Hi folks.

Just to let you all know, we're skipping ahead to the last week of Spinelli's and Francis' sentencing.

Read On!

Journal,

I hate when people ask me questions like that. The one's that try to get to the root of my problems. I hate it. I hate it when Mr. Simmons does it, I hate it when Spinelli and Francis do it, it doesn't matter. Because when they ask me that I start to ask myself and it won't leave my mind for weeks and I don't have the answer.

~*~V~*~

Following his encounter with Spinelli, TJ was stuck thinking about the question she asked. she had no idea how many days and nights he spent going through list of mental disorders trying to find one that matches him. He knew there was something wrong, but all he knew was that he was a pyromaniac. Add in his experience philosophizing, it became torturous.

Since then he kept his mouth shut, not talking at all unless he was asked a question he could answer with one or two answers, or if he asked something. He ignored the questions his former colleagues asked him and acted as if they weren't there at all. It was the next best thing to them not being there.

Sitting at the table with the others, he watched his friends gamble. As he watched, me made sure Duracell didn't suddenly decided to hop away. It stopped raining a long time ago, but the animal refused to leave him alone no matter what he did. He couldn't even say that he adopted it. It adopted him. Sighing, TJ asked himself if he was the only inmate who had to go through something like this. How many inmates had a baby bunny stalk them? Most likely none.

'At least it doesn't bother me,' He thought. 'All it does it jump on me when I'm sleeping. Like last night…' He thought back to last night when he was starting to doze off. He was startled when something landed on his chest, it was none other than the bunny. He put it in it's box and went back to sleep, but it still jumped on his chest. Soon it became apparent that it wasn't going to leave when it snuggled against his shirt and started to sleep. 'You have to pick you battles…'

"Watch the rabbit." He told everyone. "I gotta go to the commissary to get something." Abandoning their game, everyone brought their attention to the bunny munching on a pile of food. '…..whatever…' He thought.

~*~V~*~

"It's about time this place got all this stuff back….lets see….three bottles of Orange Crush, all the cherry Airheads you have, a pack of gum and cigarettes.." Waiting for the clerk to get what he asked for, TJ looked around the dorms. The place still smelled like mildew from the rain falling through the roof, the walls were still grey, and people still did what they always did. He spotted the others watching the rabbit hop back and forth between them. Then he found Francis and Spinelli sitting under the stair case talking to one another. As long as they weren't trying to talk to him there wasn't a problem. They didn't cross him, or talk to him, or looked. But he did mess with their heads just for the hell of it. Like when he held a knife to Spinelli's neck.

'That was gold,' He thought, turning back to the front of the line. He paid for everything and carried it all to his room before sitting back at the table.

~*~V~*~
Spinelli hated how she felt in here. At home she was strong. At home, she was the one person that guys didn't fuck with. But here she was none of that. She was just like every other girl. What was thought of as strong on the outside of this place was weak inside, and she loathed the word 'weak.'

Guys here at the nerve to hit on her, and though she answered with a swift punch to their face when a no didn't work, it didn't faze them at all. They just kept coming.

"Hey Spin, I gotta go to the commissary," Francis said standing up from where he was sitting. "Think you'll be okay 'til I get back?" Francis was aware of all the guys hitting on Spinelli, and he hated it as much as she did because he didn't want her to accidently fall for one of them. He wanted her to fall for him and had been working on it since ninth grade.

Her parents didn't like him at all because of his hustling. He understood that they wanted to protect their daughter, but that didn't faze his urge to date her at all. He only tried harder and although he might be in the friend zone, he wasn't going to let any guy hurt her. At least not without a fight in the case of TJ.

"I'll be fine, Francis," She said. "Go get whatever you need." Spinelli continued to write once Francis left to get in line. She kept her promise of writing every day, and when a letter from her parents came, she could tell that that they were resisting coming in there and making sure she was okay.

"What'sha doing?" Irritated, she looked up at the first person to hit on her for today. He was taller than her by a foot, and screamed nothing but trouble.

