Inconsolable » Squid [Holes]

10: A Spoonful of Sugar

"Why do you look like you're going to tear someone's head off?" Eagle asked, studying Mickey's face as she entered the kitchen to prepare "breakfast" that morning. That only meant they were going to open a jar of peanut butter and put out limp celery sticks and raisins. Why she had to get up for that, she didn't know but she wasn't going to raise a fuss about it. She was tired of shouting into the void, to deaf ears. It only caused her pain.

She didn't want to hurt anymore.

"Because I'm stuck with a bunch of...jerks!" Mickey replied. A much stronger word was desired but she couldn't come up with anything appropriate at the time. Instead she grabbed a jar and slammed it down on a counter top.

"Okay...want to tell me what these jerks did?" Eagle prompted, digging a knife though another jar. He picked up a celery stick and dragged the peanut butter across the top of a celery stick. It was a little difficult due to the limpness of the vegetable. "Whoa!" he cried out, racing over to yank the knife she picked up out of her hand. "No knives for you. Bad Mickey, bad!" He set it down out of her reach. "The last thing you want is to get a murder charge while you're here."

"Well, it'd get me out of here so that wouldn't exactly be a bad thing," Mickey growled, shoving raisins into the prepared celery sticks so hard that she left finger marks in the peanut butter.

"What happened?" Eagle pressed. She huffed out a breath. "You can trust me, Micks." His words were so soft, so tender that it almost made her fall over in surprise. But added to those words were a certain weight that struck her just as hard. Micks. She couldn't help but remember that Squid used to call her that, back when things were good between them, back when hearing his name put a smile on her face, back when they were friends.

A lifetime ago.

So, with a heavy sigh, she relayed the happenings: finding 'Matthew' or whatever his name was in her tent, trying to explain what happened, having to fight against the boy's words, and culminating with her sleeping with one eye open just in case one of her tentmates tried anything while she slept. She didn't worry about Caveman or Zero but the others? She couldn't take that risk.

The ease of which the words came out of her surprised her, giving her a good one-two punch in a span of a few minutes. But then that surprise was short-lived. Frankly, Eagle's been the only one around the camp that tried to make her feel comfortable since the day she got there and, if she were being honest, she trusted him more than she trusted anyone else there.

Especially now. Even if he was there for a reason as well. Surely it couldn't be so bad. Someone as nice as him couldn't be, say, a murderer or a batterer or anything of the sort. What about Ted Bundy? a voice nearly shouted in her ear but she waved it away. They were juveniles. Anything particularly bad and they would have all been sent to an actual adult jail.

While she was trained on that notion, Eagle was trained on another one. In fact he was so stuck on it that his eyes had widened to nearly two times their normal size. "You squealed?" he repeated himself for the third time, the words bouncing against Mickey's bewildered stare.

"I explained a situation," she stated. "There's a difference."

"No, you squealed!" he insisted, setting the celery in his hand down. "That's rule number one here! ...Okay, maybe rule number three. Number one is don't bother the Warden."

"What's number two?"

"Don't fuck with Mr. Sir."

She nodded. Good rule. He looked as if he could strike faster than an angry rattlesnake. "I didn't squeal," she insisted.