In a way, Obie thought, prison guard was the perfect job for him. The perfect job for any flunk out, really. Everyone around you was a flunk-out who had it infinitely worse than you did. Because hey, he may have gotten an LSAT score of 100, but at least he wasn't in jail. At least he never thought about killing people.

Or, at least, he hadn't since he was in high school.

And the people in Block C didn't kill people anyways. It was mostly money crimes, things with long sentences but not very long term effects. So not many ruckuses. Lots of days of peace and quiet, like today, when the only sound he could hear was the dripping of the leaky faucet in the bathroom adjacent to his desk. He thumbed through the pile of papers in front of him, creating a crinkly sound. It was an enormous pile of papers, because no other guard in Block C ever bothered to actually sit down at the desk and file, so Obie took it upon himself to file for everyone. As of yet, no one had thanked him.

He heard the familiar sound of a van door opening and closing outside. There wasn't much yelling or scuffling, so it was probably a Block C guy. He knew the sound that would come next would be the slamming of the door-they always slammed the door, even if the prisoner was doing nothing to fight back. For effect, supposedly. And so the door slam came, and then there was the sound of feet on linoleum. Tap-tap-tap. Obie tapped his pen on the table, trying to match it. He got up with the lethargy of a sleeping leopard getting out of its tree.

The double-doors to Block C creaked open, still hiding the face of the new prisoner due to how long they took to actually get open. They pushed open like slabs of stone. Obie didn't even touch his baton, but reminded himself that it was still at his hip if he needed it.

Obie saw the prisoner's face. A word hitched in his throat, a name, an incantation, an expletive.

"Archie."

Then he keeled over in a faint.

No one had put him back in his leather desk chair. He still felt the linoleum on his back when he came to. Bastards restrained prisoners for a living and they somehow felt couldn't pick him up. There was an ice pack on his head, but it was little more than a plastic bag of ice cube and was giving him a headache where he hadn't had one before. He felt a mix of cold water dribbling out of the bag and unpleasantly warm sweat trickling down his forehead.

"You good?" Edmund Androsky, a long-tall-and-ugly type who had called Obie a better secretary than guard once, asked. He had an expression of faux concern on his face-Obie could tell it was an act because he had spent so long around a person whose concern fluctuated between real and fake so often that he'd had to learn to keep up. Real concern was hard to hide. It was painful. It was Archie Costello filling his schedule with useless things to keep him away from Laurie, rambling on and on about things that didn't matter or things Obie thought he'd been downright making up to chain him down to the bleachers where they sat with the lock of politeness. You couldn't control real concern, real compassion. It wasn't rational. Androsky's face was Archie asking him if he wanted him to put a guy on his job at the grocery store to mess with his boss.

"I'm good," Obie wheezed. The world around him looked like a blur. "You got my glasses?"

"Yeah," another guard, James Warren, whose handwriting was completely illegible on all his papers, said. He pulled them out of his pocket and haphazardly put them on Obie's face. "We thought you might've had a seizure or something. And you're s'posed to remove that stuff. If someone's got a seizure, that is. You know?"

Obie nodded and pulled himself up, brushed himself off, and tried to retain some dignity. His eyes darted from cell to cell, trying to find that head of bright blond hair and that damned grin. The hair was a dead enough giveaway-there were very few natural blonds with hair the color of Archie Costello's-but the grin had made him know that it was him. And as he replayed the moment in his mind, he recalled that the grin had appeared on his face just as he and Archie locked eyes. Those eyes, those cold, blue eyes. Almost grey. The color of ice on a lake, ice you'd slip and skin your knee on if you didn't know how to skate.

He found Archie, in the cell on the right side of his desk. Practically next to him. And next to the toilets. He had an unsavory taste in his mouth. He couldn't go over to him, not with everybody watching. He wasn't seventeen anymore; he was twenty-five. An adult. He was at the age when you were supposed to let go of things you did in high school.

"What's he in for?" Obie asked Warren, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "The new guy."

"Embezzlement. People love him. He was some clerk at Joe's Grocery, you know the one, up by Trinity High? And behind the scenes he was taking all boss's money. The funny part is what he was doin' with it. The cops think he's hilarious. A real jokester. Guess what he did?"

"What?" Obie said with mild irritation in his voice.

"Bought a bunch of chocolate. No kidding here, he just bought a bunch of Hershey chocolate. He even kept the receipts."

Obie felt ill. "And what's his name again?"

"Archie. Archie Costello. He's around your age. A kid, you know."

"A kid," Obie repeated. Archie. Buying chocolate with embezzled funds. One of Obie's most vivid memories of Archie came to mind-Archie and Brother Jerome. 'Environment.' Archie tipped Brother Jerome off about the scheme against him that Archie himself had orchestrated, then only laughed and shrugged when Obie asked him why he'd done it. "What's his sentence?"

"The judge was nice on him, 'cause like I said, people love him. Three to ten years depending on what happens, I guess. Maybe even less than that. He didn't really cause any harm. Boss has his money back and everyone's happy now. Even him, I think. Grinned like a motherfucker the whole way here."