"If you're gonna hit on me, you might as well stop," she said. "Because I'm going to say no."

"Well who the hell said that I was gonna ask?" He snapped. "Get up!"

"Piss off!" As soon as those words came out of her mouth, Spinelli was pulled to her feet by the inmate standing in front of her and was pulling back to not get taken to where ever he was trying to take her. She punched and pushed to get whoever that guy was to let her go, but it did not appear as if it was working. Suddenly, the force she was using to pull herself away sent her to the floor and the guy who tried to take her away was next to her, grabbing the side of his face in pain. Thinking it was Francis that had saved her, she was shocked to see who was really standing there.

"Don't you know how to defend yourself anymore?" TJ asked her. "Or are you just like every other girl out there now?"

"…uh.."

"Get out of here," He said, getting a kick to the guy on the ground. He got on his feet and ran away from the scene. "Stop being so damn weak. It's pathetic."

"Thanks for that," She said. "I dunno what would've happened if you didn't—"

"You would've been raped," He said, cutting her off. "Stop being so weak." He stepped past her and left, leaving her stunned.

~*~TJ"S POV~*~

I don't care about her safety. I couldn't care less. But I'm going to be the only person in her inflicting any sort of pain on her. No one else gets that privilege.

I need some air. Stupid shit like this makes me mad. As much as I could overpower her, it's still nice to see her fight back. She just gave up this time. She better not expect me to do that again.

"Where's the rabbit?" I asked, approaching the table.

"She fell asleep so we put her in her box," Bandit explained. "Why? Do you care about it? Do you love it?"

"Just asked a fucking question, Jesus," I said, turning away from the table. "I'm going outside. Who's coming?" They all followed me as I made my way outside. The air in here is too polluted to relax. Air outside is like a completely different thing. It's like I'm miles away from the city and any form of air pollution, and the air is clean. It's one of the few things on the outside I can cling to.

Doesn't look like it was going now. Coming outside, we all saw that the sky was full of clouds and any sunlight was blocked. It looked like there was a storm approaching and that no one should be outside. And no one was except us.

"I think we should go back inside," Specs said. "It's about to rain."

"…yeah…"

~*~V~*~

"Who's up for Monopoly? I bought it at the commissary a few days ago?"

Heh, not me. I know I would win. I wouldn't be fair to everyone else. It would be the playground economy all over again. Man, I took over the economy SO FAST it was ridiculous. I could be a hell of a businessman if I want to. That, and being emotionless? I could control the whole country's economy with the power of a pen and contract. I can dream big, can't I? I doubt it. Someone would probably ruin me by exposing this part of my life to the public. But I think I'll play anyways.

I opened my mouth to reply, but was cut off.

"WHO'S RABBIT IS THIS?" The others ran into my room. Probably scared that a guard had found Duracell. I walked instead. Turning into the room I didn't see them fighting off a guard. They were just standing there, facing the inside of the room. I looked over all of them and saw who they were staring at.

It's about damn time.

"JoJo?" He turned around and looked at us.

"Huh? Oh hey," He said before turning back to face the makeshift cage. "What's with the rabbit? Is it yours Freckl—" he couldn't finish his sentence because Veronica pulled him into a hug. "I missed you all too….."

"Where the hell have you been?" She asked, pulling away from him and landing a slap to his face. "You had us worried sick!"

"I was in the hospital," JoJo told us. "That's where I was sent…"

"Why were you in for so long?"

"Why wasn't I in for so long?" He sighed, sitting down on his bed. "It's a long story." We all went inside. I sat on my bed with Veronica and Bandit. Specs sat on the floor and Googly and Tony (the other girl) sat next to JoJo. "What I was told was that you guys got me sent to the hospital and I was dehydrated and malnourished. When they were trying to fix that they found that I was anemic and had to stay in the hospital longer. That shit hurts. I got fed through a feeding tube! So when that was fixed my right side was hurtin' and I blacked out. When I woke up the doctor said that my appendix burst and that they took it out. See?" He stopped to hold up his shirt and show the scar left from the surgery. "Since it burst I had an infection and had to stay longer. Then that was fixed, and I'm here now."

