A/N: Here I am with another multi-chapter Nichorello fic, and this time it is a Childhood Friends AU. Parts written in italics are flashbacks. Title is from "Almost Paradise" from Footloose for obvious reasons. Please review if you enjoy!
...
Today is the day that Lorna Morello is going to prison. Her trial was long and painful, so part of her is glad that the jury reached a verdict, but her other part really doesn't want to go to prison for the next three years. She looks at herself in the bathroom mirror of her and her sister Franny's dingy apartment and tries to keep from crying. Their mother used to live with them as well, until she passed away a few years ago. The space she left has been replaced with Franny's two bouncy boys who never seem to stop talking. Lorna supposes that if she weren't about to go to prison, she would be thinking about getting her own apartment to get away from the noise. Nearby, of course, but with her own private rooms that she can decorate all by herself. Now, all she has to worry about is how she is going to get a hold of her favorite shade of lipstick in prison, although what does it matter, really? Who could she possibly want to impress in prison, for God's sake?
Nevertheless, Lorna gets dressed in her favorite dress, which is a flowy black dress covered with tiny white hearts. It was a hand-me-down from Franny, one of the only pieces of clothing Franny used to wear that she likes. Her sister can't wear it anymore after having two babies, so Lorna happily accepted it. She does her makeup like usual and brushes her practically waist-length brown hair, curling the ends a little bit. Lastly, she clasps on her silver cross necklace, a gift from her father, whom she only sees about once a year.
Lorna's parents divorced when she was six, and by the time she was seven, Lorna had moved from Boston to Brooklyn with her mother and older sister to this tiny apartment where there was never enough space. She used to have Christmas with her father each year, but his health has been deteriorating in the past few years, so he hasn't been able to visit. Lorna and Franny have to share a car, so that's made it difficult for them to visit their father, what with all the kids, and the cost of a hotel.
She sits down at the little desk in her room and picks up a framed picture of her family in front of her childhood home in Boston, almost twenty years ago. Her parents are smiling, and her father has his arm around her mother. Franny is about ten, and her toothy smile is greatly in need of braces. She is clutching the hand of her younger sister, Lorna, about five, who is halfway wrapped around her father's leg, grinning up at the camera.
Lorna turns the frame around, takes the photo out, and slides it gently into the manilla envelope of possessions she is taking to prison.
"LOR-NA," comes a shout from two rooms over. Franny is in a hurry to get Lorna to the prison because she has to pick up her kids from their dad's house as soon as possible.
After one last glance around her bedroom, she shuts the door and makes her way to the front of the apartment. "Coming, Fran."
…
Litchfield is bigger than Lorna imagined. Franny parks the car and Lorna rings her hands together.
"You got everything?" Franny asks, with only a touch of impatience.
Lorna wants to be angry at her for rushing, but she understands why her sister doesn't want to hang out at the prison for too long. "Sure. I'm ready." That second part is a lie, but Lorna puts on a brave face and gets out of the car. Franny walks her to the door and gives her a quick, tight hug.
"I'll see you next week, okay Lor?" She's trying to fight back tears, but Lorna's already given up that battle.
"Yeah, I'll see you soon. Bye Franny. I love you."
"Love you too, Lorna." Franny purses her lips to keep in a sob and waves before she gets back in the car.
Lorna turns around and opens the glass door to the prison. The inside smells of sweat and hand sanitizer. She shakily approaches the counter, behind which sits a grumpy looking blonde woman. Her shirt reads "Bell".
"Hi, my name is Lorna Morello. I'm um, here to self-surrender."
"Oh, would ya look at that. How sweet of you," mutters Bell sarcastically.
The small brunette just stays quiet and does as she's told, answering the guard's many questions. Bell mutters something else about today being a quiet day, and immediately takes Lorna to the back to squat and cough and put on her uniform. She realizes quickly how much she hates this shade of orange, but tries to imagine a place where this color would actually be appropriate. Maybe on a beach in Mexico.
"Hey, let's go, Morello," Bell shouts, shaking Lorna from her daydream and handing her a prison issue coat.
Around the back of the building is a white van with it's door open. When Lorna doesn't move, Bell points to the van and barks, "Get in."
…
"Get in the car, girls," Lorna's mother said sharply and led Franny out the front door. Lorna had been dragging her feet all morning. She was reluctant to leave behind their big house in Boston, and even more, her father.
