Grace closed her eyes then, trying to pretend she wasn't there, that it wasn't happening, and then suddenly she heard a noise and a bang, like a door slamming. She heard Brenda gasp and felt her pull her hand out and jump aside, and when Grace opened her eyes, she saw a tall, graceful black girl standing in the doorway. She didn't know if the girl was one of them or not, but the others didn't seem happy to see her.

“Okay, you fools, untie her.” The black girl was very tall and very cool, and strangely good-looking. And the whites of her eyes looked enormous in the light of the flashlight. “You've got five seconds to get her out of here, or Sally's going to the Man. If I'm not outta here in three minutes, she's gone. And I guess maybe you babes are in the hole until Christmas.”

“Bullshit, Luana. Get your black ass outta here before we kill you.” Jane was addressing her and flashing the switchblade at her and Brenda looked furious, but she seemed somewhat distracted. The cocaine had taken hold and she wanted to proceed with Grace, without their damn interruptions.

“Why don't you cunts go fight someplace else?” Brenda said with a small groan as she moved away from Grace for a moment.

“You got two minutes left,” Luana said icily. “I said untie her.” Luana looked terrifying as she stood staring at them in the light of the flashlight. She had muscles almost like a man's and the long sinewy legs of an Olympic runner. She was the prison's female karate and boxing champ, and she was someone that no one wanted to mess with. Jane always swore she wasn't afraid of her, and she'd said more than once that she would have liked to carve her face off. But the rest of them knew it was more talk than action. Luana had powerful connections.

There was a long moment of hesitation, and then one of the other women untied Grace's hands and arms, and another began to untie her legs, as Brenda whined in unfulfilled passion.

“You bitch. You want her for yourself, don't you?”

“I've got what I want. Since when do you have to fuck with babies?” But Luana knew as well as they did that Grace was a beauty. Lying there, all sprawled out, she had almost made them drool with anticipation.

“She's old enough,” Brenda spat at the black girl in frustrated fury. “What are you now, the Lone Ranger? Go fuck yourself, Luana.”

“Thanks.”

Grace was on her feet, and struggling into her clothes, and trying to button her shirt with trembling hands again a moment later. She didn't even dare look at them, for fear that they would kill her.

“Party's over, girls,” Luana announced with a smile. “You touch her again, and I'll kill you.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Brenda said with a tone of complete annoyance.

“She's mine. You heard me?”

“Yours;?”For once, Brenda looked stunned. No one had told her that. That might have made things a little different.

“What about Sally?” Brenda asked suspiciously.

“We don't owe you any explanations,” Luana said coldly, as she shoved Grace toward the door. She was wheezing and shaking, and Luana pushed her so hard she almost fell. This was not a woman to mess with. None of them was. Grace was way out of her league, and she realized now that she'd been crazy to think she could be safe here. All the stories were true. They had just been waiting.

“Christ, you guys are into threesomes now?” Brenda whined at her.

“You heard me. She's mine. Stay away from her. Or there's gonna be trouble. You got that?” No one answered her, but the message was clear, and Luana was too important in the political scheme of things to be worth annoying. With a single word from her, a riot could come down. Two of her brothers were the most powerful Black Muslims in the state, and the two others had staged the biggest riots in the history of Attica, and San Quentin.

Having warned them to stay away from Grace, Luana quickly opened the door, and shoved Grace outside. She grabbed her arm, and growled at her to stroll along, chatting with her as though nothing had happened. Five minutes later, they were in the gym, and Grace was deathly pale and wheezing, and she no longer had her inhaler. Sally was waiting for them there, with a look of concern. And when she saw Grace, she looked really angry.

“What the hell were you doing with Brenda?” she asked in an irate undertone, as Luana watched them.

“She came into our cell. I thought it was you at first, I didn't even look up until she was nose to nose with me, and Jane was flashing a knife right behind her.”

“You've got a lot to learn.” But she'd been impressed that she'd been smart enough to leave a message on her bunk, with the single scrawled word Brenda. “Are you okay?” She wondered how far it had gone, and she glanced at Luana for an answer.