"It's about time you're back," I said. "It's weird here without you."

"Sorry. I'm better now," he said. "So what's with the rabbit?"

"It follows me. It won't leave me alone. I would've left it outside, but SOMEONE said that you would beat me up if I let it out."

"They were right," He said, scooping Duracell out of the box. "I would. Don't you dare hurt it. What's its name?"

"Duracell."

"….You did not name this rabbit Duracell."

"Her name is Duracell, JoJo," I said. "Just like the battery."

~*~END TJ's POV~*~

"So let me get this straight, you were getting dragged away by some dude and he saved you? Am I missing something here?" Confused, Francis was attempting to understand what Spinelli had told him that happened to her.

"You're not missing anything. That's all that happened," Spinelli told him. "He must've saw what that guy was trying to do and he came over, punched him, and told him to leave me alone. I was just as shocked as you are!"

"I don't get him. One minute he's holding a knife to your throat, or telling us not to talk to him, and the next he's adopting rabbits and saving you from getting raped. I'd be nice to have some consistency."

"I don't get it either, but we only have a week left in here," Said Spinelli. "If we made it this far, I think we can survive another we of his mood swings."

~*~V~*~

Dear Diary,

I didn't do this manual labor in my entire life! And it's not even what you would think of when you hear 'hard work'. It's laundry. But it's not just my laundry. It's EVERYONE'S laundry. If I had to guess, I would say that I did laundry for about….oh, no less than five hundred people. Not only did we have to do laundry, but I had to iron and fold it too. In one day. Without a break. I'm never taking my own laundry for granted ever again.

I had help though. The guards just picked out a bunch of random inmates. Me and Francis were picked, so was TJ a couple of his friends and some other inmates I didn't know. Francis got grouped with some other guys. There were three laundry rooms, and I got grouped to together to work in one room with TJ and some other dude. Swear there's someone setting this all up.

…..There was an accident though. I'm sure he's okay now, because he came back from the hospital earlier. That means it wasn't as bad as it looked.

Still scary though.

~*~V~*~

Wiping the sweat from her forehead Spinelli waited for the three second necessary to iron the uniforms she was ordered to do. She was unfortunate enough t be selected when the guards came and picked whom was to go the laundry. She thought that it wouldn't have been so bad if the dorms had to house both the male and female inmates, but now that the two genders shared the same housing, the amount of laundry doubled and took twice as long to do.

She did however take solace in the ironing being the easiest task. The iron she was using was not like the small one she used at home, but an industrial sized one that you laid the clothes down on and pressed the top down. The heat radiating off the machine made the task seem harder than it was.

She and the two others split the four tasks evenly. She did the ironing and when she had to wait for more clothes to iron, she helped fold what was ironed. TJ unloaded the laundry and helped fold it. The other guy, who she thought she heard TJ call JoJo once, sorted the clothes and loaded them into the washer.

"But for real though, you are not about to name that rabbit Duracell," She heard JoJo said. "Don't torture it by givin' it that name. How 'bout Falafel?"

"Falafel?...I'm not changing it," Said TJ. "It's gonna stay like that. That thing gave me enough trouble already. And now you've joined everyone else in loving it. What's the big deal about it? It's just a rodent."

"It didn't do anything to you," Said JoJo. "It just follows you. You act like it bites you and calls it's entire family to chew out your eyes. She's only guilty of liking you. Damn. She didn't follow you in here did she?"

"Not that I know off…."

"See?"

"I still don't like it."

"That's too bad, 'cause it's stayin'. Now shut-up and unload the dryer so I can put the clothes in the dryer in. First day I come back and I have to do all this physical labor…this should be illegal."

