"Come on, P." Taystee said "I'm telling you she ain't that one."

"And how do you know?" Poussey pushed her laundry bag on her back. "She's never showed her face on the Tee-Vee! But I'll tell you this: that voice, I'd recognize it anywhere!"

"What are you girls talking about?"

Pennsatucky looked at them with shy eyes and moved her body weight from one leg to another when Taystee and P. both struck her with a threatening gaze.

"Mind you own business, white girl" was Taystee's rough answer. Doggett moved her lips saying "Alright" but with no voice coming out from her mouth and turned back to the washing machine.

"Whatever P. She's too skinny and blond to be Adele anyway. Besides, why should Adele be here in Litch with us?"

Taystee dropped her laundry sack on the desk without waiting for an answer.

"We'll leaving these, lady" she said and put on the serious-distant face she used for dealing with strangers and white people. P. dropped her sack on the desk too, but Taystee tilted her head and furrowed her eyebrows.

"Aren't you that white girl's girlfriend?" she asked. "The new ones?"

Alex Vause remained indifferent and took the bags and placed them away, then she wrote something in a tiny notebook she held against her palm.

"You mean Chapman" interrupted Doggett with a horrible toothless smile.

Alex let her eyes slip on her, but then she ignored her and pulled out a piece of yellow paper from the notebook. «She's not my girlfriend».

"Oh, come on" Taystee put her hands on the desk and leant forward. "We'll keep it between us. Is that white girlie really. You know. Adele?" she whispered and moved her head right and left to make sure no one was listening.

Alex put on a teasing smile.

"Adele?"

"The Someone Like You girl. Rolling in the deep?"

"I don't know anything about that Chapman."

"See, P.? Told you. Adele's just a stupid name some girl from college invented so she could hide behind a microphone on the Internet. She's never showed up around cause she doesn't exist. Maybe the voice is just a trick with the computer, you know."

"But…"Poussey tried.

"I bet she's not even white. If she exists, she must be a ghetto black girl. Maybe she's one of us and we don't even know."

P. didn't seem sure, she just looked sad and resigned. He put her arms up and let them fall on her sides.

"Ok, fine."

"Take these" Alex handed them two pieces of yellow paper "and go play American Idol elsewhere."

They left arguing. Alex and Pennsatucky's eyes met from one corner of the room to the other. Doggett looked at her with a strange face, like she believed nothing of that bullshit Alex just told them, and then slammed the washing machine's door violently.


Piper was humming under the shower. The water came out warm and she closed her eyes and put her face under it. She had followed Sophia's advice and decided to have a shower at 5 AM. There was no line, no people staring at her, plus there was hot water.

She had this strange melody buzzing in her head that she couldn't ignore. She was in the "song-making mood", that's how she used to call it. But so much time had passed since she last felt like that, like she wanted not just to sing but to make up the words to fill her voice with. But why there, in prison, and why now?

She turned off the water and passed her hands over her face, closed her eyes.

I can't, she told herself. I just can't sing.

She covered herself with the towel and put her flip-flops on.

I promised I would sing no more.

She moved the plastic curtains away and stepped out of the shower cube. She stopped.

Alex raised her eyes from the sink and looked at Piper through the mirror. No disturbing emotions seemed to cross her face, she just stopped brushing her teeth for a few seconds. She was wearing the white undershirt that revealed her shoulders and the upper part of her back's skin and tattoos. Piper stood still, water was coming down her hair and neck.

"I'm here at 5:00 just about every day," Alex said and then leant over the sink. "You don't like it, avoid it."

"You named me."

"What?"

"You turned me in."

"You carried that bag full of money. No one ever put a gun to your head!" Alex turned to face her with an expression of anger drawn on her face.

"You didn't have to take me down with you."

"No? Well, this is how the story went."

"I was scared."

"You loved it!"

"I was in love, Alex. You blew me away," Alex's face seemed to soften as she listened to Piper. "But you used me."

"You left me!"

"I wish I could…"but she stopped in the middle of the sentence.

This is how the story went, a melody sang in Piper's head.

She pushed away those strange words echoing in her ears. "I was building a life, Alex. I had a home and…"

"You called that home?" Alex looked like she was about to lose her temper and stepped toward Piper with her forefinger pointed at her. "You were just this little girl from Connecticut, who wanted to feel special and bad. Your fiancé might buy this bullshit, but I know you. I know you."

I call that home, Piper sang in her head.

"And, yeah, maybe I turned you in, because I never forgave you for leaving, because you broke my fucking heart."

She turned her back to Piper and walked away. Piper felt like those words had made a tremble run inside her. It seemed to her as years of her life were peeling off her just like the drops of water fell down from her wet skin. But there was something, something she had to do. She ran away from the bathroom and didn't even seem to notice she had passed near Alex, who stopped in the middle of the corridor and looked at her like she was hit by a truck. Piper ran all along the corridors, with her sticky flip-flops clapping and holding the towel above her breast.

She blew me away, she kept thinking.

"No running, Chapman," Pornstache came out from the CO bubble holding a sandwich in his hands. "You better stop before I give you a shot."

Piper slowed down, catching all of the other inmates' attention. She marched quickly like a funny soldier to her bunk and rushed to get some paper.

"Hold on, hold on!" Miss Claudette put away the wood spoon she was moving over her improvised camp stove. "You're not getting in here all wet."

Piper ignored her. She grabbed a notebook and a pencil and got all the paper wet with her just-showered hands and wrists. She didn't care, she had to put this down now.

This is how the story went, she wrote.

I met someone by accident

Who blew me away, blew me away

While writing, she kept humming and singing the melody in her head. She just needed a guitar now, but where was she supposed to get one?

Miss Claudette was quiet now, and sat on her bed with her hands in her lap, staring in a suspicious way to that young white lady covered in a towel, bent on a piece of paper with her wet hair hanging down and looking like she was out of her mind.

When Piper finished, she signed using her name, her secret name, at the bottom of the song. No one was ever going to know, she decided. She wasn't breaking the promise as long as no one knew. On top of the paper she wrote the song's name, "Hiding My Heart".