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“Don’t do this.” Lace grabs a hold of my sleeve and pulls me back a step, toward here. The women smirk and roll their eyes. I ignore them, and instead take one of Lace’s hands in mine, squeezing her fingers.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for loving me when I wasn’t very loveable.”
“Joey—”
“I have to do this.”
I drop Lace’s hand and turn back toward Ronnie. I can’t read her expression, and that’s worse than anything else. Is she scared? Angry? Ready to kill me? I can’t bring myself to care enough to stop this painful moment. I raise the fist holding the shiv in the air, and swallow a lump in my throat.
“I told you I’d kill you if you fucked with my people, Veronica.”
“You want to play dirty?” asks Veronica, a tight smile forming on the smooth features of her skin. She steps forward, rolling her sleeves up, and Bull and Deadeye flank her, like usual, but Veronica waves them off, looking back at me. “Are you challenging me? One on one?”
“One on one,” I confirm, the shiv gripped tightly against the palm of my hand.
“No weapons,” Veronica says. “I don’t have one either.”
I hesitate, unsure if I can take her without a weapon. But it doesn’t matter, not anymore. Either I will win or I will lose, but I’m in it now, and there’s no backing out.
“Joey,” Lace whimpers from behind me. I take my eyes off Veronica for a split second, turning to look at Lace, and that’s when it happens.
Ronnie knocks me to the cold, tile floor, completely catching me off guard. Around us, a chorus of boos and hisses, mixed with some cheers and whistles, fills the space between us, but I can barely hear the noise of the roar in my ears. The back of my skull hits the hard tile, and stars sprout in front of my vision. Somewhere in the room, Lace is screaming, but the roar of blood in my ears is muting the shouts around us. Ronnie is straddling me now, one arm against my throat. My fingers claw at her arms, hands, face … anything I can grab onto to leverage, but she’s got strength over me now that she’s got me pinned.
“I told you not to fuck with me,” Ronnie hisses, her lips next to my ear. “I told you you wouldn’t survive in here, but did you listen?” Her arm tightens, shooting pain into my skull and down into my chest. “No,” she continues. “You fucking didn’t.”
I can still hear Lace screaming. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think of my sister; I remember the way she looked at me through the glass, eyes narrowed, so satisfied with the situation … satisfied with herself. She’s pulled it off, she’d done it, and now here I was.
I don’t know what made me think of it, but somewhere in the back of my mind, common sense takes over. One of my free hands moves up towards my neck, wrapping around Ronnie’s smallest finger, her pinky. Before she even has time to react to what I’m about to do, I jerk my hand down, and Ronnie’s little finger comes with it. Somehow, even amongst the screaming and the jeers and the hollers from the other women, the snap of Ronnie’s finger echoes against the brick walls.
“Fuck!” she wails, and both hands come away at once as she brings her injured hand to her chest to nurse it. There’s no time to waste, because I know it won’t keep her down for long. Across the tile floor is the shiv I’ve brought, and, still gasping for air, I push myself towards it. I’m mere feet away when Ronnie grabs me again, my ankles this time, pulling me back, away from my weapon. I aim a kick at her face, but miss, and I know that within seconds she’ll be on top of me again.
“Joey!” Lace shouts, and she breaks free of whoever is holding her back to lunge forward, her sneaker meeting the tip of the shiv to kick it towards me. My fingers wrap around the weapon just as Ronnie is about to flip me over, and I dodge her, scrambling to my feet before she can pin me again. She makes an attempt to scramble up after me, but it’s no use. I shove her back to the floor and throw my legs around her, just as she’d done me, but there’s no need to try and strangle her. Ronnie opens her mouth to scream something at me, to fight, maybe, and I press the edge of the shiv against the tender skin of her neck, cutting her off.
The room falls silent. The cheers have stopped. The screams. It’s so quiet suddenly I swear I can hear the frantic beating of Veronica’s heart in my ears. For the first time since I’ve known her, Veronica looks frightened.
No, terrified.
Above all, she finally looks … human.
“Cut her!” Lace shrieks as Bull grabs her arms again to pull her back. “Get it over with, Joey, and cut her! She would have killed you already given the chance.”
My eyes meet Lace. She’s practically begging me, her eyes full of tears. The other women have nothing to say. They seem to be holding their breath, trying to figure out what’s going to happen before it does. My gaze shifts from Lace and back down to Ronnie, where the blade of my homemade shiv is still against her neck, stretching the skin over the blade.
“She’s right,” Ronnie gasps. “I would have killed you, kid, so do it. Just fucking do it.”
I swallow, my fingers steady against Ronnie’s neck. A tiny trickle of blood erupts from the surface of the skin, trickling down her neck. I swallow, wanting more than anything to cut this woman, cut her bad. I know she’s dangerous. I know she can hurt me. Kill me, even.
But I can’t. I’m not that person.
“You will step down from being the Boss,” I tell her, my voice a mere whisper that only she can hear. Some of the women lean in and, keeping the shiv against Ronnie’s neck, I look up at them, around at them, meeting each gaze individually. “I’m in charge now,” I say, forcing my voice to hold steady. “From this moment until the day I leave this place, you’ll report to me. There will be no more drugs being run into this prison. No jumping each other in the hallways, bashing each other in the bathrooms. You will coexist peacefully.”
“And if we don’t?” sneers Deadeye, glaring at me. I look back down at Ronnie, who is watching my face, completely silent. Our eyes meet. Below a facade of confident indifference, I see fear.
“You will,” she says, her eyes unwavering from my own. “Josephine is the Boss now. You’ll do what she says. All of you.”
Not another woman speaks, not even to argue. I swallow a painful lump in my throat and slowly pull the blade from Ronnie’s neck, until Lace comes over and takes my arm, helping me stand up. Ronnie doesn’t try to attack again. No one does. Now, everyone is looking at me. Waiting.
“If anyone has a problem with how things are going to be, you can come to me,” I say, looking around the room. Lace has a hold of my hand; no one seems to care. Not a single woman puts a foot out of line as I walk around the room, meeting each of their gazes. Behind me, Ronnie scrambles to her feet, broken hand against her chest, free arm holding the small cut on her neck.
“You win,” she says, dropping her head a bit. “And as long as you’re in charge here, you can count on me to enforce the rules.”
A breath of relief I don’t realize I’ve been holding slips out, and Lace squeezes my hand. From now until the day we’re out of here, we’re as safe we can be.
For now.
