Strange Roommates Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Gabi sat at the computer in the library a couple of hours after Will and Arianna left. It had felt good to cry and not keep things bottled up and tomorrow she had a therapy session and would have something to share. She knew her problem wasn't so much that she didn't trust people it was that she just had the knack for trusting the wrong people all too easily and shutting out the people who really could have helped her. She had trusted Andrew the guy she hired to pretend to stalk her when she had only met him two or three times. He turned out to be an escaped mental patient living under an alias and he had ended up kidnapping Melanie and accidentally setting off an explosion that caused a lot damage and had claimed lives including his own.

Then she turned around and trusted Nick with that secret after knowing him for just a couple of weeks. She still remembered his initial incredulous response: "So are you just going around town and telling this to anyone you think will listen?"

She sighed and entered her id number into the prompt box when it popped up on screen. She then clicked on the mailbox icon when the homepage of her heavily monitored account popped up and just as Will had promised were four photo j-pegs holding the photos that were taken today. She clicked on each of the icons and printed out each of the photos then logged off. She went to the main desk of the library and took a dull pair of scissors from a jar that held pens and trimmed the edges of the photos then glanced at the wall clock and felt a pang of sadness it was 4:00. "Will and Ari are taking off right now," she thought to herself and sighed.

"Is everything alright?" asked a voice coming from her left-hand side. Startled she glanced over at Jane Wikes, the head librarian. Jane was a thin woman in her early fifties who had rust-colored hair and thick glasses. She defintely looked like she should be a librarian and not a prison inmate.

"Yeah, I'm okay," Gabi said, "I just got a bit of bad news is all. My daughter's father is taking her out of state for a while."

"That's never easy, I'm sorry to hear that."

"It's okay, it's only going to be temporary."

Jane nodded skeptically and Gabi wished she had never said anything. Then she looked around the library that consisted mostly of law resource books and a couple of spindly racks full of books by John Grisham, Stephen King and Danielle Steele, that had come from donations from churches and local libraries. It usually had only one or two people in at a time at the moment it was empty.

"Do you need me for anything?" Gabi asked hopefully.

Jane sighed and glanced at the clock and shook her head, "No go ahead and clock out."

"Thanks."

Gabi walked out of the library and down the hall to the prison commissary that was really just a counter in front of a large room that held anything an inmate needed: everything from undergarments and personal hygene products to junk food and beverages. It was manned by a middle-aged African American corrections officer named Tibbs. Inmates were not allowed in the back room to prevent stealing. Fortunately Gabi arrived at just the right time because there was no line in front of the counter.

"What can I get you?" Tibbs asked in a bored voice.

"A package of thumbtacks, a bag of pretzels and a bottle of Pepsi please."

Tibbs disappered into the room and appeared a moment later and scanned the items then asked "ID number?"

Gabi rattled it off and Tibbs typed it into the computer. The inmates didn't purchase items with cash, it came out of the commissary account that was set up when inmates first arrived and were processed.

Tibbs took a pen from her uniform pocket, "Do you need to know your balance?"
"Yes, please."

Tibbs wrote on the recipt then reached under the counter and brought out a clear plastic bag she put the items in.

Gabi glanced at the recipt at the top written in red ink was $126.00 which was better then she expected. "Thank you," she said then walked off after receiving a nod in response.

Gabi returned to her cell block and as she passed the guard station the guard said, "Hold on a minute."

She turned to face the bald corrections officer, "Yes, sir?"

"I just wanted to give you a heads up, a new bus load came today so you have a cellmate now."

She fought back a sense of irritation; she knew that having the cell to herself was a temporary situation and could end at anytime but she thought naively perhaps that they would at least give her some notice before that change occurred.

"Okay, thank you." The butterflies immediately started to form as she walked to her cell she stopped as she heard a voice that sounded strangely familar exclaim through the open doorway; "Oh my God, no way!"

Puzzled she stepped into the doorway standing with her back to the door next to Gabi's locker looking at the pictures was a petite, delicate-looking woman with short auburn hair stylishly curled.

"Excuse me?" Gabi said.

The woman turned, she was in her early thirties with an attractive kewpie doll face and large hazel eyes that grew larger as she stared at Gabi in recognition.

"Gabi?" she said in disbelief.

Gabi felt her jaw drop open as she looked into the equally astonished face of Will's cousin, Theresa Donovan.

"Theresa?" she said dumbstruck.

