like mine, there's no second chance. There's just juvie and eventually jail in my future."

I sighed, "That's a sad way to live."

"It's how I live though. It's how a lot of kids live."

I couldn't help feeling bad for her, seemed like she had always told herself that. She seemed steadfast in the belief that there was no such thing as a second chance.

"I'm sor-"

"Don't fucking apologize, my fucked up life isn't your fault."

Sammy ran into the room smiling, "Dinners ready."

Carmen nodded, "Okay, I'll be down in a second."

"But I want to talk to you now."

Carmen laughed a little, "Okay, okay, I'm coming down now."

Sammy's smile grew, "Yay, come on. I gotta tell you what I told Ashley today."

"Oh, I can't wait," Carmen said enthusiastically, before turning around and mouthing help me. I just waved, loving how Carmen looked so scared for what she was about to hear.

"I'll catch up in a second. Have fun you two."

They were about to leave, Carmen was getting dragged out but as she started to go out of sight, her hand came back into view through the door frame and flipped me off.

Wow, I was flattered.

I was originally just going to pack up my shit, but Carmen's notebook was sitting on her bed, and I was a curious guy.

I finished putting my shit up and then walked over.

Don't do it. Don't you dare look at it. That's her notebook, you don't know what kind of shit would be in it.

Exactly, which is why it's your job as the man of the house to make sure she isn't hiding anything that endangers the family.

One, toxic masculinity, two, literally her entire existence is endangering, she literally almost got us arrested, I'm pretty sure we already know what we're getting into.

Yeah, but what if she actually has killed a man?

Okay, good point.

I couldn't help myself.

I took the book from her bed and gave it a once-over. It was covered in dirt, maybe gravel or something, and- wait was that blood on the binding? That was definitely blood.

Wait, was it her blood or someone else's?

Why was I hoping that it was hers?

It also had a few parts of it that were spray-painted, like it had been there at a site she was graffitiing.

Oh sorry, defacing public property.

I opened the book, and on the first page was more blood. A lot more with rough handwriting scrawled over it all.

Remember this as the first time you almost died.

Great...

Well, at least it wasn't someone else.

Wait, more writing.

And not the first time you succeeded in beating the shit out of someone.

Oh, even better.

There was also a post-it.

Pretty sure you might want this
- Eliza.

Carmen probably hadn't seen that.

I kept flipping. The first few pages were designs for graffiti, actually, they were pretty good. Even had little tags of what would be what color. But as I moved on through the book, the graffiti got deeper, like that tag that she had made on the front of the school, she left out a lot.

Instead of just the lettering, the word was turning into a bunch of birds flying off. And then there were others like the tag of criminal, and it showed hands sticking through cell walls in handcuffs coming out of some of the letters. Actually using the letters as cell bars.

I kept flipping, actual drawings. Not colored or anything, just silhouettes, then they started getting shaded.

One was a girl with her knees to her chest, as all these words spun around her.

Criminal, delinquent, troublemaker, you did this, it's your fault, no good, no second chance, no freedom, no life, no family, no hope, go away, no one wants you, no one gives a shit.

The girl had a phrase that she was trying to get out, starting to scrawl across the page,

It's not...

Carmen had written something underneath everything in cursive.

And yet she couldn't speak, because she knew they were right.

Was that how she felt? That she's just some sort of trouble maker who didn't do anything good?

Wow, it was like I was reading her diary or something.

Because you are, this is an invasion of privacy.

I almost put it down.

Buuuuut, it's a good invasion of privacy. Keep going.

I did. I flipped one more time to an unfinished picture, a girl's silhouette was in a cell, and the cell and herself were turning into birds.

That part was finished, but it was like she had just added something on because it showed signs that she had erased something. But there was another figure that it seemed like she had just begun to draw. They were in separate cells, but they were both fading to birds that joined each other in the end.

Under the caption were the words.

We will finally be free
Why the fuck did I write that?
Who cares I'm too lazy to erase it and Jay's talking to me about some depressing shit.

What the fuck did we will finally be free mean? I mean, sure she was out of juvie, but who was the other person in the we? Did she have a boyfriend that was still in lock-up or something?

You're jealous.

Shut up.

I put the book down right where I had picked it up, an indent still in the bed.

It kind of made me wonder though, all the things she said about wanting to be back in juvie, and wanting to be bad, and that she's just accepted it, and how she seemed so okay with just accepting it, now seemed like she was just pretending.

Whatever was the case, there were two things I had actually learned from that whole thing.

One, Carmen was a damn good artist, and two, Carmen, if my statement about pretending was true, was a damn good liar.

_________________________

Author: I think this is going pretty well.

Carmen: Probably because you rewrote a lot of this.

Rex: I agree, you actually gave me a storyline.

Eliza: Yeah, I really like my ending.

Rex: Oh, right, yeah, yours is so awesome

Jay: My ending's pretty good too.

Rex: No it's really not.

Jay: You're just mad that you don't-(Rex covers Jay's mouth)

Rex: Hey, people are reading this.

Carmen: Okay, am I the only one that doesn't know what you guys are talking about?

Author: Oh, right, you decided not to go to the cast meeting where we talked about all this stuff. 

Carmen: Well can you tell me now?

Author: Weelll...

Carmen: Bro, I will steal your car.

Author: I take the subway.

Carmen: Okay... I'm gonna have to rethink this...

Author: Yeah, no, you failed to show up for the meeting, so you don't know your ending.

Carmen: Fuck you.

Author: Language young lady!

Carmen: (Mutters) Sorry.

Glad you're reading.