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  “Psyche,” she said. “No hell-copters should be coming out here. But I’m glad you came inside anyway. We should talk some.”

  “It’s 4:15 p.m.,” Riot said with a bright smile stretched across her face. Her green eyes were glued onto her Timex.

  “PANIC, walkie-talkies blaring. The volume pumped all the way up. Cell doors slamming shut. Guards scrambling, officers calling the library, the clinic, the visitation hall, the commissary, the slop house, the gymnasium, the dormitories, the classrooms, the tower. Officers reporting ‘missing bodies.’ That’s us,” Riot dramatized with exaggerated body movements as she acted out the scenes described. Serious faced, she was reflecting on what she knew for sure was happening back at lockdown. Me and Siri got caught up in her storytelling. We knew it was dead on. Riot continued.

  “It’s 4:18 p.m., First Officer calls the Captain.” Riot was using her fingers, pretending to be on the important phone call.

  “It’s 4:20 p.m., Captain calls the Assistant Deputy Warden. He tries to keep it a secret, get to the bottom of it, gain control, collect more info.”

  “Now it’s 4:30 p.m. Assistant Deputy Warden calls Warden Strickland.”

  “It 4:30 and three seconds. Warden places entire facility on shutdown. No one leaves out. No one gets in. Shifts don’t change. The workers, officers, staff, and administration all feel tense, aggravated, imprisoned, angry.”

  “4:35 Yellow alert.”

  “4:45 Orange alert.”

  “5:00 RED ALERT!”

  Riot threw herself back on the dollhouse floor. She laid out flat next to her picnic items. Riot placed her hand over her mouth and screamed into her palms. “You motherfuckers! You assholes! You perverts, creeps, bloodsuckers, liars, cowards, punks! We fucking outsmarted you! We did it! We did it! We did it!”

  Her face turned a pale pink with fury. She laughed. She cried. She shook.

  I understood.

  “Porsche, I couldn’t sleep last night. Now I’m exhausted. Forgive me if I knock out. I trust you. Watch over me while I rest. Don’t worry about the authorities. They won’t be coming here anytime soon, and probably never. We are on Seneca land. This place is not technically even America. We’re safe here. The New York State Police cannot even come here. Even the hell-copters won’t come here. And please eat something. Me and you gotta start eating now that we’re gone from that nasty prison.”

  • • •

  I wanted to talk to her. I had a slew of questions and plans I wanted to make. I already decided when I was lying in that trunk, thinking, that I was gonna change my relationship with Riot. It had to even up somehow. I didn’t want to be kept in the dark on the most important matters anymore. I felt like a fool seeking out each Diamond Needle and offering my candy tributes while they were doing big things, serious schemes, making dangerous and necessary moves.

  And what is “Seneca land” and is it possible there is a place that was a few hours from lockdown that wasn’t in America, where cops couldn’t come? That shit blew my mind. If Riot had gotten us to such a place, she deserved to sleep well, word.

  I knew that Riot didn’t know about my eating matters. The psych on lockdown called it my “eating disorder.” I didn’t give a fuck about anything the psych had to say. I knew what I was doing and why. A person gotta have rules for themselves, I think. If other people don’t understand another person’s rules for themselves, it doesn’t matter and shouldn’t affect them. I don’t have no eating disorder. I just don’t like to eat around people who I don’t trust. I don’t like to eat food prepared by people who I don’t trust. I don’t like to eat any food that anyone offers to me. I want to get it myself, choose it myself. I’ll eat it if it’s random enough. Otherwise I’m stubborn enough to starve.

  Siri was right. I was hungry and I’d been hungry for years, at least for all the years that I been away from my home. I always knew that I was hungry. I ignored it cause not trusting was heavier than hunger.

  So in that moment, I ate. I didn’t touch any of the things that were in my backpack. I ate the candy bars and chips and the honey bun that Riot had. I chose those foods cause they were not given to me. I chose them for myself, right or wrong.

