Chapter 16:The Inmate Code

Quincy

There’s a saying you hear around here by your second or third week, whispered like a prayer and carved into the back of your head whether you like it or not:

Don’t trust anyone.

Not your cellmate.

Not the guy who trades you cookies for soap.

Not the guards, the chaplain, the janitor, not even the rat outside the laundry hall.

Trust gets you shanked.

Trust gets you stripped.

Trust gets you dead.

I thought I understood that.

And I had defiled that law once with my cellmate.

Yep, I'm guilty of trust ill people.

But after pulling that stunt, I vowed to keep my records almost clean as they were before.

Then it's clean up with the clean record when your hands have been soiled in a thing or two.

It started small, like most things in here do. A guy named Malik. A guy I hardly noticed. He's quiet, clean. He played cards near the east tables, rarely raised his voice, always nodded at the guards. The kind of guy you think is safe because he doesn’t make noise.

We ended up paired on kitchen duty. Cleaning trays. Drying silver. Talking in low murmurs beneath the hum of overhead fans.

“Yo, you Jordan’s boy, right?” Malik asked one day, handing me a towel.

I nearly dropped the tray, the feeling of being placed as inferior boiled my blood. “I’m not his boy.”

He just grinned. “Relax, man. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant you’re his cellie.”

“Oh. Yeah. That.” I loosened the grip I had on the tray.

“Guy’s got clout,” Malik said, voice low. “You walk with him, no one bothers you. Have you ever noticed that?”

I had. I just didn’t want to admit it.

Malik kept talking, soft and smooth. Said he liked me. Said I was smart. Said I looked like I didn’t belong here. Said he could help me out.

All his words were acknowledged except the last one.

That was the first warning sign.

Help doesn’t come free in prison. I knew that for sure.

But I was tired of being cautious.

Tired of pretending like Jordan was the only person I could rely on.

So when Malik asked me to pass a small envelope to a guy during rec, I said yes.

He told me it was tobacco. I believed him.

He said it was nothing big. I wanted to believe him.

He handed a package to me, tucking it neatly inside a book cover. He said all I had to do was to take it out into the yard and hand it over to a guy named Riker sitting on the bleachers. No problem. In and out. No fuss.

Except…

Except when I got there, Riker wasn’t sitting alone. He was surrounded by a couple of other guys who looked just as mean as him. I approached anyway, heart thudding, trying to act casual.

“You Riker?” I asked, eyes on who I thought to be the Riker, based on Malik's description. huge, skull tattoos on both shoulders, a scar on his lips.

The one that fit the description looked up and didn’t say a word.

I held out the book.

Just when I thought this stupid task had been completed, I heard the sound every inmate dreads.

“FREEZE!”

A guard’s voice. Loud. Commanding.

I turned to see three of them closing in, radios crackling, hands on batons. Riker darted out of the scene. So did his disciples. They scattered in different direction. And then me, the Scape goat, just stood there like a damn idiot, still holding the book.

The guards tackled me to the ground like I’d just set off a bomb.

Later, in the security office, they slit the spine of the book open.

It wasn't housing tobacco like Malik said it did.

It contained Oxy.

Malik disappeared before they dragged me in. Like he knew it was coming. Like he planned it. He wants my downfall, just like others did.

The interrogation didn’t last long. I kept repeating I didn’t know what it was. That I was just doing someone a favor.

I told the truth.

They didn’t care.

“You’ve been here long enough to know better,” Officer Bill said, slamming the report on the desk. He glared at me with disgust. The kind of look that said: "look who pledged to keep his cellmate in check, he's the same guy running on the same pedal of his cellmate."

I sat in the cold chair, lowering my gaze, feeling numb.

“Cell restriction. No yard privileges for another week,” Officer Bill said in disappointment.

“But—”

“Shut it, Laurent.”

They dumped me back in my cell, slammed the door shut, and walked away like I was just another stupid kid who deserved what he got.

Jordan wasn’t back from laundry yet.

And when he did walk in, sweaty and humming like he always did, the moment his eyes landed on me, something shifted.

He shut the door. Set his stuff down. Didn’t say a word.

I was sitting on the bunk, staring at the floor like it could swallow me.

“Spill,” he said at once.

I met his cold gaze. I know he feels something was off. Maybe he might have heard what happened from the licking lips of the inmates.

“What?” I asked, acting oblivious like sadness in my eyes was invincible to the rest of the world.

“Your face screams guilt, and you’re not dumb enough to try heroin. So what the fuck did you do?”

I wanted to lie.

I almost lied.

But then I remembered what it felt like to be slammed into concrete by a pair of guards while holding a book that could’ve added five years to my sentence.

So I told him.

All of it.

The envelope. Malik. Riker. The takedown.

When I finished, Jordan stared at me like I’d just told him I’d volunteered to be prison Santa.

“You let a guy named Malik talk you into running something?”

“I didn’t know it was drugs, Jordan. He said it was—”

He raised a hand. “Stop. Just stop.”

I shut up.

His jaw flexed. “What else did he say? What else did he promise?”

“Nothing. He just—” I sighed. “He said I didn’t belong here.”

Jordan laughed once, but it wasn’t amused. It was harsh. Cold.

“That’s how they get you,” he said. “They spot the new fish. The pretty ones. The ones with decent hair and wide eyes. They play nice, then feed you to the dogs.”

He ran a hand down his face.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want to need you,” I snapped.

That made him stop.

I stood, suddenly hot with embarrassment. “Everyone sees me as your shadow. Your fucking sidekick. You don’t think I hear them? Calling me ‘Vex’s bitch’ behind my back?”

His eyes narrowed. “You aren’t my bitch.”

“Well, I sure look like it,” I muttered. “So yeah, I did something on my own. And it backfired. Congratulations, you were right.”

Jordan stared at me, and for a second, I thought he might punch the wall.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he moved toward the door.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“To remind Malik why we don’t mess with what's mine.”

That froze me.

“What’s yours?” I asked, half defiant, half terrified.

He didn’t answer.

Didn’t have to.

*****

He came back twenty minutes later, blood on his knuckles.

No one asked questions.

Malik got transferred to the infirmary. Word spread fast. No one knew the details. That’s the handiwork of my cellie.

After that, no one looked at me the same way.

Not because I was tough.

But because Jordan had claimed me.

I should’ve been pissed. Should’ve felt owned.

But instead, I felt safe.

Safer than I’d ever felt in my life.

That night, I laid on my bunk staring at the ceiling, mind racing.

Jordan was below, breathing steady.

“You could’ve ignored it,” I whispered.

He didn’t respond.

“You didn’t have to do anything.”

Still silent.

Then, quietly: “Yeah, I did.”

“What did you do to Malik?”

“Nothing you need to know about. I made it look like he fell.”

That reply wasn't supposed to calm my jagged nerves, but somehow, it did.

I turned onto my side, facing the wall.

My heart ached in ways I didn’t couldn't explain.

Because trust in prison is a loaded gun.

And Jordan had just handed it back to me.

Still warm.

That night, Jordan said something to me that had me thinking: “If there was anyone to soil your clean hands in dirt, it has to be me. No one else.”