The little girl stood in the foyer with her back to the door and stared back at the house she'd grown up in thus far. It seemed huge to a petite six-year-old, clutching her two little suitcases. One was stuffed full of her clothes, and the other contained her most prized possesions: A teddy bear named Rosemarie, a stack of letters from her much older brother, who was in the army, a cassette tape of the Beach Boys, and a videocassette tape of Funny Face. She had already said farewell to her room, and the big backyard, so now the only thing left was to hug her father goodbye.
She threw down her suitcases in the doorway and ran up to her father as he approached from the living room. He hoisted her up and she buried her face in his shoulder. "Why can't you come too, Daddy?" the little girl asksed for the third time that morning.
"You know why, sweetheart. Your mother and I aren't going to be living together anymore, so you're going on an adventure with her and Fran, okay? You're gonna have a ton of fun, and I'll see you at Christmas." He tried to put Lorna down, but she wrapped her arms around his neck and refused to let go. "Sweetie, you gotta go now. Your mother's waiting. I love you, sweet girl." He peeled Lorna's arms apart and set her down on the floor.
She picked up her suitcases again and meekly said, "Bye, Daddy," before running out the door toward the waiting car.
…
Lorna skitters over to the van and climbs into the back seat. Unexpectedly, she is greeted by a smiling face from the front seat. "Hi, I'm Valduto. Well, my friends call me Mercy. We usually go by last names here, but I hate mine." She grins, and motions for Lorna to introduce herself.
"Oh. I'm Lorna—Morello, I guess." She's a little taken aback by the friendliness of Mercy, as she suspects not everyone will be quite so nice.
Just then, in fact, a grumpy, balding officer shuts the back door of the van and climbs into the front seat quite out of breath. He grunts at Mercy, pointing toward the main prison building.
Mercy starts up the van, and Lorna takes one last look at the parking lot where she was a free woman not even an hour earlier.
The guard in the front doesn't seem to be saying anything, so Mercy glances at Lorna in the rearview mirror. "Hey, don't look so scared. Nobody here is too bad. You seem nice. I'll introduce you to Red. She works in the kitchen and she's been looking for a new server. I bet she'll like you. Red's like my ma here. Don't know what I would do without her."
Mercy continues chattering until they arrive at the big building. She shuts off the engine and gets down from the driver's seat. The guard doesn't move, so Lorna stays still as well until Mercy comes around and opens her door. The taller girl extends a hand to Lorna and helps her down from the van. She leads the way to the door and into the prison. The walls are the same color as those in Lorna's apartment, which is strangely comforting.
Mercy takes her down a hallway and points out the commisary, the laundry counter, and the medical counter. She points in the direction of the dorms and the cafeteria before stopping at one of the rooms full of bunk beds. "So, this is where you're going to be staying until they assign you a dorm. Just hang out here until lunch and then, hey DeMarco," she turns to a short lady lounging on a bottom bunk, "show Morello here to lunch, kay?" Mercy looks back at Lorna. "I'll be back here at dinner and then I'll introduce you to Red. Sound alright? I gotta get back to work, but I'll see you later. Here's a toothbrush. And stop lookin' so scared."
Mercy darts out the door, leaving Lorna to stare at the room of bunk beds before her.
…
"Hey mom? Can I go to sleepaway camp with Nicky this summer?" asked a ten-year-old Lorna. She was sitting at the kitchen table next to her best friend Nicky Nichols. They'd been inseparable since Lorna's first week of second grade when she moved to Brooklyn. Nicky was going to an overnight camp that summer and Lorna desperately wanted to go with her.
Her mother was cooking spaghetti in their tiny kitchen. She turned around and looked at Lorna helplessly. "Lory, I told ya, we can't afford a camp this summer. And I need you to help out around here.
Lorna's face fell, and Nicky noticed immediately. "My mom can pay for it!" she interjected tactlessly. "She wouldn't mind."
Lorna suspected that Nicky's mom didn't even blink twice before writing Nicky a check for whatever she asked for, while Lorna's mom could barely afford to buy ice cream for her daughters every few weeks.