"Oh," was all Obie could manage. He had an urge to run to the bathroom to escape the situation. But then he'd have to walk past Archie. And that would be worse than standing here making awkward conversation with Warren. He took off his cap and fussed with his hair, trying to seem as though he was in a natural state. Because as far as Warren knew, he was. His dark, curly hair had always been limp and matted. No different now than in high school.

"You okay? If you need to check out early I'll cover your shift."

"I'm fine. But thanks."

He took one step forward. Then another. Everything seemed like it was in slow motion. Soon Archie's cell was in his line of sight. He shut his eyes and said a silent prayer. Please, God, let Jerry Renault and Goober and all those shits not be hanging around with the ghosts of their pasts like he and Archie were now. He and Archie were and always had been sick puppies. Renault? Goober? Even fucking Janza if things had gone right? They could've been good. Please, God.

"Hi, Archie," he said to the young man standing in front of the bars like he'd been expecting Obie. "Stripes look good on you."

"Why, thanks," Archie said. That voice. He'd forgotten Archie's stupid voice, which was velvety and quiet to quivering Assigned kids and lost the quiet and gained an edge when he spoke to Obie, but still had that lilting, velvety quality. He shivered. "Your uniform suits you as well. The hat really completes the look. It's really quite funny, those kids' cop Halloween costumes are practically miniature cop costumes. You rarely get that kind of accuracy with costumes, which says something about the ridiculousness level of cops' outfits." He said this all as though he was just telling Obie what the homework for history was.

"I'm not a cop."

"Same difference."

"Why don't you cut the shit?"

"When have I ever?"

Obie sighed. "Archie. You're in jail. You're twenty-five. In my opinion cutting the shit is the only thing you can do now."

"Are you worried about me? Me? If anything, I should worry about you, Obie."

"Yeah? Which one of us embezzled funds for fucking chocolate?" He turned around, not looking at Archie. "You're nobody. Just another Block C deadbeat. You'll come in here and then you'll come out. And then we'll both go on with our lives."

"I'm not so sure about that," Archie said.

Obie walked away, clenching his fists. He told Warren, who had happily offered to cover his shift, that he was feeling ill and checked out of work early.

Obie's apartment was barely an apartment. A bed stuffed in a room that may or may not have once been a large closet, a kitchen with a dining table, and a bathroom. The end. He probably could have moved out if he wanted to, but it was just so damn complicated. And his bed, although it took up the entire room except for a tiny swatch of floor in front of the door, was comfortable. He took an early bedtime that night

But despite the fact that he really wanted to go to sleep, sleep was escaping him. He laid there staring at the ceiling and not really thinking about anything, Archie's face and voice echoing in his mind, for a length of time that felt like eternity. He rolled over on his side.

Why had he become a prison guard in the first place? Because a failed LSAT and a criminal justice degree could get you that. But you could also become a cop. Or law librarian. Or detective, if he had wanted to work hard enough. Prison worker was low on the list of things that interested him.

Maybe, Obie thought, it was because deep down he would always be a lowlife. A Catholic school criminal, too timid to be on top but too smart to be on the bottom. And the only people he could stand were lowlifes and criminals. People like Archie. Why had he put Block C, the financial crime unit, as his first choice? Because he liked lowlifes but he didn't like lowlifes with death sentences. He liked lowlifes that were slippery and didn't need to kill to get their way. Again, people like Archie.

Law school had been a brief period when Archie had been absent from his life, but had he really been absent from his mind? Obie hadn't dated any girls after Laurie. He'd wanted to hook up a few times but had never gotten around to it. Picked last in group activities, never invited to parties unless the invitation went out to everyone, ate lunch in his room. Focused on his studies and acted like the other students didn't even fucking exist.

He'd wanted to see Archie again.

Obie felt a sudden awakeness and the patterns in the plaster of the ceiling suddenly seemed much clearer. Archie had stolen chocolate-he'd dismissed it as a dumb joke, a joke only someone who'd went to Trinity would get but a dumb joke. But maybe it hadn't been. Maybe somehow Archie had known. He was Archie Costello. It was possible.

Archie, The Assigner. Archie, The Fool. Archie, laughing with his head in a guillotine.

Archie wanted to see him again, too.

Obie sat up and stifled a laugh. Obie had become a prison guard and Archie a criminal. The most bizarre Romeo and Juliet story of them all. God, he thought. God, we're messed up.

Understanding Archie, forgiving Archie, tolerating Archie, those things were all hard enough to be on the edge of the impossible. But letting go of him, it seemed, was not only hard but impossible in the karmic scheme of universe. Obie got out of bed, a wry grin on his face, and began to get dressed. He fished around for money in the pocket of his jeans and found a twenty. Some seedy little stores were probably still open. Not bothering to comb his unkept hair and rub his sleep-heavy eyes, Obie set out to buy some chocolate.

Inspired by the fact that Obie and Percy Wetmore from The Green Mile are played by the same actor. Also: Think of my Chocolate War post-novel fanfics as a series: First Register Five, then this one, then Linger.