I have it all worked out. It’s going to be rough, but I’ll do it for her. I’d do anything for her.
She’s reluctant. I can tell.
My girl keeps taking hesitant steps and looking over her shoulder while biting her bottom lip like she’s not quite sure if coming with me is a good idea.
I get it. I’m just a stranger to her. A random guy in the forest who’s making all of these big promises.
She doesn’t know the truth. That my heart burns for her. That I would literally do anything to keep her safe.
“Take that jumpsuit off,” I tell her when we slow to a stop. “You’re not a prisoner anymore.”
She grabs the orange material bunched up at her waist and looks at it with a heavy sigh.
“I didn’t do it, you know?” she says as she runs her finger over the prisoner number stenciled on the material.
“I know.”
Her eyes snap up to mine. They’re full of sadness. “I’m not even from here.”
I just stand here and listen to her as my heart pounds.
“I’m from Canada. Montreal, actually.” She runs her hand through her wet hair as she looks at the chicks who have finally quieted down. “I was traveling through the US with someone I met.”
“A man?” I ask, feeling a tense edgy feeling taking over my body. Fuck, I hope it wasn’t a man…
“No,” she quickly says. “Another girl. My age. We met in Seattle and we shared a room in a hostel. I thought we were becoming friends, but…”
Her chin quivers. I step in and place a comforting hand on her shoulder. She places her hand on mine and looks into my eyes.
I hate that she’s gone through hard times. I wish I could take the pain away. I wish I could erase her past. I can’t do any of those things, but I can make sure her future is one she deserves. I’ll just have to give her so much pleasure that it will make up for all of the crap she’s been through.
“She was using me,” she continues. “She played me.”
“How?”
“She said she was meeting her brother in Vancouver and invited me to tag along. She even offered to pay for my flight. I thought she was being nice, but… She was setting me up. I had packed my suitcase the night before and didn’t think anything of it until I was at the airport and the drug-sniffing dog came walking by. He went straight for my bag.”
“She put drugs in your suitcase?”
“Yeah. Two kilograms of it. The customs agents grabbed me as everyone watched. I was humiliated. The first of many humiliations, I guess. They brought me into the back and dumped my suitcase all over the stainless steel table. I kept telling them that they were not going to find anything, but then they unraveled a t-shirt and there it was… A brick of cocaine. And then in my sweater, another one. I threw up when they put the handcuffs on me.
“They arrested me and took me to prison. My asshole stepfather was convinced I did it and convinced my mother that I did it too.”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. That quiver returns in her chin as she tries not to cry.
“I don’t know how my mom could think that. Me… Me of all people. I never even tried a cigarette or smoked a joint. I got all A’s in high school. She thought that I was an international drug trafficker? I’ll never understand that… She hasn’t even visited me in prison…”
I wrap my arms around her as a heavy sob comes out. She cries into my chest as I hold her for as long as she needs me to.
The rain slows as she gathers herself and looks up at me.
“Thank you,” she says with a sniff. “I’m okay.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“It’s okay,” she says as she steps back, holding the nest of chicks close to her body. “I want you to know the truth.”
“I’d take you in even if you were guilty of much more than that.”
She smiles shyly as she looks at me. “My family cut me off, so I was stuck with the worst lawyer ever. He didn’t know what he was doing and he was so stressed out all of the time, saying that he had dozens of clients. He always called me Kimberly. I mean, how is he supposed to put up a suitable defense if he can’t even remember my name?”
My hands squeeze into fists by my sides as I listen to her. Anger boils up in me over the incompetent lawyer, the complicit judge, the whole damn crooked and rigged system that locked an angel like her away. I want to burn it all down.