Alex doesn't come to lunch, but it's just as well. You aren't sure you could stomach the sight of her and Nichols laughing together over a plate of beef tips and chewy corn on the cob.
And besides, you have your hands full with your well-wishers, who, to your surprise, seem to outnumber those who were hoping you'd been shanked in the yard. The Jesus freaks glare at you on behalf of Pennsatucky, who is nowhere to be seen, and the table of white girls avoids eye contact with you on behalf of Alex. But Poussey gives you a shit-eating grin and a Fuck, girl, took you long enough, and Taystee hugs you partway through your green beans. It might be the best hug you've ever had, even if her arms aren't the ones you want and she smells like lavender instead of like Alex.
Sophia tells you to come by later and she'll fix you up for free, which you're guessing means you look like a neglected Afghan hound that's been left outside in the mud. Still, it's a nice gesture.
You've spent weeks fantasizing about Red's cooking, but when the moment of truth arrives you can only force down a few bites before they threaten to start coming back up. You'll buy some pretzels later at the Commissary, you tell Suzanne, when she says that if you were still her wife she'd make you finish your whole tray, because that much skinny doesn't look right on anyone, Dandelion, not even you.
Despite your churning stomach, by the time lunch is over you feel a little bit more like a person, and a little bit less like the schizophrenic pariah you became in the SHU.
You still haven't been reassigned to a job—none of the COs have spoken to you at all, except for when Mendez told you he'd missed your little lesbian jerk shows—so when the other inmates shuffle off to work, you return to your empty temporary bunk.
Only when you get there, it isn't empty anymore.
A box has been placed on your mattress, and inside are all the things you left behind when you went to solitary. Someone must have rescued them for you before they could get packed up by a CO and lost in a bin somewhere. Taystee, maybe. But Taystee would have told you. She would have brought the box to you personally and taken a couple of Snickers for her trouble. Anyone would have. There's only one person who would have done this in secret, and the thought makes you wipe furiously at your cheeks.
You sit down and sift slowly through the box, item by item, and remind yourself that the world—even your world, even here—is made up of more than just heartbreak and loneliness. The world has books you can read, and letters you can write, and friends you can call. It has hairbrushes and candy bars and photographs of babies you'll one day get to meet.
As you look at each of your photos—you and Cal and your parents last summer, Pete and Polly comparing Finn to the Thanksgiving turkey—you regret that you ripped up the ones of you and Larry in your frenzy before the Christmas pageant. You think it would have been therapeutic, now, to look at each one in turn and say a silent goodbye to that possible future. When you were finished, you would seal them up in an envelope and mail them to Polly, and she'd keep them safe for you until one day, a long, long time from now, when you felt like reminiscing about that period of your life when you pretended to be everything your parents wanted.
Pictures of Larry, though, are not what you're really looking for. You flip open a hardback copy of The Sound and the Fury, where you had hidden the photo of you and Alex that you'd asked Cal to mail to you a few weeks in. The two of you are sitting on the beach in Bali, before the business got rough, and Alex's arm is wrapped around your bare waist. She looks radiant, and you look like you've been handed the keys to the kingdom, and whenever you study the photo you can feel her phantom fingers on your stomach all over again.
But The Sound and the Fury contains nothing but Faulkner's words. Your other books are empty, too, and you thumb through every page twice to be sure. It isn't mixed into the stack of family photos, either, or in the pile of letters, or in the tupperware of Commissary snacks.
Did Alex find it?
Did she go through your things and pull out the photo? Did smile when she saw it? Did she rip it into a hundred pieces? Your palms begin to sweat. Did she show it to Nicky? Did the two of them laugh about how young and naive you were? When they were finished, did they burn it in the yard?
No, you decide, swallowing hard. You don't think they did. That's the kind of thing you would have done to Alex, not the kind of thing she would have done to you. Still, you wonder where the picture is now.
You go to Sophia later, and her hands on your scalp tick another box in your transition from SHU-rat to moderately functional human being.
"You talk to her yet?" Sophia says, as she sits you up and squeezes a towel at the nape of your neck.
You think about playing dumb, but what's the point? "No."
"You're just delaying the inevitable, you know."
Your head snaps to the side, despite the comb that tugs your hair painfully in the opposite direction. "Why? Did she say something to you?"
"That girl don't have to say anything, honey." Sophia nudges your cheek back toward the mirror. "She's not as subtle as she thinks she is, least not when it comes to you. Been walking around like a zombie, though whether she wants to kiss you or kill you, I couldn't say."
