I look down at myself. Red. Head to toe.
I look like a warning sign.
"Done," I say.
Sven opens the door. Eyes sweep me once — checking compliance, not checking me out. Nods.
"Rules. One: you don't leave this wing without me or authorized escort. Two: no physical contact with any resident. Three: alarm sounds, you get on the floor, hands behind your head. Don't move until you're told."
He delivers all three like a man reading terms and conditions. I nod, file them, and follow him toward lunch.
The cafeteria is at the end of the hall through double doors that require Sven's thumbprint.
The room is bigger than I expected. Long metal tables welded to the floor. Benches instead of chairs, also welded. Food in heavy plastic bowls.
There are maybe twelve guys in here. All in red.
No girls.
In every facility I've been in, there were always girls. Not a lot. The ratio was usually bad. But there were always a few. Someone to nod at in the hall. Someone who understood the specific math you do when you're outnumbered by people bigger than you.
Here, nobody. I'm it.
Sven walks me to a table at the far end. One bowl of soup, a roll, a protein bar, a cup of water.
The room is watching me. Not all of them — some are eating, some are staring at their tables like it's the only safe place to look. But enough of them are watching that I feel it on my skin.
It's not the way men usually look at me. I know that look. Inventory. What can I take. What will she do if I try.
This is different. Some look confused. Some shift in their seats like they can't get comfortable. One — big, maybe twenty, tattoos climbing his neck — inhales deeply when I pass and his whole body goes rigid. Jaw clenches. Fingers curl into the metal bench and I hear the stress on the weld points.
Sven's hand closes on my upper arm. Steers me to the far table without breaking stride.
"Sit. Eat. Don't look at them."
"Why?"
"Because your attention is a variable I haven't controlled for yet."
That's the most honest thing he's said to me. And the most terrifying.
I eat. I watch from my periphery because I've never once done what I was told.
The whispers start about three minutes in. Low voices, mouths barely moving, eyes cutting toward me and away. I catch fragments. New transfer. Girl. Red House. And then, from a table near the middle — a voice that doesn't bother to whisper.
"That's her? That's murder girl?"
Sven's head turns. Fast. The room goes quiet.
"Eat your food, Torres," Sven says.
Torres — stocky, dark-haired, built like he's been fighting since he could make a fist — looks at Sven. Looks at me. Calculates odds. Decides against them.
He eats his food.
But the word's out. Murder girl. They know about the file, the red tag, the body. In juvie, a reputation like that buys either fear or challenge. Here it buys something I can't read. Torres didn't say it mocking. He said it like murder was a category and I'd just been sorted into it alongside the rest of them.
Like they all had a body in their file.