Gabi didn't know Theresa well, hardly at all actually, having only met her a few times at Brady family gatherings after she had blown into Salem like a tornado a year ago. From everything Gabi heard about the woman she came in only second to Will's mother Sami for the title of Brady family black sheep. She had a reputation for being a promiscious cocaine-snorting hot mess. "Not that I'm in any position to judge," Gabi thought to herself wryly.

Practically everything she knew about Theresa had come from Abigail Deveraux and over the past year, the woman had made life hell for Abigail's younger brother J.J., their mother Jennifer, and Jennifer's then boyfriend Dr. Daniel Jonas. The last Gabi had heard Theresa had been involved with Brady Black and was his date at Will and Sonny's wedding.

She had apparently talked Brady into taking a trip to Las Vegas and the two of them got married in a drugged out stupor. She had struck Brady's father John in the head with a fireplace poker and tried to make it look like Brady had struck his father in an intoxicated rage.

That charade had been brought to an end when John awoke from his coma and remembered everything. Will had told her in one of his previous visits that Theresa had cut a deal and got five to fifteen for attempted manslaughter.

"Wow," Theresa said breaking the awkward silence, "this is a weird coincidence isn't it?"


"Yeah, I guess so," Gabi said having absolutely no idea of what to say.

"So, um, I didn't take your bed did I?" Theresa said gesturing at the bed nearest the cell door.

"No, you're cool."

"Good," Theresa laughed uneasily, "I wouldn't want us to get off on the wrong foot or anything."

Gabi nodded and put her plastic bag on on her bed and took out the package of thumb tacks opened it and carefully tacked up the new photos on the wall by her locker. She spun the combination on the locker door and placed the remaining tacks on the locker shelf and closed it. She sat down on her bed and opened the bag of pretzels.

Then she looked across the room at Theresa. The woman was jittery and didn't seem to know what to do with her hands, she kept folding and unfolding them and then rubbing them across the back of her neck.

Gabi ate a couple of pretzels and observed her silently, not knowing what to make of the situation. She didn't personally care for Theresa based on the things she heard about her but she knew that she was likely to be stuck with her for the foresaeable future so there was no point in being unfriendly.

"Would you like some?" she asked holding out the pretzel bag, "They'll be calling us to dinner in about forty-five minutes and they might work as a buffer from the crap they call 'food' here."

"What?" Theresa said looking up startled then noticed the bag, "oh, um, no thanks."

Gabi shrugged and opened up her soda and took a swig then screwed the cap back on tightly.

"So, what do they expect us to do all day, just sit in here?" Theresa asked suddenly a slightly frantic tone in her voice.

"No, there's a day room where we can go watch TV or go out in the yard. In a few days you'll be assigned a job."

What's your job?"

"I work in the library."

"Well that sounds exciting," Theresa snorted. "Do you have guards following you around?"

"That's only for the first few weeks, after that you can move around with some freedom I mean we still have to report our every movement but we can make them unescorted."

"Great," Theresa sighed then studied Gabi silently for a moment. "I suppose you think I'm a total witch right?"

"What?" Gabi asked taken aback by the suddenly combative tone in the woman's voice.

"I know you're friends with Abigail."

"Yeah, but we haven't talked in a while."

That wasn't quite true, they had corresponded through letters. When Gabi had turned herself in for Nick's murder she thought her friendship with Abigail would be over, and she had told Abigail that she had never been her friend. She didn't feel worthy of Abigail's friendship after what she had done to Nick and Melanie and felt that Abigail would feel that way as well.

But to Gabi's surprise that turned out not to be the case, Abigail had given Rafe a letter she had written. In it she told Gabi that while she didn't understand why or how Gabi had taken the turns she had had taken that led her to do what she had done to Melaine, she knew that Gabi was still at heart a good person. That she wasn't going to turn her back on Gabi now while she needed all the support she could get.

That despite everything she still considered Gabi to be her friend wether she liked it or not and she wasn't going to be pushed away. Gabi had written back a tear-drenched letter of thanks and the two of them had slowly started rebuilding a friendship that Gabi thought was destroyed.

Abigail had asked to be included on Gabi's list of approved visitors and the process took a month to six weeks so the approval could come at any time.

"Okay, so maybe you haven't talked to Abigail recently but you used to talk all the time, right?" Theresa shot back.

"Yeah but we didn't actually spend a lot of time talking about you, okay? I think you really need to chill out."

"I don't appreciate being judged by someone who doesn't even know me."