  Chapter 14

  Garlic. I didn’t smell like myself. I woke up naked in a warm bed in a wooden room, covered by a pink sheet. The sunshine was pouring through a window. “A window,” I thought to myself. The dollhouse doesn’t have glass windows. This room didn’t feel familiar like a prison or hateful like a hospital where they forced tubes up my nose, needles in my arms, or cuffs around my ankles locking my feet in one stiff position. I lifted each leg, exhaled, and laid them back down. I rolled left, then right, testing my freedom. I was rolling over something beneath me. I reached in and felt around the sheet. When I pulled my hand back, I was holding pieces of garlic. Garlic like in Poppa’s famous black beans, which he liked to eat. I put my head beneath the sheet and looked around. I opened my legs and pushed a finger between my thighs and into my opening. It was still closed. I exhaled. I pulled my fingers up to my nose and smelled the moisture. It smelled the same way it did whenever I performed a pussy check to be sure no one had fucked me in my sleep. For three years I’ve been nervous about sleeping, I thought to myself. I knew it was a time for anyone who wants to take advantage, to do things to me that I never agreed to. I had promised myself that no matter what happened, and even though they stole me from my family, and traded me around from place to place before throwing me into a cage, no one would fuck me if I didn’t agree to it. I had zero plans to agree to it anytime soon. So normally, I fought sleep and never would until either I collapsed or they drugged me. So they say I have a “sleeping disorder.”

  Eating disorder, sleeping disorder, anger disorder. Eating disorder, sleeping disorder, anger management problem, and those were nice and simple words. Oh, they had long ones like Skitzo-frena-paranoya, but I never listened to people who purposely try to talk over my head. I knew that it’s a slick way to make themselves seem smarter and better than me while making me feel dumb.

  I peeled back the sheet. My stomach felt nervous, but I didn’t feel captured. I knew well what that captured feeling feels like. Sitting up straight now, my eyes roamed the room looking for my clothes. It took seconds to remember “my clothes.” Not the baby-blue jail jumper or prison pajamas, but the skimpy, cheap jean skirt and baby T that read touch me. They weren’t here. There was another bed a few feet away from the one I was in. I wanted to believe that Riot had slept there, cause I could see that somebody had. I got up walking softly on the pretty polished wood. I was used to cold cement and rock floors.

  I pushed in a wooden wall that led to a closet stuffed with lady things. Relieved, I stood on my tiptoes and grabbed the first thing I could reach that my fingers touched. It was a dress made of soft silk. I smelled it, then slid it over my head.

  “It’s too long, but it looks nice,” Siri said, giggling. “It doesn’t matter, as long as we are not naked,” she added.

  “I’m not keeping it. I’m not a thief,” I told Siri.

  “I know,” Siri said quietly.

  My fingers turned the wooden knob slowly and pulled the room door open gently. I wasn’t used to opening doors or doors being unlocked and opened.

  I poked my head out. The hallway walls were wooden. No one was walking around, and I didn’t hear no sounds of life. The smell was very nice, the kind of fresh smell like pine needles from a huge Christmas tree we once had back home. I was used to noisy, busy, wide corridors and stinky dorms. Should I walk out, or should I go back and wait in the room for something to happen? Cautiously, I stepped out. I took a few steps and jumped a step back, when I looked left and saw a wooden hanging thing. When I looked right I saw another one. They were wooden masks of faces of horror. It looked like it was put there to scare the shit out of little kids. I squeezed my legs together. I had to pee. Rushing with my thighs still pressed together, I found a toilet. I stepped in. My pee splattered out before I c
ould sit.

  “There’s a window,” Siri said. I pulled down a towel from the thin rack. I cleaned up my pee. I wasn’t used to cleaning it up. I’d leave it there on purpose, a puddle for the guards to clean. I rolled the dirty towel up neatly, then hid it in a small space behind the toilet. I turned the faucet on, a sparkling clean silver faucet. I cleaned my hands.

  Glancing at the window, I wondered if it was wired with alarms or a booby-trap or if there was a secret tower outside with snipers who shoot kids for moving two feet beyond the lines. Or maybe there was no tower or lines, but I’d be electrocuted or bagged by the warden. Siri lifted the window. I leaped backwards one step. No alarm rang, but a string of bright green leaves dangled in.