“She's okay. Stupid, but okay. They didn't get too far. Brenda was too busy getting coked up to do a whole lot of damage.” Over the years they had all seen girls raped and ruined for life by baseball bats and broomsticks. But Luana was still annoyed that this kid had almost dragged Sally into it. It was Luana who had insisted on going herself, and leaving Sally to tell the guards, if she had to. Luana took good care of her. They had been together for years and no one dared to bother either of them, because of Luana's brothers who came to see her when they could. Two lived in Illinois, one in New York, and the other in California. All four were on parole, but everyone knew who they were, and what they could do, if they ever got angry. Even Brenda and her friends wouldn't dare mess with them, or with Luana or Sally. Now Grace was going to be under their protection.

“What did you tell them?” Sally asked Luana conversationally as they walked back to the cell she shared with Grace.

“That she was ours now,” Luana said quietly, looking at Grace with annoyance. She had told Sally to watch out for her. The kid was so green she was liable to bring the house down. And Luana didn't pull any punches with her when they got back to the cell and Grace started crying. She also knew she didn't dare ask for another inhaler till the next day, and she was wheezing badly.

“I don't give a shit how scared and sick you are,” Luana said, looking murderous. “If you ever put Sally's ass on the line again, I'll kill you. You don't leave her any notes, don't tell her who kidnapped you. Don't go whining to her about your medicine or who pinched your ass on the chow line. You got a problem, you come to me. I don't know what the hell you did to get sent here, and I don't want to know. But I can tell you one thing, you weren't sent here for having brains, and if you don't get them quick, you're gonna die, simple as that. So get smart real fast. Ya hear? And in the meantime, you do every goddamn thing Sally tells you. She tells you to lick the floor, or clean her latrine with your eyebrows, you do it. You got that, kid?”

“Yes, yes, I do … and thank you …” She knew that she was safe with them. Sally had already proven that to her. And from now on, if she was faithful to them, they would protect her. They wanted nothing from her, not sex, not money, they felt sorry for her, and they both knew she didn't belong there.

But from that day on, things changed. People stayed away from Grace, and treated her with respect. No one hassled her, no one whistled or jeered. It was as though she didn't exist. She led a sort of charmed life, going her own way in the jungle, amidst the lions and the snakes and the alligators. And her only friends were Sally and Luana.

She had gotten religious while she was there. And her asthma was troubling her less than it had in years. She had started her correspondence course from the local junior college. She could finish in two years, and go to school at night to get her B.A. once she got out. She was taking secretarial classes too, to help her find a job when she got out and went to Chicago.

Even David saw a change in her in time. When he visited her, he saw that there was a quiet confidence, and an odd peace about her. It allowed her to accept the news philosophically when he told her that they had lost the appeal, and she would have to serve her full two-year sentence. It had been exactly a year since her conviction, and David could barely bring himself to believe that they had lost again, but she took it very calmly. It was Grace who consoled him, when he told her how badly he felt to have failed her yet again, but she reminded him that it wasn't his fault. He had done his best. And all she had to do now was survive another year there. It wasn't easy, but all she could do now was look forward. It touched him more than ever as he listened to her, but it pained him too. He found that he came to see her less often because seeing her always reminded him of all that he hadn't been able to accomplish for her. He still had an odd kind of obsession with her. She was so beautiful, so young, so pure, and she had had such rotten luck in her short life, and yet, despite all he felt for her, he had been able to do nothing to change it. It made him feel helpless and angry and inadequate. Sometimes, he wondered if he had won the appeal for her, would things have been different? If, maybe then, he would have had the guts to tell her he loved her. But as things stood, he had never said it, and Grace never suspected his feelings for her.

Molly had been aware of his feelings for Grace for a while, but she had never said anything to him about it. But the young lawyer David had been taking out recently had said plenty. She had sensed long since how obsessed he was with Grace. He talked about her constantly. His new friend had called him on it more than once, and told him it wasn't healthy. She told him he had a “hero complex” and was trying to save her. She told him a lot of things, some of which were truly painful. But the simple fact was, in his own mind, he had failed Grace. Knowing that made him feel worse each time he saw her. And in her second year at Dwight, he came to see Grace less and less often. He had less reason to now. There was no appeal. There was nothing he could do for her anymore, except be her friend. And his girlfriend kept telling him he had to get on with his own life.