Untrained Eye by Jody Klaire

up to my knees and glared around at the stupid
place. What was next, stick a straightjacket on me and act like I shouldn’t
have any rights? Why should I be happy about getting locked up? I’d been
locked up for most of my life.
    The door opened and I braced myself. If they were going to try
hitting me with anything else, I was going to get mad.
    “I done my time yet?” It sounded snarling, aggressive even to my
own ears.
    Frei appeared in the doorway in running shorts and a tank top.
“Gym.” She turned and strode out.
    If she was fazed by my mood, she weren’t giving nothing away.
There was a surprise.
    I followed her out of the room, already a million times calmer
than I’d been in there. I hated confined spaces. At my height and build, being
stuck in the “pillow prison,” as I called them, just rubbed me raw.
    I hadn’t seen the outside of the room in what felt like a decade.
In Serenity, I’d been through some nasty stuff and some nastier treatments and
gotten through with a smile on my face. I’d smiled most of the time to irritate
the shrinks trying to break me.
    A year away from the place and I’d lost that ability to cope. I
was at a breaking point a lot faster than it used to take me to get there.
Right now, I was ready to cry and beg Frei never to let me go near one of those
stupid cells again.
    “Who are you mad at?” Frei said as we walked into a well-stocked
gym.
    I yanked at my prison wear. The top rose up on my stomach and the
pants had ripped at the seams. They flapped around my calves as they were way
too short and all in orange. I had a thing about orange. I’d spent a decade in
orange. “Institutions thinkin’ they know what’s going on in my head.”
    Frei patted the weight bench and I headed to it and racked up in
an automatic motion.
    “But they don’t, right?” Frei sat beside me on an identical bench
and racked up the same weight I’d put on. I just stared at her. She was crazy
if she thought she could lift that.
    “A degree don’t make you smarter than anybody else. Just means you
planted your butt on a seat and regurgitated something you memorized.” I
shunted the weights up. The t-shirt ripped from my biceps. I knew I looked as
unhinged as I felt but relief in the expulsion of energy flowed through me.
    “So what do you think is smart?” Frei used one arm, half the size
of mine, and glided the weights up like they were balloons. I was pretty sure
whatever they’d shot into my system must still be working.
    “Being a good person. Being somebody that tries to do the right
thing.” I got into a rhythm, my tension draining out with each push. “Learning
from the dumb mistakes you make.”
    “Are you going to be smart?” Frei continued to glide up her weight
like she wasn’t taxed by it. I knew from the sweat dribbling down my chest that
it was not that easy.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Frei’s cool appraisal made me
sigh. “Look, I did what I needed to. Neither of us wanted Renee to live her
life like that. You did what you needed to do and I did what I needed to do.”
    “That doesn’t make it smart.”
    I slammed out the last few of the reps. “I didn’t ever say I was.
I spent most of my life locked up for some guy who tried to rip all I had left
from me.”
    “So trusting people is stupid too.” Frei switched arms as I
started another set. It didn’t sound like a question.
    “Trusting the wrong folks is dumb. Trusting a serial killer who
wants to tear your heart to shreds makes me nothing but a fool. A big, stupid,
gullible fool.”
    “Nice.” Frei’s tone was cutting. “Add in some self-pity to it,
that’ll help.”
    “You want to wind me up?” I slammed the weight up harder, making
the machine ding.
    “I’m not afraid of you, Lorelei.” Frei stopped and added more
weight. She started again, still one-handed.
    “Why would I want to scare you?” I scowled at her.
    “Growing up, I learned there were two ways to survive.”