"What are you talking about?" Gabi demanded, "I've said about five sentences to you in the last ten minutes and not a single one could be considered judgmental in any way!"

"You may not have said anything but that doesn't mean you weren't thinking it."

"Is there a problem here ladies?" A male voice broke in, Gabi looked in the doorway to see Hawkins standing there. "Of course," she said under her breath.

"No, sir, there 's no problem at all."

"Really?" Hawkins said skeptically stepping into the cell, "because I could have sworn I heard too much arguing coming from in here for there to be 'no problem at all.'"

He seemed to notice Theresa for the first time. "You're a new arrival aren't you?

Theresa nodded.

"What's your name?"

"Theresa Donovan."

"Well Theresa, I'm going to be honest with you, I don't care what you and Gabriella were discussing so passionately, we just prefer that you ladies use your 'indoor voices' especially on the cell block. Because when we hear loud voices we think a fight is going to break out and then we have to move to stop it and that's just a pain in the *bleep* particularly when it's a false alarm." He paused then noticed Gabi's pretzels. "May I?" He asked reaching for the bag with a smirk.

She silently held out the bag while he grabbed a large handful. He popped a pretzel in his mouth and chewed deliberately as though in deep thought.

He glanced at his watch and turned his attention back to Theresa. "Here's what I'm going to do since you've only been here an hour, I'm going to write you up as a possible disruption who needs careful supervision. Now I won't recommend any further displinary action be taken at this time but just know that these first few weeks in which you're acclimating to life here are going to be tougher then they might have otherwise been because the staff will be on you like white on rice if you step out of line the slightest bit."

He looked at Theresa's stunned expression and chuckled, "What did you think I was just going to let you off with a warning?"

Theresa slowly nodded.

"Sorry sweetheart, but that's not how it works here. This isn't daycare we're not here to babysit you, it doesn't matter if you're fresh off the bus or not."

He turned to Gabi and sighed, "I'm kind of surprised at you Gabriella, I would have thought that you would have taken this opportunity to explain some of these things to your new roomie instead of arguing with her."

"I was trying to-" Gabi started to object.

"Well you should try harder then," Hawkins cut her off. "Because if I have to come in here again for something like this you BOTH will be spending time in solitary and I know you don't want to lose out on any visits from that sweet little daughter of yours."

He popped a couple of more pretzels in his mouth and checked his watch again. "Dinner is in twenty minutes so I suggest that within that twenty minutes you two cross whatever you were talking about off your lists of things 'I should not discuss with my cellmate'. Because I meant what I said about not wanting to come in here again."

After he was gone Gabi and Theresa surveyed each other silently. Gabi understood that the woman was wound tight at the moment but from what she had heard she had the sinking feeling that was a natural state of being for Theresa.

She really didn't want to be at odds with Theresa but from the anger and defiance that burnt in her eyes that there would be no apology forthcoming. It was clear that in Theresa's mind the reprimand was Gabi's fault.

"Well, so much for her not wanting to get off on the wrong foot," Gabi thought to herself. Personally she didn't really care if the two of them never spoke again, one thing she had learned for certain in the last fifteen minutes was that Theresa Dovovan was the living embodiment of the phrase 'Drama Queen' and she had enough problems of her own.

"That guard was just bluffing right?" Theresa asked suddently, "He isn't going to do all that stuff he said he was going to do is he?"

"No," Gabi said sternly, "I don't think he was bluffing at all."

"But I just got here!"

"Like he said that doesn't matter," Gabi sighed. "Look I've been here long enough to know some of the guards will give newbies a little slack at least for the first few days but unfortunately Kyle Hawkins is not one of them. In fact, I think he lives for making the first few days as miserable as he can and you made a bad first impression and he's going to watch you like a hawk. So I'm telling you for your own good, you need to CALM DOWN especially when you go into the mess hall."

Theresa merely stared back in mute defiance. Gabi shrugged, rolled up the pretzel bag and rose to put the bag in her locker.

"What did that shrug mean?" Theresa asked pugnanciously.

Gabi sighed. "It meant that I know you're going to do whatever the hell you want and I'm just wasting my breath so why don't we just stop talking, okay?"

"Fine with me."

Gabi sat back down and took a large drink of her soda. She had a feeling that life with Theresa was going to make her sentence feel even longer then it already did.

I like this story.

I appreciate that, look of love . I actually haven't finished it but since there does seem to be interest there may still be more to come.