Old Ink (Get Ink'd #3) - Ali Lyda Page 0,62
in relief. Dane muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “fucking finally.”
“What—” I started, but Christian waved me off.
“We’ve been waiting all summer for this. Something was clearly bothering you, and it has been absolutely awful not pestering you to tell us before you were ready.” He pointed to the coffee. “Do you need a caffeine boost before you lay this on us?”
This was… not going the way I’d expected it to. “Uh, no? No. Thank you. I...well, I guess I’ll just get to it, then.” Any confidence I’d mustered had flown out the window at their reactions. I set the laptop on the dining table and sat, pulling up the presentation I’d worked so hard on.
I cleared my throat. “I’d like to talk about school and graduation.”
Click. The first slide showed my current degree, the remaining requirements, and my current official graduation date. “As you know, I’ve been working on a social work degree. I took courses over the summers in the hopes of graduating early. If I were to stay on this track, I’d graduate in the fall.”
Christian raised an eyebrow at the “if”. I wrinkled my nose and moved to the next slide.
Click. “There are over two million arrests of persons under eighteen in the US each year. While incarceration and detention rates are going down, there is still an unacceptably large population of our youth being arrested and held, sometimes for months without a trial.”
There was a graph showing the arrest rates and laws typically violated by youths.
Click. “In many juvenile prisons and detention centers, solitary confinement is still being utilized on the regular. This can mean upwards of sixty days spent in solitary when the prisoner is under eighteen, the most formative social-building years.”
This slide held statistics regarding the psychological and emotional impacts of solitary for persons under eighteen—which I was intimately familiar with.
Click. “Pepper spray is also used with some frequency in centers. There is increased exposure for youths to drugs, violence, and sexual violence within the walls of the detention centers.” A list of common excessive forces utilized in detention centers followed by the statistics of increased crime after juvie and the probability of repeat offenses. “There is also little effort being put toward the continuing education of incarcerated youths, leaving them unable to easily reintegrate into society upon release.”
Click. “If I hadn’t agreed to be the lookout at seventeen, if Dane hadn’t caught me and you hadn’t agreed to take me in?”
I paused, looking at the slide, which contained a list of the infractions I’d been put in juvie for and the crimes I’d committed that I hadn’t been caught for. Larceny. Breaking and Entering. Drugs. Vandalism. Truancy.
“I’d be in prison by now. I’m certain of it.” My voice cracked and my eyes squeezed shut. When I was ready, I looked at my brothers. “You saved my life, and now I want to pay it forward by saving the lives of other kids who aren’t lucky enough to have a Christian and Dane. But I don’t think social work is enough. I don’t just want to help counsel kids in juvie—I want to change juvie, I want to be an advocate for those who don’t have one.”
Click. “I’d like to add a criminal justice major. It will extend my schooling by at least a year, probably two. I’ll also be looking at graduate programs after, which of course, I’ll find a way to pay for myself. But I want to be working in the centers and with lawmakers to help out kids like me and the ones I was in juvie with. To give them the chance that they don’t have now.”
It was the end of my presentation. I shut the laptop and sat with my hands in my lap. Christian and Dane were staring at me and I willed myself to sit and wait, enduring their looks. Just as I was about to start sweating, Christian let out a startled laugh.
“What?” I asked, my stomach in knots.
“That’s all? You want to learn more? Jesus, that’s great.” Christian’s shoulders continued to shake with his laughter and relief. “I’ve been worried you were going to drop out. Or that you’d gotten into some kind of trouble. Or hell, both. I’ve been so fucking anxious.”
I grabbed the edge of the table, knocked off balance by Christian’s reaction. “But I’m going to cost you more money! And I’ll be semi-dependent on you for another few years. I know you and Dane are probably eager to start