  “See, it’s safe,” Siri said.

  So, I approached. I jumped out to the ground level right beneath the window. My left foot arched a little, over a rock hidden in the green grass. I looked up. It was a brick house covered with green leaves. The leaves climbed over every section and even up the roof, leaving nothing but the door uncovered. But even the door was almost completely hidden by two tall bushes.

  The yellow sun was blazing up, but the forest blocked its strength. The green everywhere was only shown up by the blue sky. I began to cry. I didn’t know why. Why not? In my last conversation with myself I didn’t know who I am. Now, I also don’t know where I am. Even in prison, I knew what would happen next, was locked into a schedule, could count up everything and reduce it to a pattern. Siri wiped my tears. I turned tough again and started away from the house into the forest, more pee trickling a trail as I stepped.

  We walked and walked until I heard and then saw water, a stream sliding down some gray rocks and around the trees.

  “Good, let’s drink,” Siri said.

  I squatted, cupped my hands, and just as I went to splash my face Siri said, “Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  With water leaking from my face, I asked her, “Shouldn’t what?”

  “It’s okay to wash your face, but maybe we shouldn’t drink it, though,” Siri said.

  “I have to drink water,” I told Siri as I cupped my hands and drank. Besides I liked it like this, finding water for myself instead of someone handing me a suspicious cup of something with a suspicious fluid inside, maybe even small bubbles that could’ve easily been some spit. I found some berried branches, big purple fruits, not grapes but dark like em. I pulled a few down. Some busted in my fingers and turned my tips colors. I licked the busted ones and ate the others. I found lettuce growing from the ground. I grabbed some, washed it in the stream and ate it with a tomato, which was growing from the ground nearby. Had some more water. Seemed like a few minutes later my stomach was rumbling like thunder in a powerful storm. I squatted by a tree and pooped a pile of poo, loose like a bowl of chili. Disgusted but relieved, I wiped myself using some leaves, dug in the dirt, and buried them. Then I walked back to the stream to wash my hands and body with the cold water in the warm heat while the red dress hung on a nearby branch.

  The fog had now passed out of my mind. My thoughts cleared up and came rushing to me. I, Porsche L. Santiaga, am free. I’m going home. I’m almost eleven years old. I’m going to see Momma, Winter, Lexy, and Mercedes. After that we will all go and see about Poppa. Holding my arms straight out in front of me, I began to inspect my skin.

  “Wish we had a mirror,” Siri said.

  I didn’t want Momma to be disappointed with my appearance. She taught me to keep my skin moisturized and to especially care for my feet. I looked down at my toes. They were still pretty, but not moisturized, just drips of water left over from the stream. Of course my nails were unpolished. I stroked my hair. It was thick and wild and longer than it was before I had cut it off and threw it at Cha-Cha more than a year ago.

  The thought of Cha-Cha triggered a dark memory. But I was glad that now it was a memory, not a reality. I didn’t want dem girls touching me. That jealousy spreads like germs. I would never know who caught it next. I wish jealousy was like the chicken pox and showed up as bumps and rashes all over faces and body parts, or made jealous people’s skin turn green so they could stand out and be stayed away from. I don’t know where all my Gutter Girls are right now. I felt bad for bouncing on them without notice. But I didn’t feel bad enough to have stayed and ridden my time out side by side with them. The Gutter Girls was my little battling squad. We had a nice little hustle that helped me make it through each day in the C-dorm. I taught them well enough for them to continue the grind if they had the heart. The Diamond Needles, however, was many levels above the GG cause their reach was stronger. In my crew, I carried the weight. In the Diamond Needles every girl played a key position. I did figure out that Riot seemed to know everything about each of us, yet we really didn’t know enough about one another. I mean we checked for one another, had each other’s back, held one another down, but beyond that, the details we didn’t know at all. Or at least I didn’t.

  I needed a ride to Long Island to my house, the Santiaga palace. Or I needed some loot for a train or bus ticket and a nice outfit that won’t make me seem suspicious or “wanted.” Something that would make Winter see me and welcome me in and let me hang out with her, proudly. I wanted to look so pretty that Winter wouldn’t lose me again, and even if she accidently did she’d search for me forever.