Mrs. Morello put down the spoon she was using to stir the sauce and turned around to look at the girls. "That is very kind of you Nicky, but we couldn't possibly accept such a gift. And like I said, I need Lorna to do house cleaning this summer while I'm at work."
"But Mom, Nicky's mom said she doesn't mind!" This was only half a lie because both girls were sure Marka wouldn't mind throwing money at her daughter if it would make her shut up.
"Yeah, she seriously doesn't," added Nicky with a trace of bitterness in her voice. Sometimes she wished for a mother who cared the way Lorna's did.
Lorna's mom clanged the sauce spoon against the pot as she returned to stirring. "End of discussion, girls. Lorna, we don't take handouts in this house."
…
"Ey, Morello, right?" asks the small woman with blue eyeshadow.
"Yeah, that's me," replies Lorna softly. She crosses the room toward the woman who had been introduced to her as DeMarco and puts her bag of bedding on the top bunk above her.
"Good to meet a fellow Italian."
Lorna manages a small smile. "Yeah, of course, I've never actually been there. But it sounds nice."
DeMarco gets a dreamy look in her eyes. "Yeah, it's not so bad, right Miss Rosa?"
A bald woman in the bunk opposite DeMarco, laughs in agreement, but that seems to be all the energy she has, so she closes her eyes, leaning back against the cinderblock wall behind her.
"Oh, Jesus, enough talk about fuckin' Italy. England's where it's at," says a woman who Lorna hadn't noticed before, as she rolls over on her top bunk in the lefthand corner of the room.
DeMarco rolls her eyes. "Bullshit, Boo. You ain't never been to England."
"True, but that doesn't mean I don't know where the party is. And who do we have here?" she asks, eyeing Lorna like a piece of meat.
"This here's Morello," says DeMarco. "Morello, this is Big Boo. And Boo, you'd better not let Mercy see you lookin' at Morello here like that or she'll kick you to the curb." She laughs with contempt and leans back against the wall with her hands behind her head.
"Nah, don't worry, I promised I'd leave the next hot one to Nichols," Boo says with a smirk in Lorna's direction.
Lorna's stomach drops at the name "Nichols". "Who's Nichols?" she asks, both excited and frightened to hear the answer.
"Ah, you'll meet her soon enough," answers Boo with a laugh, "and she's gonna have a field day with you."
Lorna's eyes widen and her stomach drops, dreading the thought that this Nichols might be her Nichols. But she takes a deep breath and climbs up to her bed, not even bothering to lay out her mattress, and tries to breathe through the panic.
…
After lunch, and several long hours of staring at the ceiling, Mercy comes to the little room to grab Boo, her prison wife, for dinner and invites Lorna along. Lorna hops off her bunk and shuffles along quietly behind Mercy and Boo, trying not to interrupt their "wife time".
When the group arrives at the cafeteria, Mercy turns around says, "I'll take you up to the front to meet Red before we eat, okay? I think she's really going to like you." She smiles, and Lorna lets out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. She's going to be okay here.
…
Lorna's first day of second grade at her new school in Brooklyn was disappointing, to say the least, and she begged her mother not to make her go back the next day.
"The kids are mean, Mama! They don't want to talk to me."
"Just be yourself, little lady, somebody's gonna love you."
Despite her ragged sobs the night before, Lorna found herself on the bus to school that next morning. She sat near the front of the bus in the hopes that someone would take the seat next to her, but all the kids passed her and sniggered to each other, causing Lorna to look down and make sure she hadn't spilled breakfast on her dress. Her outfit seemed clean, so the little girl didn't understand why nobody wanted to sit with her.
This trend continued throughout the morning. No one chose the desk next to her in class, and nobody wanted to be her reading partner when the teacher asked them to split up into pairs.
By the time recess came, Lorna felt like crying all over again. She watched longingly from a hard, blue bench as kids swung happily on the monkey bars and chased each other around in a game of tag. She hugged her lunch box close to her chest and tried to keep the tears from falling.
"Hey, there. What's your name?"
Lorna looked up to see one of the teacher's assistants staring down at her. "I'm Lorna."
"Hi, Lorna," she said, taking a seat next to the girl. "I'm Ms. Caper. You see that girl over there by the fence?" She pointed to a girl with wild, curly blonde hair and ripped jeans crouched down next to a fence. The kid was rubbing two sticks together, as if trying to start a fire. "I was just thinking that she looked a little lonely. Do you want to go introduce yourself? I think you two would be good friends."