Turning her attention back to the ironing, Spinelli pretended as if she wasn't paying attention to the boys conversation. Her mind drifted away from her manual labor and to what she was missing by being stuck in juvie. She knew before she was sentenced that there a dance planned and that she missed it. Though she didn't exactly know who she would've gone to, even just going by herself would've been somewhat fun.

'More fun than being stuck in here ironing other people's clothes,' She thought. 'I might've been able to get Francis to take me. Maybe…' Smiling at the thought of the hustler, she reminded herself that the idea of her dating him wasn't likely. He was everything she was looking for in a guy (at the time). Strong, nice (but not TOO nice), cute in a badboy-ish kind of way but not actually being like that, and on top of it, he had his own business and was making his own money. But if she ever did manage to get a date with him, she parents would forbid her to see him. They were still overprotective and with what Francis' does, they would not approve. She didn't need to ask them to know.

Her thoughts ended when TJ brought over another pile of freshly clean uniforms. Sighing, she grabbed a uniform out of the pile and started the process all over again.

"I've been gone for like, what, three weeks," JoJo said. "You mind telling me what I missed?"

"I didn't tell you because nothing happened," TJ told him as he folded the ironed clothes. "How am I supposed to tell you about what happened if nothing happened? If anything happened it's that we got some news scrubs in here and I knew them. That's it."

"Where you know them from?"

"School. Before I came here."

"So what, are you messin' with them?"

"All in my business…..if you must know, yeah I am. You would be too in my shoes," Said TJ. "I'm just scaring them so they'll leave me alone. I dunno now. They're still getting on my nerves so maybe I'll kill them to get rid of them." Spinelli suddenly felt uncomfortable listening to the conversation.

"Nah don't do that. Just keep messin' with 'em. It fucks with their minds more."

"Yeah I know," He paused to look over at Spinelli. "That's why I do it. They don't know if I'm gonna decided right in the middle of messing with them if I'm gonna change my mind all of a sudden and flip. That's why it's fun. I haven't had fun in a long time..."

"You know, most people don't' talk about the people they're going to torture while they're in the same room," Spinelli said, breaking her silence.

"...who's this trick talkin' to?" JoJo asked TJ. "She one of those scrubs?"

"Yeah," TJ told him.

"Trick? Who the fuck are you calling a Trick?" She asked, appaulled.

"You, Trick," JoJo said. "Don't you know your name?"

"You're gonna stop calling me a trick before I make you!" Spinelli abandoned the ironing to march over to JoJo to make her point.

"I know someone better get out of my face," JoJo snapped at her. He pushed her away from him while he still was holding a bottle of liquid detergent, accidently spilling some on the floor and on the front of her uniform. "Freckles, do you know this Trick?"

"She's one of the new scrubs," TJ said, ignoring the argument between the two. "Obviously. As you can see, she hasn't learned her place yet."

"In my place? Who the fu—" BANG BANG BANG. Their argument ended when one of the guards standing outside banged on the door to get their attention.

"Get back to work!" The guard yelled. Grudgingly, Spinelli went back to the ironing and JoJo went back to loading the dryer.

"But for real though, you are not gonna be callin' that rabit Duracell," JoJo Continued.

"I didn't want to name it at all. The guys made me do it," TJ explained as he placed the folded laundry in one of the carts. "I don't care what you call it. Go ahead and name it Burrito or Falafel or whatever you said. I'm not gonna stop you."

"Nah, it's aright I guess. It's YOUR rabbit."

"You can have it if you want," TJ said. Taking another clean load of laundry out of the dryer he started to carry it to the table with the rest. "Just 'cause it stalks and jumps on me, I named it, and it's sleeping on my shirts, that doesn't mean that I want it—"

He was cut off when he accidently slipped on the spilled detergent and fell to the floor, hitting his head.

"You okay Freckles?" JoJo asked him. "That sounded like it hurt."

