Chapter Forty-Nine

She never cried anymore. In the dark hole of solitary, Whitney sat on the floor and became conscious of this fact. It didn’t worry her, but she knew it should. But a lot of things were different now.

Reality doubled over her. Her prison had gotten smaller, and she had blatantly asked for it. But inside the dank little cell that housed nothing but concrete and her breathing body, Whitney was alone with her thoughts. She wondered what Halo was doing right now.

She scratched at the wall like she’d seen in the movies where people would mark the number of days they were locked in confinement. It was a lot harder than it looked, her weak fingernails bending and breaking with each attempt. If her mother knew how little she ate, the woman would lose it. But her mother knew nothing because they barely even talked. And the times that they had, Whitney on one side of the table, Marge on the other, were stone cold moments she’d rather forget. Instead, her mind drifted to Jamal, and she hated that too.

Like crying, her love had also abandoned her. She hardly felt anything thinking about his face, the way he used to move. His smell. Things that would well up hot tears in her the first year of her prison stay were non-entities now. The hate had eaten everything like acid.

She shouldn’t have killed him. Whitney knew that. So, what if he was gay. He still loved her. She could have loved him too. She could have been gentle with his heart and grateful for his love and been safe enough for him to tell her the story that lurked deep inside him.

But instead, she killed him.

She rested her head against the wall and studied her hands. So small, white. They were non-entities too. She couldn’t do a thing with them in this place. She was trapped. Useless.

Her mother. Her mother had suffered, that’s what Walt was trying to tell her. And what do you want me to do about it, Walt? She could barely urinate without an audience. How could she change the past or even the future? Walt was a God man. He believed in his Jesus and his miracles and a kind of hope that inflamed every raw place inside of Whitney.

And she didn’t even bother asking herself why.

There alone, absorbing the dankness of the room around her, Whitney opened a little box in her brain. It’s where she put Jamal’s murder and her brother’s autism and the fact that she’d probably never see daylight again. And she put that too—the thought of Jesus and miracles and hope—right where it belonged and locked up the box, threw away the key.

And only then did she think about crying.