Lorna nodded and hopped down from the bench. She smiled nervously at Ms. Caper before crossing the yard to the blonde girl.
"Hi, I'm Lorna. What's your name?" she asked, remembering to wait for a response before rambling on again.
The other girl looked up from her sticks. "Nicole. But everybody calls me Nicky. Only my mom calls me Nicole."
Lorna nodded in response, suddenly speechless at the fact that another kid here was interested in talking to her. After a few moments, she remembered her words. "What are you doing?" She pointed to Nicky's collection of sticks.
The blonde giggled. "I was pretending I'm an orphan living on the streets, and I was trying to make a fire to cook my dinner."
Lorna screwed up her nose as she sat down beside Nicky. "An orphan? Why?"
"Doesn't it sound exciting? Nobody around to tell you what to do. I could go anywhere I wanted and my mom wouldn't even be there."
"Why don't you want your mom to be there?"
Nicky put down the sticks and leaned back against the fence. "She's kind of mean." She paused. "But it's okay. Are you new?"
"Yeah, I just moved here from Boston. My mom left my dad, and I had to go with her."
"That sucks. I don't have a dad at all. I just have a nanny. And my mom's friend Pablo. He's kind of mean too. But my nanny's nice. Her name is Carla. Do you want to come over and meet her sometime?"
Lorna beamed back at her new friend. "Yeah, sure! You can come to my house too. My mom's not mean. But she makes me do things I don't want to sometimes. Like come back to school today even though yesterday nobody talked to me."
Nicky smiled too. "I'm glad you came back because now we can be best friends!"
…
"Hey Gina, is Red back there?" Mercy asks a petite woman as she and Lorna approach the front of the cafeteria.
The short woman nods. "Yeah, hang on a sec."
Moments later, a rather scary looking woman with blood-red hair appears in the doorway looking angry. "Is something wrong?" she asks Mercy in a rough Russian accent.
To Lorna's surprise, Mercy laughs. "No, Red. I just wanted to introduce you to Lorna. She's one of ours. Remember, you told me to grab our girls and bring them to you first thing?"
"Ah, yes. Hello…"
"Lorna. Er, Morello. Lorna Morello. It's nice to meet you…Red."
"Ey, what's all the commotion out here," rasps a voice that Lorna knows all too well. The girl belonging to the voice pops out from the kitchen and does a quick double-take. Her hair is as wild and curly as ever, if a little less blonde, but she looks like the world has been hard on her since Lorna last saw her. Sure enough, Nicky Nichols is here at Litchfield, and Lorna wants to barf.
"Nicky, have you met Lorna?" asks Red, oblivious to the looks between the ladies.
Nicky rolls her eyes. "Yeah, Ma. We've met. But she's a crazy cunt, so I'd keep my distance if I were you."
Red looks taken aback. "Nicky. That's no way to speak to someone you've just met!"
"No, it isn't. But I've know this bitch for far too fucking long, Red." She turnes to Lorna. "Funny we both end up here. You always thought I'd get caught, but I never thought you could be this stupid. Guess I was fuckin' wrong." She turns around and walks back through the kitchen and out the back door.
Lorna knows she must look pale as a sheet. She sees Red's mouth moving in an apology for Nicky's words, but Lorna can't hear her over her own thoughts.
She is angry. Angry that Nicky ended up in prison, angry that Nicky called her that horrible word, and angry that she has to spend the next thirty-four months in the same prison with the woman who she used hate spending a day away from.
But Lorna is sad, too. She used to think that if she ever saw Nicky again, they could get past what happened between them like adults, but acting like an adult was never Nicky's strong-suit.
She supposes she was naïve to think Nicky might be happy to see her after all these years.
…
The rest of the day is blurry, and Lorna barely goes through the motions, practically requiring that Mercy push her down the hallway to take a shower. She finally ends up in her bed, which DeMarco has made for her, and lets the emotions hit her.
Lorna covers her mouth to keep the sobs in as she cries quietly. She cries because she misses her home, she cries because she misses Franny and her crazy kids, and she cries for a girl named Nicky she knew as a kid. A girl who wasn't hooked on drugs. A girl who didn't call her names. A girl who loved Lorna a long, long time ago.