Her words make you wonder whether, if given the choice, you'd rather live out your life with Alex pretending you don't exist, or die tonight by her hand.
You think you'd choose to live, but it's close.
When you're clean and untangled, you sit in Caputo's office and listen to him threaten to throw the book at you. You tune out all but the essentials: Healy is suspended pending review, Doggett woke up after two weeks and is expected to make a full recovery in Psych, minus a few teeth, and the holy roller lawyers have decided not to take your assault to trial. You imagine there must have been security tapes of Healy leaving you, and that Natalie Figueroa is the one behind making the whole thing disappear. You make a mental note to bake her a prison casserole sometime, which brings a huff of cheerless laughter to your lips.
Caputo squints at you like you've lost it, but he dismisses you without comment. You'll start back in electric tomorrow.
The orange inmates who share the stacked bunks give a wide berth when you meet them, after a dinner of half a roll and three limp baby carrots. You wonder what they've heard about the crazy violent lesbo named Chapman. Shame fills your chest, cold and damp, but you're thankful for the silence. You climb into your bunk, though it's still light outside, and doze with your back to the door until count. You think you hear Nicky's voice whispering outside the cell at one point, but it's gone before you're fully conscious, and you didn't hear who she was talking to, anyway. Maybe you'll take up sleeping as a hobby, instead of yoga or jigsaw puzzles.
In the morning, though, things look a little brighter. It's the advice your father used to give when he wanted to tune out your childish problems and get back to his paper. The part that annoyed you most was that he was nearly always right.
You eat a bit of breakfast, despite having to do it while staring at the backs of Alex and Nicky's heads. You've put on some of the concealer Sophia gave you yesterday—for those dark circles, honey, and maybe you should give some to your girl while you're at it—which seems to make Sister Ingalls less insistent on force-feeding you her leftovers.
When you call Polly on your way to work, she answers before the end of one ring.
"Piper?" she says. "Piper, is that you?"
You realize this is the first time anyone has said your name in eight weeks. You grin into the phone, even though your throat feels tight and watery. "Know any other inmates at Litchfield Correctional?"
"Just the one asshat who keeps getting herself locked up in solitary. I mean Jesus, Piper, what the hell did you do this time?" Polly's voice is exasperated, but you can hear the worry in it. "Your parents are a wreck, Larry won't tell me anything, I can't even find—"
"I'm not with Larry anymore." It's the first time you've said it out loud, and it doesn't hurt as much to hear as you expected. "Look, there's a line, I just wanted to let you know I'm okay, and I think I can have visitors again. Will you tell my parents for me?"
"Of course. And I'll see you this weekend, you goddamn idiot." The line goes quiet for a minute, and you wonder if she was angry enough to hang up on you. Just as you're about to put the phone in its cradle, she's back. "You're my favorite idiot, Piper."
Your voice breaks, but you smile. "Love you too, Pol."
When you round the corner from the phone bank, you almost run smack into Alex, who is leaning against the wall and waiting her turn. You jump away from her, as if you've collided with the arm's-length forcefield that keeps Alex Vause protected from the world, and its dial is set to ricochet. She reaches out to steady you, because you're still about as sturdy as a twig in a hurricane. But she pulls her hand back at the last second, and you find your footing on your own.
You hear Black Cindy on the phone, still, with her grandmother, and you realize this means Alex heard you. Her face doesn't betray what she thinks of your confession about Larry, and you bite your tongue as punishment for looking in the first place. Alex can have whatever feelings she wants, including none at all, and it's none of your fucking business.
"Hey," you say at last, as you step around her, but it's the kind of hey that dismisses a conversation, not the kind that starts one. Closed off. Self-contained. The opposite of the way you used to approach Alex—plaintive and entitled. If nothing else, you want to show her that you understand. That regardless of how much she hurt you in the past, you know what you did and you take responsibility for the resulting shitshow, and you heard her when she said she wants nothing to do with you.
"Are they taking you to trial?" Alex says, once your backs are to each other.
You stop walking and blink several times, because you never expected her to answer, and this is the last thing you'd have guessed she would ask. "No," you say, looking over your shoulder, and you're proud of how even your voice sounds.
She nods once, satisfied, and turns the corner to pick up a phone. You've never seen her make a call before, and you wonder who she speaks to on the outside. Who calms her fears of confinement and listens to her stories about prison food and Nicky and rec room goodbye parties.
You wonder, but you keep walking. Because that's none of your fucking business anymore, either.