  “Someone’s coming,” Siri said.

  Maybe it was dumb for me to choose the red dress, I thought to myself suddenly as I stepped behind a wide tree. Maybe my brown skin would blend better with the bark. Maybe I should leave the dress on the branch and just hide in the nude.

  “What if it’s a man coming?” Siri warned whispering. I snatched the dress down and put it on. Her words caused me to stand statue-still.

  She was moving cautiously, using the trees as her hopscotch hiding place, looking up towards the sky, checking for the hell-copters that she said wouldn’t come. Riot’s green eyes lit up like lightning bugs. I shifted my head and called out like back in Brooklyn, a mean game of hide-and-seek or hot peas and butter. Then I pulled it back and hid.

  “Porsche, quit playing and come on out,” she said. “You okay? Feeling better?”

  “Meet me halfway cause you don’t look like yourself,” I called out to her.

  She was walking my way, her black hair gone, her long braid clipped off. Her hair was short and blonde in a buzz cut.

  “You look like a boy,” I told her, shooting out from my peeking place.

  “They’ll be looking for girls,” she said serious-faced.

  “I thought you said they weren’t coming?” I reminded her.

  “They won’t. We’re on Seneca territory. But when we travel off this land like I did this morning, we’ll be back in regular American territory.”

  “Alright, Riot, let’s sit here and go over some things so I’ll know what’s up same as you,” I said.

  “Your dress is on inside out,” Riot noticed. We both sat down on the ground surrounded by trees. “No problem. I planned to tell you some things and answer some things yesterday, but you got stung by some yellow jackets. They must’ve smelled all that sugar in your blood. You ate all my candy and the honey bun! You passed out and your whole body got all swollen,” Riot explained. I felt bad about passing out. I knew it was shit like that which made it hard for me to even up with Riot and the older Diamond Needle girls.

  “So is that why you kept me here with you, because I passed out and got stung by bees? So if that never happened, you would’ve sent me home to Long Island where I want to go?”

  “You can’t go home no time soon,” Riot said calm and serious again.

  “What do you mean?” I asked her. I was serious, too.

  “Nobody went back to the places where the authorities are gonna show up first,” Riot said.

  “How would they know?” I asked.

  “Because the authorities got thick files on each of us. They know all our business, our family addresses, the schools we used to attend, the phone numbers we wou
ld call, everything,” she warned.

  I didn’t say nothing for a few seconds. I was thinking.

  “Do you think we’re at my farmhouse right now, on my parents’ property?” Riot asked me.

  I still didn’t say nothing. She seemed comfortable enough to be at home, but I was still thinking.

  “We’re not. I knew and I know I can’t go back there for at least a year. Even if I did go back, it would just be out of curiosity. The authorities stole the land from my parents. If I went there, I’d be trespassing. But I’m smart enough to know they still expect me to go there,” Riot explained. “Porsche, you know I’m not a liar. We’re hours away from where I used to live. We are on a reservation,” she said.

  “A reservation?” I repeated.

  “We are in America, but not really. This is the land that the American government had to set aside for the Native Americans, who they stole it from in the first place. Now the Native Americans own this land. They have their own government and way of life. They own their own businesses. They have their own police. The American government and the New York State Police are never supposed to come here. That’s why I chose this place for us to be safe,” she explained.

  “How long do you plan on chilling here?” I asked, getting red.

  “Porsche, you gotta think. You’re young, but you still have to think everything through, every detail. That’s how we pulled this caper off. We stayed calm for a long time. We made moves quietly. We let our pride go so we could get our goals accomplished. I was serving ten years. You were serving eight. If we didn’t get out on our own, we wouldn’t have seen nobody we know or loved for a crazy long stretch. Now this place is real nice, even though it ain’t where you wanna be. It’s not home but it’s better than prison.” She gave me a stern stare. “You put yourself in the Porta-Potty. Nobody pushed you. You had the choice. You wanted to walk. You could’ve stayed, I didn’t have to convince you, right?” she asked me.