Chapter Text
“Look, dude, I just don’t get it. There’s no point,” Kirsch groaned, laying his head down on the open book in front of him.
“Not if you keep thinking like that, come on!” Danny slapped the back of his head and he shot up in his seat.
“Jeez, okay!”
“So what did we read last chapter?”
Kirsch thought back to the hours spent in his cell, trying to wrap his head around the dense and confusing sentences. They’d finished Beowulf and had moved on to Dickens, but that was just as hard to understand (if not worse.)
“Uuuh… Pip met a lawyer. J-something.”
“Jaggers?”
“Yeah! And he got these “great expectations” which I’m pretty sure is just money.”
Danny nodded, gesturing for him to go on.
“Aaaand something happened with his sister. I dunno.”
Her face fell.
“Kirsch. You gotta focus on this! You need to write an essay, and you can hardly do that if you don’t even understand the book!”
“It’s not my fault, this is impossible!”
Danny sighed in exasperation and Kirsch slumped in his seat. He looked around. The library was practically empty, save for Carmilla. She was sprawled out on one of the few sofas, deep in some philosophy book or another. At least it solved the mystery of where she went all day.
Most of the kids in Silas stayed as far away from the library as possible, which meant Kirsch didn’t have to worry about any embarrassment as he loudly complained that he knew nothing.
“Not nothing,” Danny protested. “You know about Jagger, and do you remember Joe Gargery?”
“Well yeah. But I can’t write about this shit.”
“Okay,” Danny began, leaning on the table. “So tell me about the differences between them.”
Kirsch screwed his face up, thinking. “Well, they’re, like, totally different things. Joe is Pip’s home, which he’s totally bored of by now, but it’s familiar. And Jaggers comes from London which is new and exciting but scary.”
“So?”
“So they’re both different parts of Pip’s life which are against one another.”
Kirsch glanced over to Danny, who had a triumphant smile on her face. Usually, Kirsch would hate her looking so smug. But, considering that Danny was trying to help him this time, he figured it was probably a good sign that she seemed happy. Still, he didn’t know why.
“What?”
“Dude, you basically just created a line of argument. Add some quotes, spout some bullshit about the duality of Pip’s desires, and you’ve got yourself an essay.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded.
Well that was easy.
“Huh.”
“So now, quotes!”
“Fuck.”
After dinner, they had a couple of hours for rec time, and Kirsch almost headed to the social area before he remembered that he was kicked out of the Zetas and, unless he wanted to listen to LaF ranting about the possibility of human cloning, he had nowhere to go.
Feeling completely and utterly sorry for himself, he headed over to the library. Carmilla was there, as always. She didn’t acknowledge Kirsch, which was more of an approval than he’d been expecting. At least he hadn’t been punched.
Or bitten.
The library was depressing, stained cinderblock with one window on the far side. Through it, Kirsch would see Sanchez dribbling a ball dejectedly.
He headed over to the bookshelf. His head was hurting enough from all the classics Danny had him reading, so he made a beeline for the easier-looking stuff.
There was way too much vampire crap for him, but he found one about superheros that looked pretty cool.
He plopped himself down on one of the beanbags in the corner, cracking the book open and beginning to read. Thankfully, this one seemed to be in English.
He was a few pages in when somebody he hadn’t heard sneak up to him snatched the book out of his hands.
“What the hell, Danny?! I was reading that!”
She raised her eyebrows, then held the book up as high as possible.
Taking it as a challenge, Kirsch got to his feet and tried to get the book back from her. Eventually he wrestled it out of her grip and stood in front of her, fuming.
“Seriously?”
“What? It was funny.”
“I was reading,” he protested, returning to his beanbag. Danny stood for a moment, before sitting down next to him.
“Sorry, geez.”
Kirsch didn’t say anything. He didn’t like people teasing him or making him feel like an idiot. He crossed his arms and huffed out a breath.
“This place sucks.”
“Shoulda thought of that before you decided to become a hardened criminal,” Danny laughed.
“Shut up.”
“Come on, I know the whole drug lord thing is bullshit, or at least totally exaggerated. So spill.”
Kirsch deliberated for a moment. He usually lied, but any cred his previous story had gotten him was officially lost anyway.
“Actually, no. I actually was done for thousands of dollars of cocaine possession.”
“Holy shit,” Danny looked impressed, and Kirsch wished she didn’t.
“No, but dude, I didn’t do anything .”
“Yeah,” she rolled her eyes sarcastically. “And I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“No, bro, I’m being serious,” he insisted.