"Y-yeah, I'm fine," Said TJ. Shaking off the fall, he sat up and started to gather the clothes he dropped when he fell. It was difficult because the room wouldn't stop spinning and he felt the urge to throw-up. And there was something dripping down his back. Standing up, he stumbled over his own feet and almost fell down again, but JoJo helped him stand. He touched the back of his head and felt something flow down his fingers. Bring his hand back into view, he saw it was now covered I his own blood.

~*~V~*~

"You should've seen it. There was blood everywhere!"

"….So what happened?"

Once she and the others assigned were done with the laundry, Spinelli and Francis rested against the wall in the dorms. Tired, the only things they wanted to do was sleep, but found enough energy left to speak to each other.

"He slipped and hit his head on the floor," Spinelli said as she explained what she saw. "He was bleeding. I think he was taken to the hospital or something. That was two hours ago though. Laundry took forever."

"You're telling me! I was just working with one other person!" Francis said. "We had to sort through the laundry, load it, unload it, iron it, and fold it. I think we did like fifty loads. I'm never complaining about my own laundry again."

"Me neither."

"Hmm…..it doesn't look like whatever you saw was THAT serious," Said Francis. "He's back from the hospital." He pointed towards the door that lead into the dorms. The person they were talking about was lead in by the guards. They both could clearly see a bandage wrapped around his head. He walked past what she assumed to be his friends and went into his room.

"But you didn't see it," Spinelli told him. "It was a lot of blood."

"If you're so worried about him why don't you check on him?" Francis joked. He didn't get the light punch in the arm that he was used to, but the sight on Spinelli walked away from where they were sitting. "I didn't mean it!"

"I know you didn't. But I'm still gonna go see."

"Haven't you learned anything from being in here? He doesn't want to talk to us! Especially you!" Not paying him any attention to his protests, Spinelli walked away and headed towards TJ's room. Looking inside, she saw him lying in his bed on his back with his eye's closed talking to JoJo. He looked fine compared to the amount of the blood she saw.

"What'shu want, Trick?" JoJo asked after he spotted her.

"If you call me a Trick one more time—"

"JoJo, Spinelli, stop fighting," Said TJ. "My headache is bad enough without you two arguing. JoJo, can you leave for a minute?" JoJo nodded and left the room, sending a heated glare to Spinelli. "What do you want Spinelli?"

"I just wanted to see if you were okay," She said. "There was a lot of blood."

"Why?"

"….okay, look. Mikey and his whole 'being nice to people no matter what' rubbed off on me, okay? Just answer the question. Are you okay or not?"

"M'fine."

"Oh, that's good. But what about all the bloo—"

"Staples."

"Staples?"

"Yeah, staples. I got a one inch cut on the back of my head. If you get a cut on your head, it bleeds a lot," He explained, tiredly. "I looked worse than what it was. I got staples on my head. And I have a concussion, so I have to take it easy. Is that a good enough answer?"

"I think so. Just checking."

"Why the hell do you care?" He asked, patience running thin. "We're not friends. We're not even acquaintances. Why do you care if I'm hurt or not?"

"Just because I don't like you doesn't mean I want you to get hurt," Spinelli explained. "If I did, then I would just be as cruel as you are. And I refuse to be ANYTHING like you. Not after everything you did."

"Then don't do it," TJ said. "Go 'way. Need to sleep." Scoffing, Spinelli turned around and left the room, shaking her head.

"You just can't help some people," she mumbled.

HiddenBehindTheCurtains: Oh yes of course more time for writing! I posted in an author's note a while back that by the time summer came I would start updating about every other day and how I was going to finish this story and the others up. However that was before I knew we get out of school in April. I'm going to try and be done with this story by June, but that's just it. I can only try because I am nowhere near the middle point for this story and I've been working on it for months. But I can safely say that updates will increase starting April 24, my birthday. :3 But hey, look! JoJo's back!

Donna Nnov: I can safely say without the exposure of any spoilers that little Duracell won't be killed. :3

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