The girl with the cornrows was on her third strike, and getting caught for cutting in the shower line bumped her down a level, taking away many of her privileges and ramping up her security status. It seems so ironic to me that cutting in the showers was her third strike, when it is clearly the least of the offenses she's committed. It's like catching Al Capone for tax evasion.
Whatever. She's gotten some comeuppance, and I'm not about to complain.
As part of her change in security level, she had to spend a week on a different floor from the rest of us. It felt like having some kind of holiday, like that old story about Christmas in the trenches, where everyone shut up and put down their guns and ate chocolate and drank for a day instead of shooting at each other.
But today's my last day, and she is back. We're lining up to go to lunch, when I realize that her friends are starting to shift in line. Two have come up behind me. Another friend, and the girl herself, are dropping back from their places ahead of me. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing straight up, and goose bumps are emerging up and down my arms as a chill runs up my spine.
Guards walk at the front and back of the line.
We're dead center.
"You're getting out today, huh? That's what we heard."
I don't know what to do. If I yell for the guards, I could have a knife in my gut before the scream leaves my lungs. If I stay quiet…well, there's probably a pretty good chance of that knife ending up in my ribs anyway.
So I do what I do best.
I say nothing.
She turns to face me. "Why you so quiet, huh?" I gasp as her two friends behind me grab my arms, my hair, knowing what's about to come.
"You was all mouth the other day when I cut in front of you in the showers." She looks me up and down, her face etched with hatred. "Lost my job privileges cause of you." I look away, not meeting her eyes, willing someone to notice their hands on me.
She looks over my shoulder, then turns away, and for a split second I think the guard has seen her, but then she's turning back, her fist connecting with my eye in an explosion of pain, and I turn away only to be hit from the other side, and then it's mayhem; all four of them kicking and punching any part of me they can reach, and I'm down, a foot in my ribs knocks the breathe out of me, and all I can do is put my arms over my face and pray that the guards will get them off of me before she can kill me as fireworks of pain explode all over my body.
It feels like forever before they're being lifted off, and even as the guards manage to get the girl with the cornrows away, her friends are still beating me like a punching bag, until finally, finally, it stops, and one of the guards, an older guy with white hair and blue eyes, is helping me get to my feet. He looks me up and down, and I can feel the split on my lip, the swelling over my eye, and I know I must look a mess. He looks at me for minute, everyone looks at me, and then he just says,
"Your social worker is here."