“Seriously?” Danny sounded doubtful. “So what happened?”
“You gotta help me, man, they’re after me!”
“What the hell?” Kirsch demanded. It was two am, and he hadn’t seen Will in months. “Did you climb in my window?”
“Dude, I did something really stupid,” Will pleaded, standing in the middle of Kirsch’s bedroom looking completely panicked. Kirsch’s brain was sleepy, but even he knew this was serious. Something had happened.
“Police! Open up!”
“What the fuck did you do?!”
“I messed up but you gotta believe me, I didn’t mean it!”
Kirsch stood up, and noticed that Will was holding a big black bag. He didn’t want to know what was in there.
“You have to help me, please!”
“Uh, okay,” Kirsch said.
“My mom will kill me if I go to jail!”
Then, Kirsch made a snap decision. Possibly the worst decision of his life.
“I’ll take the fall for you.”
Will smiled in relief, before handing the bag over to Kirsch. “Awesome! You’re a true bro!” He then headed back across the room, and climbed back out the window.
Kirsch stood there, dumbfounded, clutching the bag in his fist. That was about to get him in a whole lot of trouble.
Sirens were wailing. The banging was getting louder. He couldn’t move. His legs wouldn’t work.
The door burst open. He was wrestled to the ground. He had nowhere to run, he couldn’t do anything but let himself be taken. The handcuffs dug into his wrists as he was dragged away, his mother crying and asking what he had done. The police car was too small, and he felt panic fogging up his brain.
Why had he done that?
Danny didn’t know what to say.
If she had heard the story a few days ago then she would have laughed it off and declared that she was just as, if not more, innocent, exactly like everyone else in this place. But it wasn’t a few days ago, and now Danny knew Kirsch. She knew that he wouldn’t make up something this big. He was telling the truth, she knew it in her gut. But she didn’t know how to verbally articulate that.
“Lawrence?” He looked scared. Hell, she didn’t blame him. He’d just spilled a big secret, and was waiting for a response from Danny. A response that was still taking some time to form.
Finally, she met his eyes and said, “I believe you.”
“Cool, wanna tell the court that?”
“Shut up.” She hit him playfully on the arm, and he responded quite dramatically. Jesus, it couldn’t have hurt that bad. “Seriously though, you should tell the court.”
“No way, I’m not doing that.”
“Uh yeah, it’s bad enough being in here if you deserve it, but if you don’t? That’s pure torture.”
“It’s really not that bad.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s not!” Kirsch awkwardly shifted from foot to foot. “So what about you?”
“Huh?” The speed at which he changed the topic left Danny reeling for a moment.
“Why are you in here? Come on, I told you mine.”
Danny paused. She didn’t tell this story very often. Not at all actually, and she wasn’t about to break that streak for a freaking zeta. Except that Kirsch was more than that, whether Danny could admit it or not, and he was right. She did owe it to him.
“Okay, so you know Daisybank Park?”
“Aw yeah, I used to go there all the time with my sister.”
“Sister?”
“Tell the story.” God, he sounded like a kid demanding sweets from his mom.
“Fine. So anyway, there were plans to turn it into a parking lot which is outrageous, like that park is a staple of this city and so me and a few...well let’s call them comrades...decided to start a protest. It got some support, we were being pretty vocal, but when the police started getting uncomfortably close, they scattered. Even the people who started it.
“It ended with me handcuffing myself to the gate and the police dragging me away. Just me. No one else.”
“Jeez, that’s pretty shitty.”
“Yeah, I know.”
The pause that followed was rather awkward.
“Hey, haven’t you been in here for like...two years?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“That’s not worth…”
“Let’s just say I haven’t exactly been the best inmate in the world. I mean, I’m no Carmilla but…”
“Ah, right.” There was another pause, just as awkward as the first. That was when Danny remembered her train of thought before Kirsch distracted her.
“ Anyway , dude you should totally appeal to the court. Get your case reviewed. Get the hell out of this place!” Danny didn’t know why she was so enthusiastic about this idea, but Kirsch looked anything but.
“There’s no way it’d work.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah I do.”
“No. You don’t.” Kirsch opened his mouth to retaliate, but Danny didn’t let him. “What if it worked? How great would that be? You have to at least give it a shot.”
“Danny, there’s no evidence. Zilch, nada, nothing, and that’s what they’re going to need if they even consider letting me out of this place. Plus is means betraying my bro Will, and I’m not about that life.”
At that point, Carmilla appeared at the end of the shelves with a murderous look on her face.
“You’re not talking about Will Karnstein, are you?”