CHAPTER 6

Lillie

"Pen-Pal Prisoners. Are you serious? That's what you are doing?" I asked Sassi, confused. She saw my frowned expression and shook her head, laughing.

"It's not so bad and not what you think, Lil. Jeez." She said.

She held her hands on her hips. "I'm not communicating with a deranged person who's gonna stalk me afterwards or something. Are you crazy? I won't do anything that dangerous."

I looked her dead in the eye. "Are you sure about that? Chatting to a C-R-I-M-I-N-A-L sounds pretty dangerous to me." I cannot believe Sassi. Is she for real, placing herself in harm's way like that. You don't know the guy's criminal background, his evil intentions with you, what he'll do afterwards. The list is endless, for crying out loud.

"It's totally safe Lil. And I'm not physically chatting with the guy. I write to him. It's supposed to be a friendly initiative for inmates to integrate them into society or something. That's why it's a pen pal. Your only communicate with them through a pen. Duh." she said, rolling her eyes.

"That sounds completely dumb. Don't you have anything better to do than write to some random stranger who happens to do crime in their spare time?" I countered, determined to hold my ground.

She gave her head a side swing, bouncing her blonde curls. "Look, once they served their sentence or as long as you want to write to them. The pen-pal communication ends, and you de-register from the program, it's as simple as that." She said, snapping her fingers.

"De-register?" I asked, raising my brow.

Sassi nodded her head. "Yip, you have to register for the program first."

"Why don't you try it out too? It's perfect for you. You can chat with a guy without ever meeting him. It's the charitable thing to do and hey you might sharpen your social skills while you're at it, instead of focusing on your music and school all the time." Sassi winked at me cheekily.

"No thanks. I'll take a hard pass on that one. I don't plan on writing to some short, ugly, old guy behind bars that did petty crimes." I said and looked away.

"It can be fun. No strings attached. I swear the only thing you do these days are English assessments and practicing with that boring five string quartet." She said.

"Four string quartet, not five," I politely corrected her.

Sassi gave me a deadpan look. "You know what I mean, here look at the leaflet." Sassi said, handing me one. I took the leaflet and scanned it. It pretty much reiterated what Sassi had said... but something caught my attention that read:

"help a fellow human in need. Loneliness is a heartbreaking thing, even for a person in prison"

That made me feel strangely sad. Damn, I didn't want to feel that way. I played with my curly brown hair while assessing the pamphlet.

I could feel Sassi's eyes burning into me. "What do you say? You're 24 years old. I'll hardly say you're living on the edge here. It's your type of communication style, c'mon." She placed her hands on my shoulders and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"What is that supposed to mean? My type of communication." I said, clutching my denim jacket.

"Let's say it's social distancing at its best." She said with a gentle smile.

Her words sunk in. I finally gave in and gave a weak smile, even though I didn't want to.

I sighed in defeat. "I guess it couldn't hurt to try." I couldn't believe I was considering it. Half of me agreed that pen palling wouldn't be so bad, and it would hopefully brighten someone's dreary day with my encouragements. The other half wanted to prove to Sassi I could be nonchalant about something like this, too.

We walked to the lady at the desk for registration. She gave a form, and I filled it in. I was glad the particulars included little personal information except my name, surname and PO BOX address. I made double sure I included my PO Box address and not my home one.

"Thank you for registering." The lady said to me as I returned the form. "You are doing a kind thing for someone." I smiled at that. But somehow felt very uneasy about the whole situation.

The lady continued, "Choose your number," she pointed her finger at the board.

I walked over by myself. Sassi stayed behind and chatted with the registration lady about who knows what. I stared at the board for a good five minutes, contemplating which number to pick. The thought that each number represented an inmate was intimidating. There were numbers 28000 to 31000. A large set of numbers were already taken, clearly by other good Samaritans, too. The thought somehow comforted me.

Holding my breath, I picked the number that held the first two digits of my birthday, which was 29 January, it always was my lucky number. I gave the card to the lady, and she placed it in a small grey envelope that enclosed the details of the particular inmate I was to pen pal with. I took the envelope and headed towards Sassi. She was waiting for me at the water fountain.

"Hey, did you pick a number?" she asked, suddenly excited.

"Yip." I said sighing, hoping I did the right thing.

She bit her bottom lip with a smile. "Ooooh, which one?"

"Number 29901." I simply said.